The Origins of Autocracy

In all this it is very difficult to see an actual limitation of the tsar's power, and one may see only an abandonment of unworthy means of manifest­ing these powers. Here the tsar does not yield any of his rights.. . . He only promises to refrain from arbitrary personal caprice, and to act through the court of boyars, which existed equally in all periods of the Muscovite state and was always a law-enforcing and legislative institu­tion, without, however, limiting the power of the tsar. In a word, in the memorandum of Tsar Vasilii one cannot find anything which would es­sentially limit his power and would be juridically obligatory for him.""

To this Kliuchevskii (shrewdly foreseeing the objections of his op­ponent) notes:

The oath denied the very essence of the personal power of the tsar in the previous dynasty, which had developed out of the appanage rela­tionships of a liege lord. Do heads of households swear oaths to their servants and tenants? Along with this, Tsar Vasilii renounced three pre­rogatives in which the personal power of the tsar was most clearly ex­pressed: (1) "disgrace without guilt"—the tsar's punishment without adequate occasion, and by personal decision; (2) the confiscation of property from the family and relatives of a criminal who were not in­volved in the crime. ... (3) extraordinary trials by police and other in­vestigative agencies, calling upon denunciation, with tortures and slan­ders, but without face-to-face confrontation, examination of witnesses, and other means of normal legal process. These prerogatives con­stituted an essential part of the contents of the power of Muscovite sov­ereigns. ... By divesting himself by oath of these prerogatives, Vasilii Shuiskii transformed himself from the sovereign of bondsmen into the legitimate tsar of subjects, ruling according to law."'

By what law? No constitution existed in the country which spec­ified the interrelationships of executive and legislative power, to say nothing of judicial power. These relationships were dictated by tradi­tion and political practice, but not by law. Shuiskii promised a "true court," but where were the guarantees that he would fulfill his prom­ises? Therefore it seems that Platonov is right in asserting that "in the memorandum of Tsar Vasilii one cannot find anything which . . . would be juridically obligatory for him."

S. F. Platonov, Ocherki po istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosxidarstve XVI—XVIII vekov, p.

230. Emphasis added.

V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia, 1st ed., vol. 3, p. 40.

However, is not Kliuchevskii right in saying that the tsar re­nounced the autocratic prerogatives which gave him the opportunity to treat his subjects as slaves? True, these prerogatives proceeded "from the appanage relationships of a liege lord." But after all, Ivan the Terrible had tried to extend them over the entire state by means of mass terror. Vasilii Shuiskii renounced them, and therefore, it seems, actually did limit his power.