The Origins of Autocracy

In fact, as soon as the process of "gathering in" was completed, the Reconquista could continue only in the arena of European politics. The patrimony of Rus' was naturally transformed into something fundamentally different from a royal estate: a member nation of the European family of peoples. And, correspondingly, the "votchina" (patrimony) concept became anachronistic in the new "otchina" (which in Russian sounds rather like "otchizna" or "otechestvo"

—fatherland). Both "otchina" and "votchina" are translated into English by a single word, "patrimony." Even in Russian they have the same root and differ only by one letter. In the political life of the country, however, these terms seem to stand not only for different but for opposite things.

Now, after the completion of the "gathering in," as the ideological basis for the Russian Reconquista, "otchina" came to be used mainly in the context of foreign policy. The term starina ("old times") un­derwent analogous transformation into a political slogan signifying the common past of all of the Russian lands, as "otchina"

did their common future. Both were fused into a powerful ideological con­struct, symbolic of national unity and cemented together by the for­eign-policy strategy of Ivan III.

Votchina seems to have gradually undergone a similar transforma­tion, coming to stand mainly not for royal but for private hereditary property, thus laying a firm foundation for the Russian aristocracy. The private votchina was in itself the opposite of the idea of the coun­try as a royal votchina. In fact, the private votchina served as check and balance on the power of the medieval Russian state, imposing both social and economic limitations on it. More than that, maintenance of the private votchiny

was an absolute political imperative for Ivan III: how could he, otherwise, in forming his aristocratic elite, have at­tracted to himself boyars and princes from Lithuania, from Tver', and from Riazan', who deserted to him along with their votchiny? Why should powerful aristocrats, who had traditionally been indisputable owners of their votchiny, have fled to a state in which their rights would be disputed? Had Ivan III actually considered his country a royal patrimony, aristocrats would have absconded from Muscovy rather than fled there. This is how the tradition of "patrimonies" as private estates worked to corrode and gradually destroy the tradition of royal "patrimony." Gathering about him in Moscow "the flower of

Russian aristocracy," as Gustav Alef has expressed it, Ivan III put the idea of royal "patrimony" in mortal danger. This explains why his grandson, Ivan the Terrible, needed to foment a revolution and re­sort to mass terror in a desperate attempt to save it.

Thus, the opposition between two almost identical terms, which does not even exist in English, conceals a cruel conflict between two cultural and political traditions, one which ended with catastrophe for the new-born Russian absolutism.

3. A Historical Experiment

The complexity of history sometimes makes it easier to argue. I do not know how I would now convince the reader of the difference be­tween the political behavior of the "otchinnik" (the absolutist king) and the "votchinnik" (the autocrator), and the decisive difference in their attitudes towards the country, were it not for the analogous actions to subdue Novgorod undertaken by the grandfather and the grandson, separated from each other by what I call Russia's absolutist century.

In the 1460s, when Ivan III mounted the throne, Novgorod was an autonomous political unit in the complex and loose conglomerate ar­bitrarily called Muscovy. It was, properly speaking, a republic—some­thing like a Russian Carthage. In formal terms, the popular assembly [veche] was considered to be the highest power, which annually elect­ed a mayor [posadnik] and a general [tysiatskii], who in turn supervised the administration, the military establishment, and the organs of jus­tice. In practice, the power of this elected representative body was limited by the senate (the council of boyars), which exercised the real power (in the sense that political decisions were initiated, and the strategy for the republic determined there). The connection of the republic with the Russian state (apart from the common language and cultural traditions) consisted chiefly in the fact that Novgorod paid tribute to Muscovy in return for noninterference in its internal affairs, that the princes who were invited to command the army were supposed by tradition to belong to the clan of Riurik (the semimythi- cal Norse founder of the Kievan state, and progenitor of its royal house), and that candidates for the post of archbishop of Novgorod were nominated by the metropolitan of Moscow.