The Origins of Autocracy

14. I am compelled to admit that my point of view about the conflict between the Non-Acquirers and the Josephites (and about the fundamental role of this conflict in Russian political history) is not shared either by the "despotists" or by the "absolutists." The position of the despotists is at least consistent: what serious ideological struggle, what talk of reformation or counter-reformation can there be in a "totalitarian" or "ser­vice" state? The absolutists are in worse shape, since, asserting categorically, as is re­quired by genuine science, that "Soviet scholars first posed the question of the social role of Nil and his followers," they contradict themselves so desperately that they get mixed up and lead their readers into complete confusion. "One need only throw open the monastic robes of any of the Non-Acquirers," wrote Academician B. A. Rybakov, "in order to see the brocade of a boyar's kaftan. Trying to ward off the looming spectre of the Oprichnina, the boyar pointed the way to the patrimonial estates of the 'un- buried dead' [the monks]." (Quoted from Lur'e, p. 293.) Rybakov unfortunately does not explain what is bad about trying to ward off "the looming spectre of the Oprich­nina"—that is, national ruin and humiliation. Nevertheless, the authors of practically all the general textbooks of Russian literature and history agree with him. In Istoriia russhoi literatury, published by the USSR Academy of Science, we read that "the ideas of Nil Sorskii were a cover for the reactionary struggle of the great patrimonial boyar- dom ... a struggle against the strong grand prince's regime, which was emerging victorious." We read the same thing in Ocherkipo istorii SSSR: "Under the religious integument of the doctrine of Nil Sorskii there was hidden an intraclass struggle, directed particularly against the power of the grand prince, which was growing stronger" (quoted in ibid., p. 293;

16. The secularization of church land in Switzerland began in 1523. In 1525, the grand master of the Teutonic Order resigned his holy office and converted his holdings into a secular dukedom. In 1527, Gustavus Vasa secularized church lands in Sweden; in 1536, secularization began in Denmark, Norway, England, and Scotland, and in 1539 in Iceland.

17. Pavlov, p. 29.

18. S. M. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, Bk. 3, p. 185.