The Origins of Autocracy

Thus it turns out that both Platonov and Kliuchevskii were right. Kliuchevskii was right, in insisting on the fundamental novelty of Shuiskii's antiautocratic manifesto. And Platonov was right in empha­sizing its traditional, absolutist character. Both were right, for the res­toration of absolutism declared by Tsar Vasilii was an antiautocratic and anti-Oprichnina action.

But at the same time, both were wrong.

10. The Argument With Platonov and Kliuchevskii

For Platonov, who understood the Oprichnina as a revolution by the tsar which liberated him from the tutelage of the reactionary aristoc­racy, Shuiskii's manifesto was a kind of credo for the restoration of the "old order." The overthrown aristrocracy once again ruled in Moscow, cunningly taking advantage for this purpose of the abuses of the Oprichnina:

The old nobility once again occupied first place in the country. Through the mouth of its tsar it solemnly renounced the system which had just been in operation, and promised "true judgment" and protection from "all violence" and injustice, of which it accused the previous regime. . . . Tsar Vasilii said and thought that he was reestablishing ... the old order.

This was the order which had existed before the Oprichnina. . . . this, it seems to us, was the true meaning of Shuiskii's memorandum: it an­nounced . . . not the reduction of the power of the tsar, but the return to its former moral height."²

But what is bad about the "return of the regime to its former moral height," and why is Platonov convinced that it was only the "old no­bility" which had a stake in "protecting from all violence" ? Was not "true judgment" in the interests of the society as a whole? And wasn't this precisely what Shuiskii promises, in obligating himself "not to take from the merchants and the trading people and the peasants . . . their houses and shops and their property" ? Isn't it more natural to assume that the manifesto of Tsar Vasilii (like Khrushchev's secret

82. Platonov, pp. 231-32. Emphasis added.

speech) reflected only the simple truth: the boyardom was aware that it could not protect its own privileges without at the same time ex­tending the elementary guarantees of life and property to the whole nation? Strangely enough, Platonov did not notice this. But after all, is this really so strange? Platonov was not the first Russian historian or the last for whom the hypnosis of the "myth of the state" cut off the path to the understanding of the dualism of Russian political tradition.

But, at the same time, it is difficult to agree with Kliuchevskii that "the ascent of Tsar Vasilii to the throne marked an epoch in our polit­ical history." It might have marked an epoch if it had occurred before the Oprichnina, on a wave of absolutist reforms by the Government of Compromise, as an element of these reforms and their logical devel­opment. But it occurred after Ivan the Terrible—after the absolutist structure of the state had collapsed to the ringing of the Oprichnina's bells and in the light of its bonfires, and after the leaden cloud of serfdom had gathered over it. Ivan's "new class" was still there and the problems facing the country had not been mitigated, but, on the contrary, had been sharpened. Mortal battle was raging. This was a time for deeds, and not only kissing of crosses. How could the coun­try be saved from the inexorably advancing autocracy? Could this be done at all? Who knows? But if it was at all possible, it required some­thing considerably more than manifestos—the immediate convoca­tion of an Assembly of the Land, a solemn restoration of St. George's Day, an alliance with the "best people" of the peasantry and of the cities, the organization and arming of a new political coalition, and a strategy of reform going far beyond that of the pre-Oprichnina Gov­ernment of Compromise. But this was not what the new tsar had in mind—and for this reason Vasilii Shuiskii was destined to play only a walk-on part in political history, as Alexander Kerensky did in 1917.

CHAPTER IX

AGAIN AT THE CROSSROADS

1. At the Boundary of the Ages