The Origins of Autocracy

[118] I understand that some of my readers—particularly those who cherish a weak­ness for Marxism—may now be asking a puzzled question (if they have not asked it already): is it really possible that in the historical conflict between "money" and ."cor­vee," the boyars, which is to say the feudal lords, should suddenly turn up on the side of "money"? How can it be that they would struggle against the immunities which make up the essence of the feudal order? I would like to ask these readers in turn: how did it happen that the intellectual and political elite of the Russian serf-holding aristocracy rebelled in the mid-nineteenth century against serfdom, which was the essence of the feudal order? How could it be that this elite not only supported the Great Reform in the struggle against the mass of service landholders who were interested in retaining serfdom, but also became one of the prime political movers in this reform? Standard Marxist criticism is obviously powerless to explain this paradox. But in the case of the Great Reform of the 1860s, it is nevertheless not prepared to deny the facts. On the other hand, what basis do we have for denying the analogous—that is to say, essentially anti-feudal—position of boyardom, or at least of its intellectual and political elite, in the mid-sixteenth century? Why should what was possible in connection with one great re­form not be possible in connection with another? Why should the Decembrists and the Slavophiles (most of whom, after all, were serf-owning landholders) turn up on the side of "money" and against "corvee" in the nineteenth century, and the same not be true of the leaders of boyardom in the sixteenth century?

[119] M. N. Pokrovskii, Izbrannyeproizvedeniia, bk. 1, pp. 320-21. Posad: the commer­cial and artisan district of a Russian town, usually situated outside the city walls.