The Origins of Autocracy

An observer who around the year 1900 undertook to make a prog­nosis of the further development of Ivaniana would have had to report, first of all, that the political (to say nothing of the moral) repu­tation of the terrible tsar had been ruined. As debatable as Kliuchev­skii's methodological premise might be, his verdict on the Oprichnina was, on the face of it, not open to appeal. Whatever new facts were discovered by twentieth-century historians, and whatever new con­clusions they might come to, Ivan the Terrible and his Oprichnina were not suited to rehabilitation. Consequently, a new repetition of the "historiographic nightmare" appeared to be excluded. There would be neither new Tatishchevs nor new Kavelins. Lomonosov's ar­rogant bravado, Karamzin's sentimental indignation, and the servile enthusiasm of Gorskii, all equally must now have seemed the product of a dark, archaic, almost mythological era of Ivaniana.

In fact, a third "historiographic nightmare," the dimensions of which exceeded anything which had occurred up to that time, lay just around the corner. I am not speaking now of the shameless hymns to the "commander of the peoples" and the "great and sagacious states­man" which the coming generation of Russian readers was destined to hear from the coming generation of Russian historians—hymns which would reduce Veselovskii to despair. Nor am I speaking of the fact that the irrationality of the Oprichnina was once again rational­ized, and the unjustifiable justified. How all this happened, we shall see presently. But never during the preceding "historiographic night­mares" had a Russian historian openly justified serfdom, the greatest evil which the Oprichnina brought down on Russia. In the 1940s, however, serfdom was to be declared progressive. I.I. Polosin would write: "The strengthening of serfdom at this time—in the sixteenth century—signified the strengthened and accelerated development of the country's productive forces. . . . Serfdom was a natural, spon­taneous necessity, morally offensive, but economically inevitable."¹

1.

I. I. Polosin, Sotsial'no-politicheskaia . . .

, p.

132.

2. The Economic Apologia for the Oprichnina

The "state school" died quietly at the beginning of the century. De­spite the writings of P. N. Miliukov and G. V. Plekhanov, its triumphs were behind it. The formulas which had once prevailed—whether the "struggle of the state with the clan," the "struggle with the steppe," or the "enserfment of the society by the state"—came to provoke in many experts only a condescending smile. S. F. Platonov admitted with mocking academic politeness that "the scientific meth­od of the historical-juridical [state] school exercised a strong influ­ence on the development of the science of Russian history." He had in mind, however, only the "quantitative and qualitative growth" of the works of Russian historians.[202] He spoke of the "hyperboles" of the founder of the school, Kavelin, with the same contempt for archaic dilettantism with which Kavelin in his time had spoken of Karamzin's metaphors. M. N. Pokrovskii was not even polite: he openly laughed at the old models. In the writings of the historians of the state school, he observes,