The Origins of Autocracy

It would be infinitely easier for me if I could simply say that this was the price at which the historians of Stalin's time bought their lives and well-being in an epoch when the struggle for physical survival ruled: after all, all countries and all ages have had their collabora­tionists. This would be easier, but it would be false. It is sufficient to read the works of Sadikov, Polosin, Bakhrushin, Vipper, or Smirnov, to be convinced that this is not bureaucratic prose or official rhetoric. A profoundly personal impulse is present here, a clear certainty of being in the right.

Polosin wrote: "The Oprichnina . . . received its scientific and his­torical justification

only in Soviet scholarship."'¹⁵ Bakhrushin wrote: "The true significance of Ivan the Terrible becomes clear only in our time ...

in the light of Marxist methodology. "^4li

They were convinced of this. If this was a false faith, it was a faith nevertheless.

The mighty autocratic tradition of Russian historiography was speaking through their mouths. Lomonosov, Tatishchev, Kavelin, Gorskii, Belov, and Iarosh were speaking. All of those who, without any connection with the "light of Marxist methodology," had justified the Oprichnina long before Polosin, because somewhere in the dark depths of their souls, almost unconsciously, they were convinced that "freedom of movement" creates chaos, that opposition gives rise to anarchy, and that Paris is worth a mass—that is, that "order" is worth the price of slavery. The tradition of slavery spoke through their mouths, and it was tradition—not personal cowardice, or timeserv­ing, or the desire for a good life—which compelled them to lie, and to believe their own lies, and inventively to justify atrocities by reference to "documented facts," wrapping themselves in the cardboard armor of the "Marxist-Leninist ideology." This was not so much their fault, as their calamity.

What happened, happened. If the behavior of Ivan the Terrible's Oprichniki can still be interpreted in various ways, the behavior of Stalin's Oprichniki does not permit two opinions. In order to evaluate it, we do not need either "documented facts" or "the light of Marxist methodology." We were there. We know that we have before us not only beasts and hangmen, but also people to whom the tradition gives a basis for being proud of their corruption.

If we actually are faced by a mighty tradition, and if this tradition actually does lead us to such depths of humiliation, then are we en­titled to wait passively for the hour of humiliation and corruption to strike again for us, or for those who come after us? This is no longer a question of national pride, as it was in the time of Lomonosov and Shcherbatov, nor is it a question of national self-respect, as it was in the time of Kavelin and Kliuchevskii. This is a question of national existence. After all, three successive "historiographic nightmares" have demonstrated unmercifully that the tradition of collaboration- ism is not simply implanted by the police. It is not a force external to us, it is within us. And it is killing us from within. Will we survive a fourth "historiographic nightmare"? And, if we survive, will we still be human beings?

The structure of the "myth of the state" is elementary. On what premises, in fact, does the tsar justify his position in his letters to Kurbskii? In the first place, by identifying the goals of the leader with those of the state. In the second place, by identifying the goals of the state with those of the nation. The whole essence of the matter, in my view, is contained in this formula of double identification. To suggest that the leadership proceeds from goals and interests distinct from the interests of the state, and still more from those of the nation, is to be a traitor and an enemy of the people. This was Ivan the Terrible's fundamental postulate, so obvious to him that he does not even state it directly. Behind this postulate stands the vision of an absolutely consensual society-family, the head of which sees everything, knows everything, is concerned for everyone, and by definition cannot have any other interests than those of the members of his household.