Let us, however, return to Novgorod. It goes without saying that the anti-Muscovite party there was unreconciled to its defeat. Once more, it entered into negotiations with Lithuania, carrying the veche with it. Seven years later, Ivan III—armed, as always, with solid documentary proofs of treachery—once again launched a campaign against the mutinous otchina and brought it to its knees. (Once again surprising Fennelclass="underline" "One marvels at the patience with which Ivan conducted this [operation].") This time, Ivan settled scores with the opposition radically and cruelly: its leaders were exiled and some of them were executed; the historical autonomy of Novgorod was abolished, the bell of the veche removed, whole clans of potential traitors were resettled in the South and loyal people put in their place (for the decisive campaign against Lithuania, planned two decades earlier, Ivan needed the sympathy of the border population).
The grand prince then experimented with a mixture of past and future forms. In 1471 Novgorod was given a chance to try to incorporate its local "old ways" into the national structure which was being created, but the compromise combination of otchina with "free men" did not work. Ivan recognized his defeat by getting rid of the "free men," but even then he settled scores with the opposition and not with Novgorod itself. The pro-Lithuanian party was definitely routed, but the city survived and prospered as before. The point is that Ivan III felt himself responsible for Novgorod. This was part of his native land, his heritage, to be attached to Muscovy, but not reduced to ashes.
When Ivan the Terrible marched against Novgorod a century later, it was still Great Novgorod, the richest, most highly developed, most cultivated city in the land, the pearl of the Russian crown. But where the Oprichnina has passed, as the saying went, grass does not grow. Never again would there be Great Novgorod. Yet, in 1570, there had for a long time been no republic, no senate, no veche, no historical autonomy to be destroyed, no opposition to be decapitated. But we do not yet know the whole picture. In order to give the reader some idea of the bloody escapades of Ivan the grandson in Novgorod, let me quote a modern Soviet historian, R. G. Skrynnikov:
The Oprichnina judges conducted their investigations with the aid of the cruelest tortures. . . . The recalcitrant were burned at the stake . . . tied to sleighs by a long rope, dragged through the city to the river Volkhov and pushed under the ice. Not only those suspected of treason were killed, but also the members of their families. . . . The chronicler says that some Oprichniki threw women and children tied hand and foot into the Volkhov, while others went about the river in boats and with axes and spears drowned those who succeeded in floating to the surface.H
Immediately after the trials and reprisals described above, "the sovereign with his men-at-arms began to ride around Great Novgorod to the monasteries," the chronicler relates. The results of this royal jaunt are also described by Skrynnikov: "The black clergy [monks] were robbed down to the last thread. The Oprichniki plundered St. Sophia's Cathedral, took the valuable church furniture and icons, and broke the ancient Korsunskii gates out of the altar."1' That all of this had nothing to do with the "treason" of Novgorod is illustrated by the very fact that having finished with the monasteries of Novgorod, the expedition immediately went after those of Pskov. "The Oprichnina laid hands on the treasure of the Pskov monasteries," Skrynnikov continues. "The local monks were again robbed down to the last thread. Not only money, but also icons and crosses, valuable church furniture, and books were taken from them. The Oprichniki removed the bells of the cathedral and took them away.""5
But even this did not exhaust the sufferings of once great Novgorod. In the interval between the plundering of the Novgorod clergy and the Pskov pogrom, the Oprichniki, according to Skrynnikov,
conducted full-scale attacks against the city. They sacked the Novgorod market and divided the most valuable goods among themselves. The simple goods, such as lard, wax, and linen, they heaped into great piles and burned (that winter a terrible famine prevailed over the Russian North, and it was precisely for this reason that so many paupers accumulated in Novgorod). During the pogrom, large supplies of goods intended for trade with the West were destroyed. Not only the markets were robbed, but also the houses of the townsmen. The Oprichniki broke down the gates, removed the doors, and smashed windows. Citizens who tried to resist the bandits were killed on the spot."
Here we have the difference between the "otchina" and the "vot- china" mentalities, between absolutism and autocracy. Both reprisals against Novgorod were cruel; both were accompanied by executions, persecution, and confiscations; both were, in the final analysis, a question of foreign policy. But in the first case, the reprisal was dictated by political necessity; in the second, it was an act of mass terror to facilitate the plundering of an already frightened people. Ivan III tried as far as possible to preserve Novgorod, though compelling it to function as a part of the nation; his grandson barbarously destroyed it. Where his grandfather had aimed at the maximum rationalization of the national economy possible under medieval conditions, Ivan the Terrible attempted to secure the continuation of an irrational foreign-policy strategy at the price of expropriation and destruction of the national wealth.'8 How do the experts explain this monstrous difference between two analogous events in Russian history? Again I
Skrynnikov, Ivan Groznyi, p. 152.
There are many studies analyzing the economic results of both Novgorod expeditions, at least indirectly. Kareliia, for example, was subject to Novgorod before its annexation by Ivan III. Its inclusion into the Muscovite state, writes R. B. Miuller,
had a favorable influence on its entire population . . . the land on which the huge majority of the population lived ceased to be the property of the Novgorod boyars and became royal 'black' land. At the beginning, the state apparatus put only very insignificant pressure on the black peasants; the duties were very low, and the opportunity [for peasants] to control the land almost unlimited. . . . The basis for economic differentiation, and for the concentration of land in the hands of some [peasants] and the deprivation of others, appeared in the Karel- liian countryside.
In other words, what we may call a normal European process of intensification and rationalization of the economy was taking place, which the author sees as the origin of bourgeois relationships in the Karelliian countryside. The results of the Novgorod expedition of Ivan the Terrible are described by the same author as "an unheard-of devastation and decline of Karelliia. . . . The village land parcels, commercial buildings, and workshops fell vacant. . . . The population was ruined." (R. B. Miuller, Ocherhipo istorii KareliiXVI-XVII vekov, pp. 90-91). I don't think that these facts need any commentary.
would be happy to report on their attempts. And again I have failed to find any.
But there is yet another possible interpretation of the reprisal of the Oprichniki against Novgorod, which has not, to my knowledge, been suggested previously. Just before the Novgorod expedition, Ivan the Terrible had inspected the new and impregnable fortress—a marvel of fortification for its time—being erected in the impassable forests of Vologda. English craftsmen built an entire fleet for him, capable of carrying all the treasures of Muscovy to Solovki, and thence to England, where the tsar intended to emigrate in case he should be unable to sit out a siege behind the walls of the Vologda fortress. (Negotiations with Randolph, Queen Elizabeth's ambassador, on the granting of political asylum in England to the tsar in case of need, were complete.) The location of Vologda in the northwestern part of the country was so remote that enemy invasion could not threaten it under any circumstances. There was no one to hide from, unless we count Ivan's own people. In view of these facts, the robbery of Novgorod and Pskov may have been dictated by his desire not to arrive in England empty-handed. To be sure, this is only a hypothesis. But whether it is true or not, it is quite obvious that in building the Vologda fleet and applying for political asylum in England, the tsar was thinking least of all of the fate of Russia. It is difficult to imagine anything remotely similar when speaking of Ivan III.