The "Government of Compromise" followed precisely this path. The Oprichnina government which replaced it returned to the system of unpaid vicegerents, who were gradually turned into voevody, first in the outlying regions of the state and then over its entire extent.8
And again we face a formidable question: what was reflected by this tortuous change in the administrative policies of the two governments (formally headed by the same person, Ivan IV), which was no less significant than the changes in their emigration and peasant policies? It seems to me that, apart from everything else, it reflected the
8. "The form of [local] government administered by the voevody was born in the stormy years of the long wars of Ivan the Terrible. . . . For example, in 1578 the city of Nevel' was given to I. Karamyshev as maintenance. In the same year Karamyshev was named in one decree as vicegerent, and in another as vicegerent and as voevoda. In 1570 voevody governed in Vasil', in 1571 in Kurmysh, in 1577 in Korel'" (Zimin, Refer my, p. 435).
different constituencies on which the two governments rested. Just as the secularization campaign was the first attempt of the government to collaborate with the intelligentsia of the nation in Russian history, the Great Reform was an attempt to collaborate with its proto-bourgeoisie. And both were ruined by the "revolution from above."
In fact, the natural question which arises in connection with the Great Reform of the 1550s (and which, as far as I know, no one has yet asked) is why and under the influence of what forces the Muscovite government showed a preference for local self-government over voevodal administration. The single reference to "the stormy years of the long wars of Ivan the Terrible," to which Zimin resorts, is of no help here. The point is that the administrative reform (like the abolition of the tarkhany) was proclaimed precisely at the height of a war with Kazan', which lasted at least four years (1547-52). This war, before ending in a brilliant victory, twice led to severe defeats, after which the tsar returned home "with many tears." Nevertheless, the government took a firm course toward local self-rule. Why?
Part of the explanation lies in the fact that the first decrees assigning power in the individual uezdy to elected organs were only answers to the numerous requests, complaints, and demands of the "best people." The government was not contemplating a national reform of local administration. It adopted it under the pressure of public opinion, if we may so express ourselves in relation to medieval society. This was the pressure of particular interest groups in that society, but opposed interest groups also existed. This means that there was something more important moving the government along this liberal path. And that something was money. The decree of reform issued in September 1557 to the Dvina uezd states that the grand prince
ordered his Dvina vicegerents . . . not to give judgment and not to take their maintenance or any income, and his tax collectors and judicial officials not to go to those communities; and instead of the taxes and duties taken by the vicegerents, he ordered the people to pay a quitrent which they should bring to the treasury in Moscow, to our secretary Putilo Nechaev in the amount of twenty rubles from each unit of taxable land [sokha], and in addition a tariff of six kopeks for each ruble.'1
There is nothing remarkable in this formula, until one compares it with the dimensions of the "maintenance" which the uezdy paid to the vicegerents before the reform, which amounted to only one ruble and thirteen kopeks per Muscovite sokha (and to less than two rubles when taken together with all other duties). In other words, it was not at all a matter of the government granting self-government to the Russian land. Self-government was sold to it—and at a price ten times higher than it paid before the reform!
One might expect such a monstrous rise in the tax rate to have provoked, if not open resistance, then at least a burst of indignation in the uezdy. Nothing of the kind is to be noted. There is no trace of peasant complaints about the reform. On the contrary, it was received with a sigh of relief. This, incidentally, is not surprising if we remember that such peasant families as the Makarovs, Shul'gins, Poplevins, or Rodionovs—and all of these were in only one uezd—were sufficiently rich and powerful to pay the taxes for the entire uezd. It is hard not to agree with N. E. Nosov's conclusion:
The peasants of the Dvina region "bought off" the feudal state and its organs, receiving broad judicial and administrative autonomy. The price was high . . . but what did the "buying off of the vicegerents" mean to the rich people of the Dvina, if the Kologrivov family alone could, if it liked, have paid the taxes for the entire Dvina uezd? And what an advantage this gave them in developing their commercial and industrial activity, released at last from the mercenary tutelage of the feudal vicegerents—and, more important, in the exploitation not only of the entire wealth of the North, but of the poor people of the Dvina! And was this not a step (and a substantial one) toward the development of new bourgeois relationships for the Dvina?
Thus, the uezdy bought themselves the right to have the agents of the central power "not go" to them, and to be able to "do justice among themselves," and to have the peasants divide the rent "among themselves . . . according to their livings and occupations"—that is, according to the incomes of individual families. Thus, the creation of the institution of self-rule was accompanied by the introduction of an entirely bourgeois income tax. (This was the fundamental difference between the new institution and the old peasant commune, oriented toward the equality of its members). Does not this mean that the government thereby recognized legislatively the differentiation of the peasantry (and among city people) and the existence of the proto- bourgeoisie? Doesn't it mean that, for the first time in Russian history, the government recognized that a new stratum of taxpayers had appeared—a kind of "middle class"—whom it was more profitable to exploit in a rational way than to rob by turning them over to the arbitrary action of the vicegerents? This goose could lay golden eggs. And
the absolutist government naturally was smart enough not to waste them, which just as naturally was not the case with its Oprichnina successor.
The Great Reform of the 1550s was drowned in the blood and dirt of an autocratic revolution. But its doom was by no means the automatic result of some process developing fatally and inexorably in Muscovy since 1450, as Richard Hellie thinks," or any other year. Rather, the facts cited compel us to assume something quite different: namely, that the doom of the Great Reform was the result of a crushing defeat of the Government of Compromise and the absolutist coalition which stood behind it.
3. At the Crossroads
One of the basic failures of the Government of Compromise was that it was not able to implement the testament of Ivan III and organize a victorious secularization campaign. This, of course, neither means that it did not understand the need for such a campaign nor that it did not try to implement one. "There is every reason to consider Sil'vestr the author of the tsar's questions [to the church assembly in 1551]," writes A. A. Zimin. "An analysis of the ideological content ... of the questions shows the indubitable closeness of their compilers to the Non-Acquirers, whose de facto head in the mid-sixteenth century was Sil'vestr."12 Sil'vestr was hardly the head of the Non- Acquirers, but no one disputes the fact that, as one of the most influential people in the Government of Compromise, he was a convinced adherent of secularization. In 1551, precisely for this reason, "a confrontation developed between the government of Adashev and Sil'vestr, which strove to use the self-interest of the boyars and service landholders in liquidating the landed wealth of the church, and the Josephite leadership of the church, led by Makarii.'"3