What previously could have been regarded as the secondary level of Muscovite strategy emerged into the foreground. The Crimean king succeeded in placing his brother, Saip-Girei, on the throne of Kazan'. Muscovy was taken by surprise by this union of its two sworn enemies in the South and East, which had been long in maturing. It awoke only when both brothers suddenly appeared below its walls in 1521, forcing Vasilii to take refuge in flight. And although even the united forces of the Crimea and Kazan' were unable to take Moscow, its inhabitants were compelled to give the Tatars a humiliating promise to pay them tribute, as in the old days—as though there had been no Ugra. The Tatars took away with them many thousands of prisoners, according to rumors current at the time. It became clear that, beyond the southern horizon, formidable forces were gathering which could again call into question Muscovy's existence as a state. Ivan III had provided the Russian land with a respite from the Tatars for many decades, but not forever.
Moreover, it was no longer possible to split Lithuania, as Ivan III had hoped to do, by taking advantage of the antagonisms between its Russian Orthodox and Catholic subjects. The Reformation which was raging in Europe had brought about universal ideological changes, as a result of which the Russian Orthodox magnates of Lithuania were now thinking of an alliance not so much with Muscovy as with their Catholic colleagues—an alliance against their common enemy, Protestantism, which was spreading like an epidemic through urban circles and among the educated young people of Lithuania and Poland. Matters were tending toward the formation of a united commonwealth of the two countries. The moment for a campaign against Lithuania had been irretrievably lost by Vasilii, just as he had lost the moment for a second campaign of secularization. The colossal military, diplomatic, and intellectual efforts consumed in preparing the strategy of Ivan III, decades of labor and struggle, were reduced to nothing. Within a single generation, Muscovy might find itself caught between the united Tatar khanates (behind which loomed Turkey) in the East, and united Lithuania and Poland (behind which loomed the Papacy) in the West. The hour of decision had struck. To avoid isolation (which could lead to irreversible changes in the political structure of the country itself) it was necessary to decide with whom and against whom Muscovy would stand, who its allies were and who its enemies.
Under these conditions, the anti-Turkish entente called for by Western diplomats ceased to be a pious hope and became an urgent necessity. The situation demanded a repetition of the Ugra. The cutting edge of Muscovite strategy had to be turned from the West to the East and South, where the Tatars were forging an alliance capable of putting a hundred thousand men into the saddle.'8 But a new Ugra required a new Ivan III—and he was not available. Even the Tatar attack of 1521 taught Muscovy nothing.
Within the country, church landholding continued to spread. And there was now no question of an entente against the Orthodox establishment between the state and the intelligentsia, such as had been taking shape at the beginning of the century. Left to itself, the Non- Acquirer movement exhausted itself in struggles against a "right wing" offensive which was taking on an increasingly clear nationalist and isolationist character. The monk Filofei of Pskov proposed the tempting theory of "the Third Rome" to the grand prince Vasilii— that is, of Muscovy as the guardian of the true faith, counterposed to the West and the East and destined to play a unique role in the preservation of Christianity until the Second Coming of Christ ("thou art the only Christian king under Heaven"). Iosif, who had been defeated in an open ideological skirmish with the Non-Acquirers, performed one more political maneuver. He no longer gave himself over to meditations on tsars and tyrants, but proposed the still more tempting idea of the theocratic power of the Orthodox sovereign, declaring him "the ruler of all," and the viceroy of God on earth.[108](Though in so doing he did not abandon his fundamental thesis that "the church's acquisitions are God's acquisitions.")[109]
Thus, the Josephite hierarchy offered the state peace with the church, agreeing to recognize the Russian tsar as an autocrator—the head of a new Byzantine empire and the supreme leader of Orthodox (i.e., true Christian) humanity. For this, Vasilii would have to pay not only with new lands but also with the heads of further heretics and Non-Acquirers. He would have to sacrifice not only the radicals, but also the liberals, liquidating the ideological limitations on power— the most precious heritage left to Russia by his father. Taken together, nationalism, isolationism, messianism, and the liquidation of the ideological struggle foretold the end of Russian absolutism even in the 1520s.
But the tradition of Ivan III was strong. If Vasilii lacked the capacity to continue the policy of his father, he also lacked the capacity to change it radically. He drifted with the current. True, he gave up to the Josephites two of their chief enemies—the two most brilliant figures of the Muscovite intellectual world of that time. The assembly of 1525 condemned Maxim the Greek, and that of 1531 condemned Vassian Patrikeev.4' They left the scene, and were exiled to Josephite monasteries for life. But this did not mean that an end was put to the Non-Acquirer movement as a current of thought. It was beheaded but not yet destroyed. The aristocracy was still firmly in the saddle, and as long as the social limitations on power had not been done away with, the economic limitations prospered under their protection. The law remained the law, although the political life of the country stagnated. Consequently, the proto-bourgeoisie became more numerous, the cities grew, and the obligations of the peasants were increasingly rendered in money. (Half a century later, the "Government of Compromise" would convert the obligations to the state of whole regions into money terms, modernizing the system of taxation.) It seemed that Russian absolutism was destined to survive the rule of Vasilii.
No one yet knew which of the two tendencies would be victorious—feudal or peasant differentiation, corvee or money, the service landholders or the proto-bourgeoisie.
The fourth generation of the Non-Acquirers was still to come. The elder Artemii, from whom the tsar would respectfully take counsel, was to be elevated to the post of abbot of the Troitsa, like his ideological forebear Paisii. Still other bishops and abbots would emerge, despite the Josephite Metropolitan Daniil's intrigues, from the school of Nil Sorskii and Maxim the Greek. The assembly of 1551, with its famous royal questions, was also still to come.
But this assembly would not be a victory for the Non-Acquirers. It would be turned into their ultimate defeat. True, it would adopt important anti-Josephite decisions to return the land confiscated by churchmen for debt to the original owners, and to take away the service estates and regions given to churchmen during the sovereign's nonage. However, a terrible price would be exacted by the Josephites for these purely tactical concessions. Whereas Ivan III turned over the heretics to the Josephites in order to save the Non-Acquirers, Ivan the Terrible turned the Non-Acquirers over to them in order to destroy both victors and vanquished.