The Origins of Autocracy

Open the well-known trilogy by V. Kostylev, which received not only the Stalin Prize, but an enthusiastic review by so experienced an expert as Academician N. Druzhinin.[225] Russians would rather forget about this shameful matter. But this is precisely what one should not do. To remember, to remember as much as possible—this is the only thing which can save us from ourselves. The whole meaning of Ivan­iana lies in compelling us to remember. In Kostylev's trilogy the tsar speaks in garbled quotations from his letters to Kurbskii, and his Oprichniki in quotations from Vipper, but let us leave it to the literary critics. Across its pages there walk disreputable, stinking, bearded boyars, occupied exclusively with oppressing the peasants and com­mitting treason. The Oprichniki, on the other hand, are all as if spe­cially selected, stalwart young men out of the epic ballads, real scions of the people, liberating it from bloodthirsty exploiters, and eradicat­ing "the enemies of the people," without regard to the danger to their own lives. These Oprichniki have warm hearts, cool minds, and clean hands, just as the modern official version depicts the "Chekisty"[226]

— that is to say, Stalin's Oprichniki. Let us accept this picture as sound. Let us even accept, further, the entreaties of Kostylev and Vipper not to believe the oppositionists, explaining all the shadows cast upon the tsar exclusively by their sinister influence. "The failures in the exter­nal war," Vipper complains,

the bloodshed of the internal war—the struggle with treason—over­shadowed even for the immediately following generations the military triumphs and military achievements of the reign of [Ivan] the Terrible. Among the subsequent historians . . . the majority were subject to the influence of sources originating from oppositionist circles: in their eyes, the significance of his personality was diminished. He was included in the list of "tyrants."¹⁴

If we remember that even Karamzin, who was precisely the one who included the tsar "in the list of tyrants," not only did not deny, but even glorified his services to the state, we will see immediately that Vipper is lying (or does not know his subject). But this is not what is important. Let us turn to sources free of the "influence of opposi­tionist circles"—to the sources which Vipper himself recommends. Who, in the Russia of that time, was free from "influence"? Naturally, Ivan the Terrible's Chekist, the Oprichnik Heinrich Staden. True, he was a German, and, of course, a low-life—this much Vipper willingly admits. But his testimony is precious (we already know for what rea­son) to such a degree that in Vipper's eyes he is quite qualified to be a defense witness. His Notes on Muscovy "may boldly be called a first- class document of the history of Moscow and the Muscovite state in the 1560s and 1570s."

⁵°

Let us agree that "opposition circles" were wrong in characterizing the Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible as riffraff gathered by the tsar from all corners of the country and even hired from abroad in order to destroy its elite. Let us agree that the Oprichniki were the most honorable servants of the tsar, who helped him in the fateful struggle with treason, which was beyond his own powers. Now let us see what the defense witness says about the fate of these devoted "hounds of the sovereign." In 1572 the tsar suddenly "began to take reprisals against the top people of the Oprichnina," Staden writes.

Prince Afanasii Viazemskii died ... in iron shackles. Aleksei [Basma- nov] and his son [Fedor] with whom [the tsar] practiced depravity were killed. . . . Prince Mikhail [Cherkasskii], brother-in-law [of the tsar] was hacked to pieces by strel'tsy [musketeers] with axes. . . . Prince Vasilii