The Origins of Autocracy

Muscovite political practice and theory compel us in equal degree to doubt Kliuchevskii's premise. In the first place, the conflict in the Muscovite absolute monarchy arose long before the birth of Tsar Ivan. As early as the 1520s, his father, Vasilii, had tried to establish a personal dictatorship by contrasting executive power to the boyar Duma. But, contrary to Kliuchevskii's supposition, this conflict did not lead to a fatal confrontation. Quite the contrary: under the Gov­ernment of Compromise, boyardom, revealing an indubitable capac­ity to learn, responded with Article 98 of the law code and the calling of an Assembly of the Land. In other words, the Muscovite political machine turned out to be sufficiently adroit to leave room for political maneuvering. This was still an open system, on its way to achieving new political forms.

True, the attainment of these new forms ran counter to the inter­ests of important social groups (in the first place, the church hier­archy). The political base of the government appeared to be divided, and the entire Muscovite political machine started to skid. And it was precisely because of this unstable equilibrium of forces—and not be­cause of the "impossible combination" of absolute power with the aristocratic administration, as Kliuchevskii had it—that the character of the tsar emerged into the foreground. History, it seems, created three possible roles for this man. He could join the government in its efforts to crush the resistance of the church hierarchy, thus leading and actualizing the absolutist coalition of Non-Acquirers, boyardom, and the proto-bourgeoisie; in this role he could speed up the Euro- peanization of Russia. Or he could maneuver between the opposing forces in the Muscovite establishment, acting in the role of arbiter, and thus giving the system time to grow naturally in the same direc­tion. Or, finally, he could go for a coup d'etat, creating his own politi­cal base in the shape of a "new class," and thereby putting an end to the process of Europeanization. For the reasons discussed above, he chose the third role.

Thus, because of his incorrect premise, Kliuchevskii was destined to become a prisoner of the artificial dichotomy of his opposite, Be­lov: either the aristocracy established the order of the state without leadership being vested in any one person (oligarchy), or the leader ruled without the collaboration of the boyars (autocracy). In this view, there was no third alternative, inasmuch as the latent conflict between "absolute power" and aristocracy had been dragged to the surface and exposed.

But there was a third alternative. The entire history of medieval Europe is a proof of this. It was precisely this conflict, now hidden and now open, which was the

norm, the law of existence, and, we may say, the natural condition of all absolutist states.

What was unnatural was the liquidation of the struggle, and the autocratic metamorphosis ex­perienced by Russia in the course of the Oprichnina—the creation of the "new class" and the ensuing establishment of universal service.

We reach the same results in considering Kliuchevskii's premise from a theoretical point of view. The establishment of absolute mon­archy did not by any means signify, as Belov thought, the mere sub­stitution of the bureaucracy for the aristocracy as governmental personnel. It did not signify this, since absolute monarchy was an in­comparably more complex system than the conglomerate of feudal princedoms which preceded it. And the complexity of the system de­manded not simplification, but corresponding complication of admin­istration. Therefore, absolute monarchy—whose specific character consists precisely in the heterogeneity of its political elite—is con­structed of two elements which differ in their significance and in their origin: of bureaucratic and aristocratic personnel, of the combination of these in the most various proportions, and of political compromise between them.