Unlimited monarchy in Russia developed in the guise of Asiatic forms of administration—despotism—and centralized unlimited monarchy, formed in the struggle with the Mongol empire and its successors on the basis of the subsistence economy and the communal organization of the countryside, and later strengthened in the process of creation of the system of land tenure, the enserfment of the peasantry, and the transition to external expansion. This is the starting point of the evolution.2'1
Pavlova-Sil'vanskaia thus agrees both with Plekhanov and with Avrekh: with the former, that despotism was based "on the peculiarities of the agrarian structure of Russia," and not on a "regime of naked power"—that is, on the "base" and not on the "superstructure"; and with the latter, that this despotism evolved, being transformed in the eighteenth century into absolutism, and later in the direction of a bourgeois monarchy.
Such a mechanical joining of Plekhanov with Avrekh appears, on the one hand, to make Pavlova-Sil'vanskaia's position more orthodox, but on the other only intensifies the theoretical difficulties which face Avrekh's thesis. After all, if the despotic superstructure rested on the peculiarities of the agrarian base, then how and by virtue of what factors did it suddenly begin to evolve, while the base remained unchanged? I am not speaking of the fact, which Avrekh also accepts, that despotism is incapable of evolving toward bourgeois monarchy by virtue of the peculiarities of its superstructure, which blocks the evolution of the base. Even Marx equated despotism with stagnation.[50]In other words, the very fact of the evolution of tsarist autocracy contradicts the idea that it was a despotism.
But on the other hand, was it absolutism? Did it actually evolve in the direction of a bourgeois monarchy? This question was answered by history. Sometimes it did. But it could not, for some reason, become bourgeois monarchy. On the contrary, it became Russian and then Soviet autocracy. In other words, in evolving, it bore within itself—in spite of all reforms and revolutions—some kind of essential nucleus, which resisted transformation into a bourgeois monarchy.
As we see, Pavlova-Sil'vanskaia's attempt to insert a solid Marxist "base" under Avrekh's "superstructural" conception in fact only revealed its contradictions. Furthermore, she incautiously woke up the sleeping lion by putting into circulation the battery of Asiatic-despotic "vyskazyvaniia" which, as we already know, are not talked about in genuine science, as one does not talk about rope in a hanged man's house.
However, the bold attempt to think independently proved to be infectious. Avrekh's next opponent, A. Shapiro, cast doubt on the very premise that Russian despotism existed. In fact, he says, "The Boyar Duma (of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries) performed administrative and judicial functions with the prince, not only helping him, but also limiting his power (in fact, not juridically)."[51] More than this, the scope of these "de facto limitations" was not decreased but increased in the first half of the sixteenth century:
The major peculiarity of the political structure of Russia ... in the late 1540s and early 1550s . . . consisted in the establishment of a central institution, and the general dissemination of local institutions representing the estates. . . . And it was precisely at this time that the Assemblies of the Land originated in Rus' . . . the form of political structure for this period is more correctly characterized as a division of power between the tsar and the Boyar Duma ... in Russia there was a non- autocratic monarchy, with a Boyar Duma and institutions representing estates.
Further, Shapiro points to the role of the Oprichnina revolution of Ivan the Terrible in the liquidation of this "nonautocratic monarchy." He speaks of the functions of terror in this revolution, and of how,
out of the members of the Duma who received Duma titles before . . . 1563, at the end of the Oprichnina only individual persons survived. Both they and new members of the Duma were terrorized to such an extent that they did not dare to criticize the manifestations of the personal rule of Ivan the Terrible . . . neither the Boyar Duma nor the Assemblies of the Land any longer exercised an influence on the Oprichnina policy, which must be considered an autocratic policy.
Shapiro even speculates that "the Oprichnina was rather a state above the state than a state within a state."29 He understands that subsequent to the phase of pseudodespotism (which he calls "spasmodic autocracy") "there took place a certain weakening of the autocracy"30—that is, in my language, a phase of pseudoabsolutism. He also sees the restoration of the Oprichnina in the time of Peter I: "The reign of Peter was marked by the complete liquidation of the Boyar Duma and the Assemblies of the Land and the complete victory of the autocratic- absolutist system." In other words, in his conception, the dynamic of the Russian political structure is no longer a flat, unilinear process of evolution "from barbarism to civilization," in the terms of Solov'ev, or "from despotism to bourgeois monarchy," in Avrekh's terms. It pulsates. It hardens, then relaxes, then again hardens. It lives its own complex and peculiar life, separate from European absolutism. Finally, Shapiro sees at least one of the roots of the difference of Russian autocracy from European absolutism: "Nowhere in Europe were absolutism and bureaucracy able to stamp out the estate institutions completely ... in Russia both the Assemblies of the Land and the regional elected institutions were destroyed by absolutism."31
None of these mysterious eccentricities of the Russian historical process escaped Shapiro's penetrating gaze. But somehow they do not compose an autonomous conception of autocracy. On the contrary, as we see, he uses "autocratic-absolutist" with a hyphen, as synonyms—as though something held him on a leash, not permitting him to go beyond precise but transitory observations. What is it that does this? The "vyskazyvaniia"? But Shapiro, although he pays them abundant tribute, does so very much in the way that the Muscovite princes paid tribute to the Tatars, thereby securing their own autonomy. The foundation of his conclusions is not so much the "vyskazyvaniia" as the studies of modern historians—A. Zimin, R. Skrynnikov, N. Nosov, L. Cherepnin, S. Shmidt. What, then, compels Shapiro to consider Russian autocracy only a variant of Western absolutism?
It seems to me that here we see plainly how beneath the stratum of the sacred writings, which hinder the development of thought in Soviet historiography, there appears another and more profound hindrance: namely, the logic of the bipolar model. If Avrekh is wrong, and there was no Russian despotism, then consequently there was Russian absolutism: for what else could there be?
Shapiro sees that the category of despotism does not describe Russian political reality. He also sees that the category of absolutism in
29. Ibid., p. 72, 73. 30. Ibid., p. 74. 31. Ibid., p. 82.
some strange way stumbles over it, since "the chief and defining feature is its [absolutism's] attitude toward serfdom." The economies of the classical absolutist monarchies were incompatible with serfdom. The Russian economy was compatible with it. Nevertheless, the thought that it could be some third thing—that is, neither despotism nor absolutism—does not even enter his head.
Nonetheless, the ice was broken. Though this was still a timid, almost subterranean movement of thought, synchronous with the Prague Spring, it showed that deep under the ice of haughty and fruitless "genuine science," reformist potential had been preserved. It might perish again. But it might develop too.