The Origins of Autocracy

[92] Ia. S. Lur'e, Ideologicheskaia bor'ba v russkoi publitsystihe kontsa XV-nachala XVI w., pp. 183, 185. Admitting that "Fedor Kuritsyn stood at the head of this 'heretical' circle," Lur'e finds it necessary to add that the Russian heresies at the end of the fifteenth cen­tury were, like the urban heresies of the West, one of the forms of 'revolutionary op­position to feudalism.'" Inasmuch as Kuritsyn is spoken of in one document of the chronicles as "a person who is listened to by the sovereign in all things," it seems that it was the sovereign himself who headed the "revolutionary opposition to f eudalism."

emphasis added). One small question still remains: how are we to reconcile the struggle of the Non-Acquirers against the grand prince with the fact that the Non-Acquirer movement was itself the handiwork of the grand prince? The authors cited above can­not help knowing this. They have at least read in Kliuchevskii that "behind Nil and his Non-Acquirers there stood Ivan III himself, who needed monastery lands" (V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia (1st ed.), vol. 2, pp. 303-4). Even Lur'e declares that "Nil Sorskii's action was staged by Ivan III; Nil spoke as a sort of theoretician of the policy of the grand prince on this question" (Lur'e, p. 281). So there is no need whatever to of­fend modesty by parting the monastic robes of the elders in order to establish the real political meaning of their actions. But, after all, in Lur'e's work we have already seen Ivan III in the role of leader of the "revolutionary opposition" directed against himself. Why, then, shouldn't the grand prince at the same time head the "reactionary opposi­tion," also directed against himself?

15. Pavlov, p. 97.

[94] N. A. Kazakova and la. S. Lur'e, Antideodal'nye ereticheskie dvizheniia na Rusi XlV—nachala XVI veka, p. 381.

[95] Ibid., p. 378.

[96] Pavlov, p. 50.

[97] Slovo kratko v zashchitu monastyrskikh imushchestv, p. 25.

[98] V. Malinin, Starets Eleazarova monastyria Filofei i ego poslanie, p. 129.

[99] Kazakova and Lur'e, p. 438.