The Origins of Autocracy

Evgenii Belov's On the Historical Significance of Russian Boyardom en­deavors to show what Russia might have turned into if Kurbskii and the boyardom had prevailed, if Ivan the Terrible had not found a power base for the Oprichnina in the bureaucracy. Belov is, as far as I know, the only Russian historian prepared to praise the Muscovite bureaucracy, whose contemptible and fiercely grasping nature has be­come proverbial. In his opinion, the bureaucracy preserved Russia from "oligarchical intrigues" which had marked its entire history be­fore the Oprichnina.

Belov uncovers the first oligarchical intrigue as early as 1498, when, he believes, the boyar opposition compelled Ivan III to crown as his heir-apparent not his son Vasilii (the father of Ivan the Ter­rible), but his grandson Dimitrii. The intrigue against Tsar Ivan thus began before he had even had time to be born. The countercon- spiracy in favor of Vasilii, Belov asserts, "did not contain a single boyar." The only ones who acted in defense of the traditional struc­ture of power, which was on the point of disintegration, were the "secretaries [d'yaki] of the party of Sofia." Everything in subsequent Russian history proceeded according to the same model: selfless scions of the people in the shape of the secretaries were constantly thwarting the cunning intrigues of the boyar oligarchs—right until 1565, when the tsar was finally able to unseat the latter. "[Ivan] the Terrible is the retribution on the boyardom for its narrow and egois­tic policies. . . . [Ivan] the Terrible diverted Russia from the danger of oligarchical rule. [Had it not been for the Oprichnina] Russia would have been transformed into a second Poland."[197]

This, in brief, is Belov's concept of things. Only at first glance does it seem to be worthy of the pen of a Gorskii. In fact, Belov is doing the same thing as Kavelin, but from the other side. He was the first in Russian historiography to pose the question of an alternative to au­tocracy. Other than oligarchy and transformation into a second Po­land, he declared, no such alternative existed. Poland symbolized po­litical disintegration and, in the final analysis, the loss of national existence. If this was the sole alternative, then the autocracy of Tsar Ivan, as also the messianic role of the Muscovite bureaucracy, could be considered justified. Not only Soviet historians, such as A. N. Sak­harov, but also such classic Russian historiographers as V. O. Kliu­chevskii, fell into this trap.

Belov's argument is most conveniently considered by comparison of the "maintenances" (kormleniia) held by vicegerents in the Polish- Lithuanian state and in Muscovy. In the first case, such maintenances provided the vicegerents with a nucleus for creating their own politi­cal bases in the regions. The vicegerents subsequently represented "their" districts in the Duma (or "Rada" as it was called in the Polish- Lithuanian kingdom) and were practically uncontrolled rulers of them. As Kliuchevskii says, "the most influential force in the Rada— the 'front' or 'higher' Rada—was made up of the major regional rulers." In other words, the political basis of the oligarchy was the di­vision of the country in practical terms among semiautonomous gov­ernors, who, although they were formally subject to the central pow­er, appeared in effect as overlords of the regions which "maintained" them: "The economic and administrative strings of local life were in their hands, and the Rada served them only as the conductor, and not as the source of their political influence. Its members were not mere state counsellors, but actual rulers."

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The political process in sixteenth-century Muscovy proceeded, as we have seen, in precisely the opposite direction. Not only the main­tenances, but also the district vicegerencies themselves were abol­ished. The local elected governments, which replaced them, were directly subject to the central government offices. Paraphrasing Kliu­chevskii, we may say that in Muscovy the boyars were "not actual rulers but mere state counsellors." As the experience of the "boyar govern­ments" of 1537 to 1547 showed, they never

claimed more than this. Thus, on the eve of the Oprichnina there were no oligarchical tenden­cies in Muscovy, even in embryonic form.

But if this is so, the oligarchy turns out to be only a bugbear thought up by Belov to justify the autocracy—a bugbear in con­firmation of which he was not able to cite a single argument which would stand historical criticism. The problem, however, was not in his arguments, but in the fact that Russian historiography, as we shall see presently, did not have at its disposal any other alternative.

7. Kliuchevskii's Premise