The Origins of Autocracy

[120] Here, for example, is how B. D. Grekov explains the enserfment of the peasants in his classical work Peasants in Rus': "As the economic dislocation of the seventies and eighties increased, the number of peasant migrations grew. . . . The mass of service people could not remain calm. The state serving the interests of these landholders also could not be silent. A radical and immediate solution of the peasant question became inevitable. The abolition of St. George's Day was carried out in the interests of this stra­tum, and for the purpose of strengthening their material position" (Krestiane na Rusi s drexmeishikh vremen do XVII veka, vol. 1, p. 297). True, this murky passage raises more questions than it offers answers. The fact that enserfment was neither in the interests of the peasants nor in those of the boyars to whom the peasants went when they left the service landholders is obvious. But how is it that the "progressive service landholders" suddenly turn out to be the bearers of feudal reaction? The logical implication of what Grekov says is, furthermore, that if there had not been the "economic dislocations," neither would there have been serfdom in Russia. But if the fate of Russia, or at least the fate of the peasantry in Rus', depended on these "dislocations," would it not have been fitting for an expert on the Russian peasantry to give some thought to the ques­tion of where these determining "dislocations," which changed the entire character of Russian history, originated? He did not, and neither did the Soviet historiography which he headed during the Stalinist period.

[121] Cited in R. Iu. Vipper, p. 115. 22. Ibid., p. 116.

23. H. Staden, Zapiski . . . , p. 20.

[123] Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii, bk. 3, p. 657.

[124] Pokrovskii, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, bk. I, p. 450.

[125] Vipper, p. 69.

[126] Bakhrushin, Ivan Groznyi, p. 84.

[127] A. M. Kurbskii, History of Ivan IV, p. 126.

[128] Poslaniia Ivana Groznogo, p. 317. Emphasis added.