THE ORIGINS OF AUTOCRACY
ALEXANDER YANOV
THE ORIGINS OF AUTOCRACY
IVAN THE TERRIBLE IN RUSSIAN HISTORY
Translated by Stephen Dunn
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON
University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd. London, England
© 1981 by
The Regents of the University of California Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Yanov, Alexander, 1930- The origins of autocracy. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Russia—History—Ivan IV, 1533-1584. 2. Ivan IV, the Terrible, Czar of Russia,
1530-1584. I. Title. DK106.Y36 947'.043 80-39528 ISBN 0-520-04282-4
То ту wife, Lidia, to whom I owe this book as well as everything I have, and have not, written
No society in modern times has been more subject to conflicting assumptions and interpretations than that of Russia.
CYRIL E. BLACK
The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery, not the rude glory of the Norman epoch, forms the cradle of Muscovy, and modern Russia is but a metamorphosis of Muscovy.
KARL MARX
What was Russia's place in history? Was she properly to be regarded as one of the families of the Asian systems, as one of the European polities and societies, a variety of either, or as entirely sui generis, belonging neither to Europe nor to Asia?
DONALD W. TREADGOLD
foreword
by Sidney Monas xiii
acknowledgments xv
introduction The Hypothesis
From Greatness to Obscurity ? 1
The Alternatives 7
On the Path to Re-Europeanization 10
The Choice 11
The Catastrophe 14
"A Riddle for the Mind" 16
Scholarship and Expertise 19
PART I
THE ADVERSITIES OF THEORY
chapter i The Language in Which We Argue
Justification of the Chapter 27
The Science of Despotology 32
Despotism 36
Absolutism 42
The Historical Function of Absolutism 48
Russian Autocracy 52
The Political Spiral 59
An Explanation to the Reader 65
The Oprichnina 67
chapter и The Serf Historians: In Bondage to "Statements"
The Struggle With Elementary Logic 71
The Lost Paradise of "Equilibrium" 77
Under the Ice of "Genuine Science" 83
The Punitive Expedition 87chapter hi The "Despotists": Captives of the Bipolar Model
The Three Faces of "Russian Despotism" 96
The "Tatar" Interpretation 97
Opportunity, Means, and Motive 104
The "Byzantine" Interpretation 107
The "Patrimonial" Interpretation 111
PART II THE ABSOLUTIST CENTURY
chapter iv The Grandfather and the Grandson
The Stereotype 123
"Patrimonies" Versus "Patrimony" 128
A Historical Experiment 132
The Reversed Stereotype 138
The Reformation Against the Reconquista 145
chapter v Josephites and Non-Acquirers
Money Versus Corvee 147
Two Coalitions 151
The Political Function of Secularization 153
The Preparation for the Assault 155
The Arguments of the Counter-Reformation 160
Before the Assault 162
The First Assault 166
The Pyrrhic Victory of the Josephites 173
chapter vi The End of Russian Absolutism
The Heritage of the Absolutist Century 183
The Great Reform 186
At the Crossroads 191
The Anti-Tatar Strategy 197
Russia Versus Europe 201
The Last Compromise 203
The Autocrator's Complex 206
PART III IVA NIA N A
215 222
chapter vii The Dawn
Methodological Problems
At the Sources of IvanianaA Strange Conflict 225
The First Attack of the "Historiographic Nightmare" 230
"Hero of Virtue" and "Insatiable Bloodsucker" 233
Pogodin's Conjecture 234
The Political Crisis 236
Prolegomena to the Second Epoch 239
chapter vni The Hypnosis of "the Myth of the State"
Absolute and Relative Uniqueness 241
A Symbol of Progress 246
The "Historical Necessity" of the Oprichnina 251
The Capitulation of Slavophilism 255
The "Old" and the "New" 260
The Bugbear of Oligarchy 267
Kliuchevskii's Premise 269
An Impossible Combination? 270
Platonov's Argument With Kliuchevskii 275 10. The Argument With Platonov and Kliuchevskii 278
chapter ix Again at the Crossroads
At the Boundary of the Ages 280
The Economic Apologia for the Oprichnina 281
Platonov's Contradiction 283
Pokrovskii's Paradox 286
The Political Meaning of "Collectivization" 289
The Militarist Apologia for the Oprichnina 291
A Medieval Vision 299
The Mutiny of Dubrovskii 306
The Sacred Formula 310
The Attacks of the 1960s 311
Grounds for Optimism 318
appendixes
I. Russia at the Crossroads:
Establishment Political Forces in the 1550s 323
II. The Cycles of Russian History 324
335
selected bibliography 325
index
FOREWORD
by Sidney Monas
One of the reasons, I suspect, that Americans show little interest in history (except as a diversion or as a picture of alternative glamor) is that they have almost no sense of the past as something compulsive and limiting. For Americans, at least until the last few years, the future has seemed unlimited in its possibilities—all horizons "wide open." For Russians, on the other hand, the past has always held a compelling power over the future, exerting a force so constraining that it might foster the illusion, in an extreme instance, that if one changed the accounts in which the past is recorded and interpreted, one might well lay a magical hold upon the future.