absolutism is treated as an unlimited monarchy with the reference to V. I. Lenin cited above. ... Is this definition adequate in the given case? We think not. Is it possible, for example, to establish on the basis of it the difference between absolute monarchy and Oriental despotism? What is to be done about the rights of the people, let us say, under Ivan the Terrible? ... To argue that Ivan was a limited monarch would be to expose one's own scholarly reputation. To recognize him as an absolutist monarch, since there were no limitations on his power, is still worse.[46]
Why is it worse? Because to do so would "mean compromising the idea of equilibrium." What equilibrium? The point is that parallel to Lenin's "vyskazyvanie" denying the specific character of absolutism, there is also a "vyskazyvanie" by Engels, asserting this specific character and declaring that although every state
as a general rule is the state of the strongest, economically dominant class . . . exceptional periods are found in which contending classes reach an equilibrium of power, such that the power of the state acquires for the time being a certain autonomy in relation to both classes, as an apparent mediator between them. Such was the absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which held the nobility and the bourgeoisie in equilibrium with each other."
Faced with the choice between two irreconcilable "vyskazyvaniia," the majority of Soviet historians have preferred Engels. "This idea of Marx and Engels," Avrekh testifies, "serves as the basis of all studies of absolutism, whatever country is being discussed. All facts and phenomena are included under it and explained by it, whatever the order to which they belong.'"2
As we see, the fearless Avrekh issues a challenge to the second classical writer. For if the trouble with Lenin's "vyskazyvanie" is that it does not permit the study of absolutism, then the trouble with the "vyskazyvanie'" by Engels is that it does not fit Russian history, which two generations of experts have passionately searched for such "equilibrium." But neither in the seventeenth, nor in the eighteenth, nor even in the first half of the nineteenth century, let alone in the period of Ivan the Terrible, have they succeeded in finding it. One has to assume that this is because it is just not there—as Avrekh phrases it, their failure is conditioned by the "complete absence of proof of the existence of equilibrium."13
It is true that there are yet other "vyskazyvaniia" deep in the reserve—one might say in the subconscious—of Soviet historiography. For example: "It is in the terrible and abject school of Mongolian slavery that Muscovy was nursed and grew up. It gathered strength only by becoming a virtuoso in the craft of serfdom. Even when emancipated, Muscovy continued to perform its traditional part of the slave as master ... to whom Genghiz Khan had, by will, bequeathed his conquest of the earth."14 This treacherous stab in the back to genuine science was delivered not by some bourgeois miscreant who can be rejected with contempt, but by classical author No. 1 himself. And who was it who said that Russian autocracy "is supported ... by means of an Asiatic despotism and a degree of arbitrary rule of which we in the West cannot even have any conception"?'5 Classical author No. 2.
But these are precisely the "vyskazyvaniia" which are not only not permitted to be used, but about which Soviet historiography passionately wishes to forget and to pretend that they never existed. Marx's work which I have just quoted has never been translated into Russian in the more than sixty years of the Soviet regime. Humili- atingly and inexplicably for Soviet historiography, it appears that the majority of the officially deified classical writers (two out of three) hated Russia, viewed it as the heir of Tatar barbarism and Asiatic despotism, and called on Europe to mount a crusade against this monster. A person who thought in Freudian terms might even suspect that the tormented rejection of the concept of Asiatic despotism by genuine science is dictated by the unconscious hatred which it harbors— despite its loud avowals of love and loyalty—for the founding fathers.
Ibid., p. 85.
Karl Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of the XVIII Century, p. 121.
Karl Marx, Izbrannye proizvedeniia, p. 537. (This "vyskazyvanie" uttered by Engels appeared for some reason in Marx's book).
Thus, Soviet historians find themselves orphaned in a Kaf kaesque world of "vyskazyvaniia" which slide away under their feet—one not applicable to Russian history, another unacceptable to historians, and a third simply offensive to their best feelings. It is clear why the journal Istoriia SSSR needed four years of debate on the nature of Russian absolutism, and why Avrekh opens it with an admission apparently unthinkable in the mouth of a possessor of absolute truth: "Absolutism is not only an important theme but also a treacherous one . . . the more successful the concrete historical study of it, the more confused and vague its essence becomes.""1
Certainly, even before this discussion, Soviet historians had noted that "equilibrium" had slipped out from under their feet, and made desperate attempts to find a decent replacement for it. Why, in fact, must there necessarily be equilibrium between the nobility and the bourgeoisie? Why not "balance," say (as Likhachev did), the most reactionary strata of boyardom against the progressive class of the service nobility? However, even if we forget that the service nobility were, in fact, the "new class," the janissaries of serf-holding reaction, will this extraordinary gambit solve the problem? Avrekh thinks not. "In recent times," he writes,
it has been suggested that we consider . . . the balancing struggle between boyardom and the nobles to be the linchpin of Russian absolutism. ... It is not hard to see that this is a complete capitulation. It is, strictly speaking, no longer the substance but the word which is saved. After all, the entire essence ... of the statements of Marx and Engels is reduced to the idea that absolutism is the product of an equilibrium of forces between fundamentally different classes—the bearers of different modes of production—and the result of bourgeois development of the country."