The Origins of Autocracy

Ancient, pre-Ivanian Rus' is presented as immersed in a way of life based on kinship. "There were no profound demands for another order of things, and where were they to come from? The personality, which is the sole fruitful soil for any moral development, had not yet emerged; it was suppressed by relationships of blood.'"[169] Tsar Ivan strove to arouse the country from the dangerous slumber which con­demned it to eternal stagnation. What did he not do toward this end! He "destroyed the local rulers and placed the entire local administra­tion under the complete control of the communes themselves.'"[170] This did no good. The boyars, excluded from local administration, con­centrated themselves in the center, in Moscow. "The Duma was in their hands; they alone were its members.'"[171] The tsar tried to exclude them from the center. "The goal [of his reforms] was the same: to break the power of the great lords, and to give power and great scope to the state alone."¹⁹ For this purpose, "All the major branches of the administration were entrusted to secretaries: they headed the gov­ernment departments; the great lords were almost completely ex­cluded from civil affairs.'"²⁰

Later, the tsar went after them in the Duma itself, "and introduced into it the new element of personal dig­nity."²¹

Again nothing happens: the tsar cannot appoint whomever he wants to whatever post he likes; the boyar tradition blocks his path, binds his hands, and nullifies all his efforts. There is no one who un­derstands the tsar's grand design. There are no institutions: "The communes, however much Ivan tried to revive them for their own good, were dead; there was no public spirit in them because the for­mer quasi-patriarchal way of life was continuing there."²² Alas, the great tsar lived in an "unhappy time when no reform was capable of improving our way of life."²³

"Ivan sought for organs to implement his thoughts and did not find them; there was nowhere to take them from. . . . The elements for a better order of things did not yet exist in society itself."²⁴ How did this struggle end?

Ivan lost his strength, finally, under the burden of a dull and quasi- patriarchal environment, which had already become meaningless, and in which he was fated to live and act. Struggling with it to the death over many years, and seeing no results, he lost faith in the possibility of real­izing his great thoughts. Then life became for him an unbearable bur­den, a ceaseless torment, he became a hypocrite, a tyrant, and a coward. Ivan IV fell so far precisely because he was great.²⁵

Do you see now where Belinskii's "fallen angel" came from? Do we not have before us a tragedy worthy of the pen of Shakespeare and Cervantes? A courageous Don Quixote, fatigued by the struggle with patriarchal dragons, is against his will transformed in the end into Macbeth—and since the role of Lady Macbeth is played by History herself, he is worthy not only of our sympathy but also of admiration. Furthermore, the mysterious dualism of the personality, which so tor­mented Shcherbatov and Karamzin, now receives both explanation and justification: the more bestialities Tsar Macbeth committed in his fall, the greater Tsar Don Quixote was at the height of his powers and hopes. From now on, the bestialities bear witness to greatness.

The jeremiads of Pogodin, based on simple common sense, could not compete with this monumental apologia, which transformed the mystery of the terrible tsar from an empirical problem into the ful­crum of the state and progress. The debate transcended historiogra­phy and acquired a philosophical significance affecting the very foun­dations of the individual Russian's Weltanschauung. The concept of the nation-state was contrasted to the concept of the nation-family. The Slavophile "nation" was represented as a symbol of stagnation, Asiatic quietism, eternal marching in place, and cultural death. If you

21. Ibid., p. 362. 22. Ibid., p. 363. 23. Ibid., p. 361. 24. Ibid., p. 363. 25. Ibid., pp. 355-56.