The Origins of Autocracy

[75] Of course, extrahistorical and, so to speak, personalistic explanations are possi­ble. In his time, V. O. Kliuchevskii considered the Oprichnina, though monstrous, to be an episode in Russian history which was in a certain sense accidental, and in consider­able degree conditioned by the personality of Ivan the Terrible. In developing this line of reasoning, the leading modern historians of the Muscovite period in the United States, Richard Hellie and Edward Keenan, offer medical explanations for the Oprich­nina. According to Hellie, Ivan the Terrible's actions are to be explained by paranoia; according to Keenan, by physical disease, arthritis and spondylitis, which made him in­capable of fulfilling his duties as tsar. (See Edward Keenan, "Vita: Ivan Vasil'evich, Ter­rible Tsar 1530-1584," p. 49; Richard Hellie, "In Search of Ivan the Terrible," Preface to S. F. Platonov's Ivan the Terrible, and "Ivan the Terrible: Paranoia, 'Evil Advisors,' In­stitutional Restraints and Social Control"). We will deal with this view in the appropriate place, when analyzing the modern phase of Ivaniana. For the time being, it may be noted that Peter I was an epileptic, and, it is said, suffered from a severe form of syph­ilis, while Stalin was an indubitable paranoiac. Tyrants usually have their occupational diseases. Yet, it would not be easy to explain Stalinism by paranoia, or the reforms of Peter by epilepsy. It must be admitted, further, that the comparative paucity of infor­mation about Ivan the Terrible is more conducive to medical speculation, and to the mixing of despotology with pathology, than the analogous cases of Peter and Stalin.

[76] Ibid., p. 46.

[77] S. O. Shmidt, Stamwlenie Moskovskogo samoderzhavstvA, p. 309.

[78] Ibid., p. 247.

[79] Ibid., p. 249. Emphasis added.