The Origins of Autocracy

14. According to the prevailing stereotype, the cavalry of the service gentry re­vealed its technological backwardness only in the seventeenth century. However, this backwardness was obvious even two centuries earlier, in the time of Ivan III. For exam­ple, in 1501, when Plettenberg, the master of the Livonian Order, attacked Pskov, a huge army under the best Muscovite voevoda, Daniil Shchenia, was sent against him. Though many times superior in numbers to the small Livonian detachment, this army could not defeat it, indicating that the Muscovite military organization suffered from some organic defect which compelled it to yield before the German infantry. The army of Ivan the Terrible, which knew only how to attack in a mass, and was quite lost when its furious assault did not lead immediately to decisive success, was on the Tatar level of military action, and not only was not capable of waging a European war, but needed European modernization even to win victories over the Tatars. All this was apparent even during the Kazan' War at the beginning of the 1550s. Russian historians, without a single exception, admit the technological, tactical, and organizational backwardness of the Muscovite army during the period of the Livonian War. Thus, in terms of technol­ogy and military organization, the modernization of the army became an urgent ques­tion as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.

5. Russia Versus Europe

Livonia had regressed so thoroughly since the time of Ivan III that it

must have seemed an overripe fruit which would fall of its own accord

into the hands of the conqueror. In practical terms, it had ceased to be

a unified state, and had been transformed into an amorphous con­

glomerate of commercial cities and the fiefs of bishops and knights.²¹'

P. Berezhkov, Plan zavoevantia Kryma, p. 68.

Lester Hutchinson, Introduction to Karl Marx's Secret Diplomatic History of the

Eighteenth Century, p. 19.

"The multilayered and divided government was extremely weak: five bishops, a

master of the order, eight commanders, and eight governors owned the land; each had

his cities, districts, staff, and customary laws," writes N. M. Karamzin (Istoriia gosudarstva

Rossiiskogo, vol. 8, p. 261).

37. Edward Keenan, "Vita: Ivan Vasil'evich, Terrible Tsar 1530-1584," p. 49.

39. R. Iu. Vipper, p. 130.

12. Ibid., p. 14.

14. Vipper, p. 31.

15. Veselovskii, pp. 36-37.

16. I. I. Smirnov, Ivan Groznyi, p. 5.

25. Ibid., pp. 167, 169.

26. Ibid., p. 170.

28. Ibid., p. 180.

31. G. N. Moiseeva, Valaamskaia beseda . . .

41. Cited in Zimin, Oprichnina . . . , p. 10.

43. Iu. Krizhanich, pp. 594, 597.

45. V. N. Tatishchev, Istoriia Rossiiskaia s drevneishikh vremen, bk. I, pt. 2, p. 544.

61. Ibid., p. 247. 62. Ibid., p. 256.

1. K. Kavelin, Sochineniia, pt. 2, p. 112.