The Origins of Autocracy

are for the movement of History—so Ravelin persuaded his reader— if you are for life and against death, then you are for the founder of the Russian state, Ivan the Terrible, and you are for his Oprichnina. The lamentations of moralists, like Raramzin, the slanders of reac­tionaries, like Pogodin, and the protests of advocates of stagnation, the Slavophiles, cannot conceal the fact that progress in Russia owes its existence to the state, and the state to the Oprichnina, and the Oprichnina to Ivan the Terrible. Thus, for the second time in Russian historiography, Ivan was transformed from a tsar-tormentor into a hero, and—what is more important—into a symbol of Russian power. But if the sentimental eighteenth century was content with this, for the positivist nineteenth he became the symbol of progress as well.

3. The "Historical Necessity" of the Oprichnina

Ravelin developed only the points of departure for the construct which Solov'ev clothed with flesh in his gigantic, multivolume History of Russia.

Of course, Solov'ev digressed from Ravelin's abstract mod­els. Many things were dictated to him by the living material of history which Ravelin allowed himself to disregard. Solov'ev had arrived in­dependently at the contrast between the kin-based (old) order and the state-based (new) order as early as his doctoral dissertation, A His­tory of the Relations Between the Russian Princes of the House of Riurik, published in 1847. True, Solov'ev's conception of this was oversimpli­fied and primitive in comparison to Ravelin's. As originally formu­lated, it would have been easily destroyed by Pogodin, Solov'ev's for­mer mentor, and subsequently his eternal enemy. Nevertheless, the fact that the two conceptions were essentially the same shows once again how much the air of Nikolaian Russia was infected by apologia for Ivan the Terrible.

In his dissertation, Solov'ev's thesis was so marked by special plead­ing that even Ravelin, in a review which took up 123 pages in three issues of Sovremennik [Contemporary] (that is the kind of review they wrote in those days!) was compelled to reproach him, even though affectionately, with "a certain prejudice ... in favor of Ivan the Terri­ble."[172] Solov'ev declared that,

the opportunity of [free] departure, which was seen by some as a right . . . and by others as a sacred custom and tradition . . . was defended by the old society with all its strength against the state strivings of the Mus­covite grand princes, who justly saw in it absurdity, lawlessness, treason.

This is the meaning of the struggle which began long ago in Northern Rus' but. . . reached its extreme point under . . . Ivan IV. If it is just to say, as many do, that Ivan IV was obsessed with treason, then at the same time it must be admitted that the old society was obsessed with [the right of] departure and free movement.[173]

"From these words it is clear how accurately the author views the sig­nificance of Ivan in Russian history," Kavelin comments. "We have not yet read anything about Ivan which so profoundly satisfied us."[174]And a little further on: "In Mr. Solov'ev, Ivan IV has found a worthy advocate for our time."[175]