The Origins of Autocracy

Alas, this is one of those sensitive areas, where there are not enough suitable and sufficiently patriotic "vyskazyvaniia." Ivan the Ter- rible's Oprichnina is another. No classical author (other than the de­moted Stalin) took the trouble to leave a precise and unambiguous "vyskazyvanie" as to whether the Oprichnina was progressive or not. On the one hand, it must have served as the starting point of Russian absolutism, and to establish the presence of absolutism in Russia is not so much a scientific as a patriotic duty for Soviet historiography. Everywhere in Europe the establishment of absolutism meant the end of feudal disintegration and the formation of centralized states of the modern type. Why must things have been different with us? Russian absolutism serves as evidence of national respectability, as a certificate of Russia's affiliation with the European family—proof that (despite all the insulting conjectures of "bourgeois" historians) Russia has nothing in common with Oriental despotism. Inability to demon­strate the presence of absolutism in Russia is equivalent not only to capitulation to bourgeois historiography but, far worse, is an ad­mission of the Asiatic character of the Russian historical heritage. And this is fraught with undesirable political and ideological conse­quences. Therefore, the Oprichnina simply must be progressive.

But on the other hand, it was precisely the Oprichnina which laid the foundations for the establishment in Rus' of serfdom, the most bestial, unproductive, and reactionary mode of exploitation of the people's labor, which subsequently fatally penetrated into all the pores of the Russian political organism. Who could call serfdom pro­gressive? Especially taking into account the development of produc­tive forces (not to speak of the relationships of production). There is a clear contradiction, and some way out of it has to be found. Soviet historians try with all their might to do so.

Discussing the epoch of Ivan the Terrible, one of the most eminent Soviet scholars, Academician D. S. Likhachev, uncompromisingly as­serts, for example, that

of the two contending factions within the feudal class, the service no­bility was undoubtedly progressive. . . . What Marx and Engels said about a progressive class can be applied, in a certain degree, to the ser­vice nobility. . . . The boyardom tried to preserve the old ways. . . . Kurbskii's ideal is the division of power between the tsar and the boyar­dom. This was a clear compromise between the old and the new—a compromise to which the most reactionary circles of the boyardom were compelled to resort under the all-conquering pressure of the pro­gressive movement of history.

Sil'vestr, the ideologist of the "Government of compromise" (preced­ing the Oprichnina), is charged with treacherous and hypocritical machinations, in that "even when addressing the tsar, Sil'vestr speaks in a veiled form of the need to limit the sovereign's power.""

I do not know why a convinced Marxist is so terrified by "limita­tions on the sovereign's power," or why he treats them as a vice and as treason on the part of the "most reactionary circles of the boyardom." Neither is it part of the task of this section to dispute the depiction of the sixteenth century "new class" which helped Ivan the Terrible to destroy these limitations on power as a "progressive class" and the personification of "the all-conquering pressure of the progressive movement of history." What interests us at the moment is something else, namely that the "progressive class" was opposed not only by "the most reactionary circles of the boyardom." It was also opposed by the peasantry, which was being driven into slavery. The peasants resisted by raising mighty revolts, paying with their blood for the victory of the "progressive class" which Likhachev exalts. Then why does he not also call this still more terrible and bloody resistance to the "progres­sive movement of history" reactionary? This is required by elemen­tary logic: if the "new class" indeed represented progress, then the forces resisting it—regardless of whether from above (the boyardom) or from below (the peasantry)—must have represented regression or, what is the same thing, reaction.