[35] G. V. Plekhanov, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 21, pp. 36—37. Two centuries before Karamzin, and three centuries before Plekhanov, the director of the London "company of merchants trading to Muscovy," Jeremiah Horsey, wrote, in characterizing the period which began with the death of Ivan the Terrible: "The state of affairs in the administration and the state changed completely; every person lived in peace and quiet, and knew what he owned and what he could use; everywhere good officials were appointed, and everywhere justice was established. Russia became, even in outward appearance, a different country from what it had been under the previous tsar" (quoted in N. V. Latkin, Zemskie Sobory drevnei Rusi, p. 87).
[36] I have tried to describe this phase in some detail in my essay "The Drama of the Time of Troubles."
[37] The reader will find a chronological table of these hypothetical cycles of Russian political history in Appendix 2.
[38] Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia (Isted.), vol. 2, pp. 191, 188, 189-190.
[39] "In Russia Eastern despotism served as a model," asserted Chicherin categorically in his fundamental work О narodnom predstavitel'stve, p. 531.
[40] Cited in G. Vernadsky, The Mongols in Russia, p. 389.
[41] N. A. Berdiaev, Istoki i smysl russhogo kommunizma, p. 7.
[42] K. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, p. 225.
[43] L. V Cherepnin, "K voprosu о skladyvanii absoliutnoi monarkhii v Rossii," p. 38.
[44] Ibid., pp. 24-25.
[45] Istoriia SSSR, p. 212.1 am neither an orthodox nor a rebellious Marxist—I simply don't have anything in common with this mode of thought. But even a bitter opponent of Marxism would scarcely parody it as brutally as do these writers who claim to have custody of the pure Marxist flame.
[46] A. Ia. Avrekh, "Russkii absoliutizm i ego rol' v utverzhdenii kapitalizma v Rossii," pp. 83, 85. Emphasis added.
[47] V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, pp. 333-34.
[48] Avrekh, p. 89. Emphasis added.
[49] It should be noted that, in direct form, the category of political progress is lacking in Soviet historiography (and before Avrekh it was lacking even in indirect form). Therefore the criterion of political development is also lacking. And there is no knowing what is good or bad here, what is positive and what is negative, or what is moving from what direction and toward what. I emphasize that what is being spoken of is not the trivial Marxist postulate that the replacement of one socioeconomic order by another is inevitable, but political progress—that is, the fact that different political structures possess different dynamic potentials. And, for this reason, Avrekh's attempt to declare "St. Petersburg absolutism" (even if it never existed) capable (unlike "Muscovite despotism") of political dynamism, was for its kind a remarkably partisan action in Soviet historiography, as well as a risky one.
[50] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Izbrannye pis'ma, p. 79.
[51] A. L. Shapiro, "Ob absoliutizme v Rossii," p. 71.
[52] A. I. Davidovich and S. A. Pokrovskii, "O klassovoi sushchnosti i etapakh razvi- tiia russkogo absoliutizma," p. 65.
[53] Ibid., p. 62. 34. Ibid., p. 65.
[54] Ibid., p. 142.
[55] V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 381.
[56] A. N. Sakharov, p. 148. 45. Ibid., p. 111. 46. Ibid., p. 112.
[57] S. N. Eisenstadt, "The Study of Oriental Despotisms as Systems of Total Power," p. 446.
[58] Donald W. Treadgold, ed., The Development of the USSR: An Exchange of Views, pp. 352-53.
[59] Ibid., p. 331.
[60] See, for example, S. V Veselovskii, К voprosy о proukhozhdenii votchinnogo rezhima\ S. M. Kashtanov, Sotsial'no-politicheskaia istoriia Rossii kontsa XV—pervoi poloviny XVI v.; Horace Dewey, "Immunities in Old Russia."
[61] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Sochineniia, vol. 25, pt. 1, p. 354. Emphasis added.
[62] "[The struggle between the church and the state in Byzantium] ended in the Church's becoming virtually a department of the medieval East Roman State; and a State that has reduced the Church to this position has thereby made itself 'totalitarian'—if our latter-day term 'totalitarian State' means a state that has established its control over every side of the life of its subjects" (Toynbee, ibid., p. 93).
[62] Ibid., p. 95. 17. Ibid., p. 91. 18. Ibid., p. 94.
[63] Ibid., p. 23. 23. Ibid., p. 97. 24. Ibid., p. 71.
28. Ibid., p. 85. Emphasis added.
[65] Ibid., p. 86. 30. Ibid., p. 94. 31. Ibid., p. 89. 32. Ibid., p. 90.
33. Ibid., p. 21. 34. Ibid., p. 94.
[67] Ibid., p. 112.
[68] S. M. Solov'ev, Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen, Bk. 3, pp. 174-75.
[69] Cited in M. A. D'akonov, Vlast' moskovskikh gosudarei, pp. 187-88.
[70] Ibid., p. 189.
[71] Ibid., p. 191.
[72] Gustav Alef, "Aristocratic Politics and Royal Policy in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries," p. 1.
[73] Cited in G. V. Plekhanov, Sochineniia, vol. 20, p. 233.
[74] G. Kotoshikhin, О Rossii v tsarstvovanie Alekseia Mikhailovicha, Sochinenie Grigoriia Kotoshikhina, p. 53. Emphasis added.
[75] Of course, extrahistorical and, so to speak, personalistic explanations are possible. In his time, V. O. Kliuchevskii considered the Oprichnina, though monstrous, to be an episode in Russian history which was in a certain sense accidental, and in considerable degree conditioned by the personality of Ivan the Terrible. In developing this line of reasoning, the leading modern historians of the Muscovite period in the United States, Richard Hellie and Edward Keenan, offer medical explanations for the Oprichnina. According to Hellie, Ivan the Terrible's actions are to be explained by paranoia; according to Keenan, by physical disease, arthritis and spondylitis, which made him incapable of fulfilling his duties as tsar. (See Edward Keenan, "Vita: Ivan Vasil'evich, Terrible Tsar 1530-1584," p. 49; Richard Hellie, "In Search of Ivan the Terrible," Preface to S. F. Platonov's Ivan the Terrible, and "Ivan the Terrible: Paranoia, 'Evil Advisors,' Institutional Restraints and Social Control"). We will deal with this view in the appropriate place, when analyzing the modern phase of Ivaniana. For the time being, it may be noted that Peter I was an epileptic, and, it is said, suffered from a severe form of syphilis, while Stalin was an indubitable paranoiac. Tyrants usually have their occupational diseases. Yet, it would not be easy to explain Stalinism by paranoia, or the reforms of Peter by epilepsy. It must be admitted, further, that the comparative paucity of information about Ivan the Terrible is more conducive to medical speculation, and to the mixing of despotology with pathology, than the analogous cases of Peter and Stalin.