The Origins of Autocracy

21. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, p. 190. The doctrine of the Russian heretics in its organizational aspect can be reduced to the denial of the church establish­ment with its hierarchy, churches, rituals, and so forth. Its theological aspect consisted in the denial of the canonical Trinity (and, consequently, in denial of the divinity of Christ). There is nothing original in all of this: anyone at all familiar with the history of European heresy will recognize its twin in Russian heresy. It is considerably more inter­esting to look at how the representatives of the Russian right, as early as the fifteenth century, explained the origin of heresy. In Iosif's opinion, heresy was brought to Novgo­rod in 1470 by Jews coming from Kiev. In the opinion of Gennadii of Novgorod, on the other hand, "this evil came from those places through which Kuritsyn traveled from the Ugrian [i.e., Hungarian] lands" (quoted from I. U. Budovnits, Russkaia publitsistika XVI veka, p. 51). These two explanations—the one Jewish (kikeish) and the other Euro­pean—both propose a foreign, non-Russian provenance for the dissident movement. Over the course of the half millennium which has elapsed since that time, the Russian right has not changed its mind.

26. Iu. K. Begunov, '"Slovo inoe'—novonaidennoe proizvedenie russkoi publi- tsistiki XVI v. о bor'be Ivana III s zemlevladeniem tserkvi," p. 351.

30. Cited in ibid., p. 68.

31. Maksim Grek, Sochineniia prepodobnogo Maksima Greka v russkom perevode, p. 72.

36. G. V Plekhanov, Sochineniia, vol. 20, p. 144.

38. This thought first arose among the Non-Acquirers. Even the most peace-loving of them, Maxim the Greek, who was known for the fact that he taught the sovereign: "Honor not him who, contrary to justice, encourages you to quarrels and wars, but him who counsels you to love peace and quiet with neighboring peoples" (Maksim Grek, p. 102), recommended an attack on the Crimea. "It is difficult and ruinous—not to say impossible—to stand against both tormentors [i.e., the Crimea and Lithuania], the more so since there is a third wolf coming against us. This is the serpent whose nest is in Kazan'," he wrote (V. Rzhiga, "Maksim Grek как publitsist," p. 113). Hence his recom­mendation to attack Kazan' immediately and then to attack Crimea (ibid., p. 114).