The Origins of Autocracy

But the interweaving of these three dimensions of the struggle— the socioeconomic, the political, and the ideological—constitutes the major complexity of this transitional epoch in my view. Who stood with whom? Who represented whom? What was the immanent con­nection between the various levels of this fateful drama? In order to untangle this bundle of conflicting interests, let us attempt to group the major actors on the Muscovite historical scene according to whether they were fighting for or against the latent limitations on power.

The interests of the Russian aristocracy—the boyardom—which by definition defended the social limitations on power (since these were a matter of life and death for it), did not contradict the interests of the peasant proto-bourgeoisie, which by definition defended the economic limitations on power (also a matter of life and death). N. E. Nosov even argues that,

objectively, by virtue of its economic position as an estate of large land­owners, it [the boyardom] was less interested in the mass scale seizure of state lands and in the enserfment of peasants by the state, than was the petty and middling dvorianstvo [the pomeshchiki],

and consequently had less need of the strengthening of a military-bureaucratic autocratic sys­tem. In this respect, its interests could sometimes even coincide with those of the upper stratum of merchants.[91]

The connections between the boyardom and the Non-Acquirers, who defended the ideological limitations on power, have long been con­ceded in classical historiography. Even Soviet historians, who hate the boyardom, and therefore see the Non-Acquirers as a reactionary force, have never questioned this verdict.

Thus, on one side of the historical barricade, there appears a sort of latent absolutist political coalition—the Non-Acquirers, the boyars, and the proto-bourgeoisie. But what about the other side of this bar­ricade? Can an opposite, autocratic coalition be discerned there? Why, after all, should the service gentry, the pomeshchiki, oppose the Non- Acquirers? And why should the bureaucracy take up arms against the bourgeoisie?

If the basic problem which the Russian government faced at this time was actually reducible to deciding at whose expense it should sat­isfy the land hunger of the pomeshchiki who constituted its chief mili­tary force, the solution seems relatively clear. This hunger could be satisfied either by the lands belonging to the boyars and peasants (that is, the proto-bourgeoisie) or

those belonging to the church. In the ab­sence of an anti-Tatar strategy, there simply was no other choice. Was this not enough to produce a mortal struggle, given that the church hierarchy, too, considered its landholdings a matter of life and death, and was ready to push every available political force, be it the service gentry, the bureaucracy, or even the tsar's personal ambitions, into the battle against its opponents, the great lords?

The lesser gentry and the bureaucracy struggled against the great lords everywhere in Europe. But nowhere else did this struggle reach the point of mortal confrontation which it did in Russia, because no­where else was there such a powerful coalition of forces opposed to Europeanization, inspired and led by so mighty an institution as the Russian Orthodox Church. And here is why, as I see it, the struggle of the Non-Acquirers for the secularization of the church landholdings assumes such a fateful significance. The Non-Acquirers were the ideological side of the absolutist triangle.

3. The Political Function of Secularization

History, unlike boxing, does not usually decide disputes by a knock­out. It awards the victory on points—and then only after a long inter­val, when the original protagonists have long since left the stage. After the Renaissance, for example, it seemed that the entire fabric of society was being swiftly secularized, and that matters would soon end in total separation of the culture from the church. Instead, there fol­lowed a period of religious wars—the epoch of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. Only many centuries afterward would the cul­ture in fact be separated from the church.