The Origins of Autocracy

in the introduction of measures which promoted the further enserf- ment of the peasantry. In this sense, the Oprichnina was certainly more an antipeasant than an antiboyar policy.™

Today it is becoming ever more clear that the policy of the Chosen Rada [the Government of Compromise] in much greater degree pro­moted the further centralization of the state and its development in the direction of absolutism of European type than did the policy of the Oprichnina, which facilitated the triumph of absolutism, saturated with Asiatic barbarism

."

It was precisely at this time that the question was decided about which road Russia would travel—the road of renewal of feudalism through the "new edition" of serfdom, or the road of bourgeois devel­opment. . . . Russia was at the crossroads. . . .

And if in Russia as a result of "Ivan's Oprichnina" and the "great ruination of the peasantry" at the end of the sixteenth century, serfdom and the autocracy still won out . . . this is by no means proof of their progressive nature.⁷"

Of course, important unresolved questions remain. For example, Makovskii is unable to explain why "active intervention by the super­structure," which called forth "regressive phenomena in the econ­omy," suddenly took place in the 1570s. Furthermore, it is impossible to explain this by the "development of commodity-and-money rela­tionships in agriculture," as he tries to do. Kashtanov is unable to ex­plain the connection

between the antiboyar and the antipeasant policy of the Oprichnina. It is impossible to do this while accepting the pos­tulate of the myth as to the "reactionary nature of boyardom." Shmidt is unable to explain what constitutes the political distinction between "absolutism of European type" and "absolutism saturated with Asiatic barbarism." And without this, the formulations he proposes remain nonfunctional. Nosov is unable to explain what combination of forces predetermined victory for the "renewal of feudalism" and the defeat of "bourgeois development."

These lacunae are not accidental. Zimin, it will be remembered, has called for "a radical reconsideration of the political history of Russia in the sixteenth century." This radical reconsideration cannot be expected (as Veselovskii anticipated in the 1940s) merely from "new facts." New philosophical horizons must be opened up; new means of political analysis must be devised; a new vision of history is required. I have attempted here to make a start at the gigantic task of

Kashtanov, "K izucheniiu istorii oprichniny Ivana Groznogo," p. 108. Emphasis added.

Shmidt, "K izucheniiu agrarnoi istorii Rossii XVI veka," p. 24.

Nosov, Stanovlenie, p. 9. Emphasis added.

constructing an alternative paradigm for Ivaniana—or at least break­ing the vicious circle in which for decades we have been revolving like squirrels in a wheel, endlessly and fruitlessly repeating ourselves and our predecessors.

Are we still capable of breaking out of this circle of ancient stereo­types? I do not know. What I do know, however, is that we must try. Otherwise, I am afraid, it could be too late; a new "historiographic nightmare" may strike. After three of them, it is time, it seems, for Russian historiography to come to its senses—to put an end to its serflike dependence on Ivan the Terrible's "myth of the state" and the obsolete classical"vyskazyvaniia." It is time for Western historiography, too, to help in the emancipation of its Russian colleagues. It can do so by putting an end to its own dependence on the bipolar model of his­tory, as well as to its archaic contempt for the "Tatar-Byzantine heri­tage" of Russia, borrowed from Miliukov, Chicherin, and other classics of the "state school." It is time for the "absolutists" and the "despotists" to end the civil war between them. For the inspiration and intuition of both are needed for positive construction.