In the 1460s, when Ivan III mounted the throne, Novgorod was an autonomous political unit in the complex and loose conglomerate arbitrarily called Muscovy. It was, properly speaking, a republic—something like a Russian Carthage. In formal terms, the popular assembly [veche] was considered to be the highest power, which annually elected a mayor [posadnik] and a general [tysiatskii], who in turn supervised the administration, the military establishment, and the organs of justice. In practice, the power of this elected representative body was limited by the senate (the council of boyars), which exercised the real power (in the sense that political decisions were initiated, and the strategy for the republic determined there). The connection of the republic with the Russian state (apart from the common language and cultural traditions) consisted chiefly in the fact that Novgorod paid tribute to Muscovy in return for noninterference in its internal affairs, that the princes who were invited to command the army were supposed by tradition to belong to the clan of Riurik (the semimythi- cal Norse founder of the Kievan state, and progenitor of its royal house), and that candidates for the post of archbishop of Novgorod were nominated by the metropolitan of Moscow.
The Novgorod North was the treasure house of Russia, spared by the Tatar invasion, and closely connected with the Hanseatic commercial republics, which were related to it by their political structure. Novgorod controlled the roads to the White Sea, to the Baltic, and to the vast territories beyond the Urals. Its incorporation was, therefore, absolutely vital for the development of Muscovy as a state, and hence only a matter of time.
The senate of Novgorod had for decades been deeply split into hostile factions. The sympathies of the veche, or popular assembly, were chiefly with the pro-Lithuanian faction (most probably because Lithuania was farther away and posed a lesser danger to the autonomy of the republic). The representatives of the grand prince were publicly humiliated; regions of the republic ceded to Moscow in the past were taken back by force; payment of taxes was refused; the position of head of the army was ostentatiously off ered to the son of Dimitri Shemiaka, who had blinded the father of the grand prince; negotiations with Kazimir of Lithuania were the order of the day and, to top it all, the archbishop of Novgorod also entered into negotiations with the Uniate metropolitan of Kiev (an appointee of the pope's and probably also of Kazimir's). "Throughout the sixties tension grew," writes John Fennelclass="underline"
The split in Novgorod between the pro-Muscovite faction and the pro- Lithuanian party . . . became more sharply defined and led to disorders within the city. Although few people could have foreseen any other fate for Novgorod than her ultimate annexation by Moscow, the pro- Lithuanian faction grew in strength and boldness. It was as though they were attempting to provoke Ivan into a final act of reprisal. ... In vain Ivan sent his ambassadors to reason with his insubordinate patrimony; Novgorod refused to listen to his complaints. Mere insolence and minor boundary conflicts could hardly be used as a pretext for a major expedition to crush what was after all a Russian and an Orthodox state."
For one who knows the history of Ivan the Terrible s Novgorod expedition, which turned the same Russian and Orthodox city into a desert without any pretext whatever (except, of course, for the suspicion of "treason" which was the standard fabrication in the Oprichnina period when it was necessary to rob someone), this explanation may seem improbable. But between grandfather and grandson there was a great gulf: even when the treachery of Novgorod, both political and religious, was demonstrated beyond doubt, Ivan III punished it not immediately or hastily, but with caution, in two stages. The Nov- goroders played a clumsy political game, and were always falling into the traps laid by the grand prince. The challenge he faced lay rather in the powerful authority of the "old ways" embodied in the liberties of Novgorod. Simply to violate them as his grandson would have done, and did, was something of which Ivan III was, it seems, incapable. His mind worked in a fundamentally different way. He had in his hands a tool which tyrants never have: time. Let the republic be the first to violate the "old ways." Then he would act, in the role not of a violator but of a preserver of national and religious tradition.
He waited them out. The Novgoroders, in desperation, sought help from the traditional enemies of Rus'—the Livonian Order. Now the whole world could see who was defending the "old ways" and who was violating them. The grand prince marched against Novgorod and, on July 14, 1471, inflicted a crushing defeat on its army at the river Shelon'. The republic lay at his feet, disarmed and helpless. It seemed that the moment for which he had patiently waited for a whole decade had come. What now? Did he disarm Novgorod, destroy it politically, plunder it, kill its people? Did he at least annex its northern empire? Nothing of the sort. He entered into negotiations and agreed to a compromise. What was more, in the treaty, along with words confirming the fact that Novgorod was "our otchina," there was reference to "the free men [of Novgorod]." Fennell notes with mild astonishment: "Ivan showed remarkable clemency. . . . Why should the anomaly of an independent freedom-loving republic within the confines of what was becoming a centralized totalitarian state be tolerated for another seven years?"[76] In fact Ivan III liquidated the grand princedom of Tver' in exactly the same way, in two stages, thirteen years later. Thus, too, he organized his pressure campaign against Lithuania—methodically, unhurriedly, and not all at once. He acted similarly in his struggle to secularize the church lands. This appears to have been the universal strategic method of the grand prince of compromise—the founding father of the absolutist tradition of Russia. Fennell points out:
Of course, harsh methods at this stage would not make the task of governing the city any easier; his undoubted unpopularity amongst certain members of the [Novgorod] community would be increased; leaders of the opposition would become martyrs in the eyes of the public; the merchants, whose support Ivan was only too anxious to court and maintain, might well become antagonistic to the cause of Moscow and thus disrupt its economic programme."
Not one of these considerations entered the mind of Ivan the Terrible at the time of his Novgorod expedition of 1570; he mercilessly robbed the Novgorod traders without any concern for the economic program of Muscovy, still less for his reputation "among certain members of the community" (these, and others about whom we are uncertain, were simply executed on a mass scale). Certainly, the thought that "harsh methods" would hardly ease the task of governing the city did not stop Ivan the Terrible. All strata of the population, boyars, clergy, rich merchants, poor townsmen, and even the paupers—who were driven out in the middle of a fierce winter, to be frozen alive beyond the city walls—were exterminated methodically, mercilessly, in whole families.
It is as though for the grandson the vertical (temporal) dimension of politics did not exist. Not even the future, let alone the past ("old ways"), had any meaning for him. He thought, one might say, horizontally, and worked outside of the context of time. And although he traced his descent in a direct line from the Roman emperor Augustus, the sacred "old ways" were for him merely a great abstract congeries, in which Moses and the Prophet Samuel and "our forefathers" all blended together—in no sense a living, vital tradition which created a moral imperative, or an authority to which policy had to be adapted.