The Origins of Autocracy

In other words, what we may call a normal European process of intensification and rationalization of the economy was taking place, which the author sees as the origin of bourgeois relationships in the Karelliian countryside. The results of the Novgorod expe­dition of Ivan the Terrible are described by the same author as "an unheard-of devasta­tion and decline of Karelliia. . . . The village land parcels, commercial buildings, and workshops fell vacant. . . . The population was ruined." (R. B. Miuller, Ocherhipo istorii KareliiXVI-XVII vekov,

pp. 90-91). I don't think that these facts need any commentary.

would be happy to report on their attempts. And again I have failed to find any.

But there is yet another possible interpretation of the reprisal of the Oprichniki against Novgorod, which has not, to my knowledge, been suggested previously. Just before the Novgorod expedition, Ivan the Terrible had inspected the new and impregnable fortress—a marvel of fortification for its time—being erected in the impassable forests of Vologda. English craftsmen built an entire fleet for him, ca­pable of carrying all the treasures of Muscovy to Solovki, and thence to England, where the tsar intended to emigrate in case he should be unable to sit out a siege behind the walls of the Vologda fortress. (Ne­gotiations with Randolph, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador, on the granting of political asylum in England to the tsar in case of need, were complete.) The location of Vologda in the northwestern part of the country was so remote that enemy invasion could not threaten it under any circumstances. There was no one to hide from, unless we count Ivan's own people. In view of these facts, the robbery of Novgo­rod and Pskov may have been dictated by his desire not to arrive in England empty-handed. To be sure, this is only a hypothesis. But whether it is true or not, it is quite obvious that in building the Volog­da fleet and applying for political asylum in England, the tsar was thinking least of all of the fate of Russia. It is difficult to imagine any­thing remotely similar when speaking of Ivan III.

By no means have I tried to draw a rosy picture of the latter here. There were quite a few bloody murders and cruel persecutions in his time. After all, he was no more than a medieval king. But while the medieval Kremlinologists may perhaps triumphantly point this out, what I am stressing is a totally different matter. Ivan III was not an autocrator.

That is, however cruel and medieval he may have been, he never dared to violate the latent limitations on power. Indeed, as we shall soon see, he tried to strengthen them. For this reason, I think of him as an essentially European king.

4. The Reversed Stereotype

The stereotype which we encountered in chapter one asserted cate­gorically that Russia began its march from barbarism to civilization only with Peter the Great. Historians of socioeconomic relationships in pre-Petrine Russia are inclined, it seems, to an analogous stereo­type, but in reverse. They take it as a postulate that from the twelfth to the seventeenth century, in the process of feudalizing its economy and society and gradually enserfing its peasantry, Russia went from relatively free status (in medieval terms) to serfdom, which after Peter was transformed into literal slavery. Peasant self-government was gradually destroyed as the landlords seized the "black" lands—that is, those belonging formally to the state, but actually to the peasants. The peasants' freedom of movement was just as gradually limited in the course of the fifteenth century. Finally, in terms of Ivan Ill's law code of 1497, the so-called St. George's Day rule, which gave the peas­ants the choice of leaving their landlords only during two weeks in the year, became law. From here—so runs the stereotype—it was only one step to the complete "tying down" of the peasants, and to the in­troduction, at the end of Ivan the Terrible's reign, of the "forbidden years," eliminating any movement whatever on their part.