The Origins of Autocracy

Speaking of the statesmanship of [Ivan] the Terrible, Comrade I. V. Sta­lin noted that Ivan IV was a great and wise ruler, who guarded the country from the penetration of foreign influence and strove to unify Russia. In particular, speaking of the progressive activity of [Ivan] the Terrible, Comrade Stalin noted that Ivan IV was the first to introduce into Russia the monopoly of foreign trade, and that Lenin was the only one to do so after him. Iosif Vissarionovich also noted the progressive role of the Oprichnina. . . . Referring to the mistakes of Ivan the Ter­rible, Iosif Vissarionovich noted that one of his mistakes consisted in the fact that he was not able to liquidate the five remaining large feudal families, and did not complete the struggle with feudalism: if he had done so, there would have been no Time of Troubles in Rus'.[213]

Of course, a Marxist historian would have to shudder at this way of putting the question. The contradictions in it are obvious. Was it ac­tually possible in the sixteenth century to "complete the struggle with feudalism," if, as we have just seen, even the Oprichnik Polosin justi­fies the "economic inevitability of serfdom" precisely by the fact that "sixteenth-century Russia was built and could be built only

on the basis of feudal and serf production"?[214] But for Stalin, who confused the Turks with the Tatars, and whose reading in Russian history never went higher than the level of the junior grades of a Georgian the­ological seminary, such subtleties were immaterial. To Stalin "com­pleting the struggle against feudalism" meant only the need to finish murdering the "five remaining feudal families." For, unmurdered, they ruined all the achievements of Ivan the Terrible in "guarding the country from the penetration of foreign influence." In other words, the cause of the catastrophe which overtook Russia in the sixteenth century lay in the inconsistency and insufficiency of the terror. This, for a fact, was Ivan the Terrible's language.

There was no one around to shudder: the historians, as if en­chanted, accepted the new idol. Let us return to their texts: