The Origins of Autocracy

For Gorskii and the majority of his coevals, Herzen was the same kind of traitor as Kurbskii—"the power of darkness, which under­mined the most precious foundations of our state structure," as one of them put it.[189] Down the centuries, from Ivan the Terrible to Josef Stalin and beyond, whenever confrontation has arisen between the individual and the state, the majority takes the side of the state, and the political emigre is open to an accusation of treason. Herzen un­derstood this quite well. Protesting against the bloody suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1863, he wrote:

If no one makes this protest, we will be alone in our protest, but we will not abandon it. We will repeat it in order that there be witness to the fact that in a time of general intoxication with narrow patriotism, there were still people who found the strength to separate themselves from a rotting empire in the name of the future Russia which was coming to birth, and found the strength to subject themselves to the accusation of treason in the name of love for the Russian people.[190]

Not only Herzen, but hundreds of Russian oppositionists took this stand—from the Narodniks to the Bolsheviks. The most eminent of these were Georgii Plekhanov, who spent almost his entire conscious life in exile, and Vladimir Lenin, who struggled abroad for the defeat of his own government, and therefore—by the logic of the "stat­ists"—of his nation, in the wars with Japan and Germany. All of these people were traitors in the eyes of the majority. All of them were judged as Gorskii judged Kurbskii. Then the revolution of 1917 occurred.

Everything, it seemed, had changed. The opinions of the old ma­jority were rejected and mocked by the new majority. Herzen, Plekha­nov, and Lenin were turned from traitors into saints. Only one ver­dict remained in force as if there had been no revolution. And this was the verdict on Kurbskii. Even in our time, Academician D. S. Likhachev, closely following Gorskii, placidly called the correspon­dence between Ivan the Terrible and Kurbskii "correspondence be­tween the tsar and a traitor."³⁴

Professor la. S. Lur'e, quoting Tsar Ivan, also called Kurbskii and the entire group of political emigres in

Lithuania (Vladimir Zabolotskii, Mark Sarykhozin, the Elder Artemii, Timofei Teterin) "traitors to the sovereign."[191] And very recently, in the 1970s, Professor R. G. Skrynnikov has had no words for Kurbskii except "a history of treason," "treasonous negotiations," and "trea­sonous relations."[192] Destiny was truly merciless toward Kurbskii. For 400 years, both before the revolution and after it, no one has been found willing to raise their voice in defense of him.[193] But whom should anyone who was so bold refute? Skrynnikov, who borrowed his opinion from Gorskii? Gorskii, who borrowed his opinion from Ravelin? Kavelin, who borrowed it from Karamzin? Karamzin, who borrowed it from Tatishchev? Tatishchev, after all, had it from Tsar Ivan himself, who first called Kurbskii a "traitor" and "oath-breaker." Only by tracing back this chain, unbroken for centuries, do we come finally to the original inspiration of all of these ideologists and histo­rians—to the true founder of the "state school" in Rus'. Before Tsar Ivan, the Muscovite government stood, at least officially, for freedom of political choice, decisively rejecting—even if for selfish reasons— the treatment of political emigration as treason. Ivan was the first to put the question in the terms in which it is phrased to this day. His credo ran: "He who opposes the regime opposes God. . . . Children should not oppose their parents nor slaves their masters." The tsar cited Saint Paul, forgetting that the apostle was speaking of slaves. Kurbskii was a famous general, a boyar, and an advisor to the tsar. He felt himself to be a free man.

The alternative to emigration which the tsar proposed to him was: "If you are just and pious, why do you not desire to suffer and ac­quire a martyr's crown from me, the obstinate ruler?"[194] Kurbskii pre­ferred exile and struggle against the tyrant to slavery and the martyr's crown, a choice for which Russian historians have unanimously pro­nounced him to be a traitor, thereby recognizing Ivan the Terrible's alternatives, slavery or martyrdom, as the rational ones, and coming down on the side of the autocrator. But it is not so much the medieval sermons of the terrible tsar which astonish, as the slavish concurrence of modern Russian commentators.