The Origins of Autocracy

We will never find the answer to these questions unless we return to poor Gorskii, with his stereotype about the struggle of "the old" and "the new." Let us remember how he reasons: "The old for Kurb­skii was second nature; it was his flesh and blood, a vital necessity. . . . He considers the restoration of the old tradition the main task of his life." What "old tradition" is Gorskii talking about? And what is bad about it? "What advantage for Russia could be expected from the restoration of the custom of boyar council? . . . What advantage could it obtain from its old-fashioned politics"? Gorskii asks indig­nantly, revealing in his simplemindedness the horrible secret of the entire apologia for Ivan the Terrible. And he answers: "Nothing but ruin and harm."[196] Here we see quite clearly what, precisely, it is that Gorskii (and his Soviet pupils) cannot forgive the opposition of that time, and why it is that they hate Kurbskii: the struggle for limitations on power, for the custom of the boyar council and the Assembly of the Land, for social control over the administration. Why was the ruin in England not brought about by the existence there, even in the darkest times, of the custom of Parliament? Why was France not ruined by the provincial Estates-General? Why was Sweden not ruined by the Landtags, why did Denmark get only good out of its "old-fashioned politics"? Why is it that what was possible for them was not possible for us? No one, beginning with Tatishchev and end­ing with Skrynnikov, has an answer to this question. For that matter, no one ever asked it. Autocracy is the imperative for Russia, a histor­ical necessity, its destiny.

In fact, the church immunities, the custom of the boyar council, the custom of taking fixed taxes from the peasants, "by tradition," "as they were received by the previous landowners," the mobility of peas­ants, guaranteed as a matter of law by St. George's Day, and every­thing else that Ivan the Terrible destroyed, were old fashioned and essentially feudal forms of limitation on power. Many of them really had outlived their time, and required modernization. But, after all, this was what the Government of Compromise was doing. One need only briefly list what it did, or tried to do, in order to make this clear. What were the replacement of the vicegerents by a local government, and the introduction of trial by jury, and the creation of a new code of law, and the calling of an Assembly of the Land, and the attempt to introduce an income tax and restrict the immunities, if not a moderni­zation of the limitations on power ? By modernizing the traditional limita­tions on power, the Government of Compromise was following in the line of contemporary European absolutism. The Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible, however, questioned not the form

of the limitations on power, but their existence.

In the Criminal Code of contemporary Russia there is an article which defines "flight abroad or refusal to return from abroad" as treason to the motherland. This is a most precise indicator of what the victory of Ivan the Terrible over Kurbskii turned Russia into. Kurbskii's French contemporary, Duplesis-Mornay, in his famous Suit Against Tyrants, says almost word for word the same thing as the Muscovite exile. The tyrant, he says, destroys his counsellors ("the strong men in Israel," as Kurbskii calls them). The tyrant does not take counsel with the estates and the land ("he is not a lover of coun­sel," says Kurbskii). The tyrant counterposes to them hired mercen­aries ("he creates a seed of Abraham out of stone," says Kurbskii). The tyrant steals the property of his subjects ("he ruins them for the sake of their miserable votchiny

," says Kurbskii). One might think that Duplesis-Mornay was describing Ivan the Terrible. And although he was also a political emigre, it is hardly likely that any modern French historian would call him a traitor. For they do not consider a struggle against tyranny to be treason. But the Russian historians—from Gor­skii to Skrynnikov—do. They have chosen the autocrator's alterna­tive: as distinct from Kurbskii, they have preferred slavery.

The myth of the state is cunningly constructed. In it the apologia for tyranny is skillfully interwoven with patriotism, thejustification of terror with national feelings. In raising one's hand against tyranny, one therefore risks dealing a blow to patriotism; in protesting against terror one may offend national feelings; in struggling for limitations on power, one turns into a traitor to one's country.

6. The Bugbear of Oligarchy