Smirnov, p. 5.
Veselovskii, p. 37.
Polosin, p. 19.
agreed, but the criticism is valid, if you discard the abuse. Both Vese- lovskii and Kurbskii actually fought on one side of the barricades in the national debate on the nature of tyranny and its role in Russian history. They were both on the side of the intellect of the nation and against its prejudices in the historical battle taking place in the heart of one nation divided in two.
New apologias for Ivan the Terrible have arisen, and will continue to arise, independently of the "maturity" of historical scholarship in each new phase of pseudodespotism, each with a new Ivan the Terrible on the Russian throne. Society can outlive autocracy only in its historical experience. Historical scholarship, no matter how many new sources it discovers, is not capable of replacing this experience. But it can still do something: it can help or hinder a society in overcoming its autocratic tradition. Here we approach the real problem of Ivan- iana. The opponents of Ivan the Terrible have been dissidents rather than oppositionists. In other words, they have argued, exposed, cursed, and been indignant, and they have been just and strong in their criticism—as long as criticism by itself was sufficient. But they have not thought out a positive alternative to autocracy. They have not seen it either in terms of theory or in terms of history. They have worked without depending on the ancient and powerful Russian absolutist tradition—on the tradition which gave them birth, but which they were not able to make their tool. On the other hand, their opponents—beginning with Ivan the Terrible himself, and ending with Ivan Smirnov—have based themselves on the equally ancient and mighty autocratic tradition, on the prejudices of a nation which lived through the Tatar yoke and the cultural revolution of the Oprichnina, on the powerful striving to justify the strong regime of the Boss. And they have not only based themselves on this tradition; they have been able to make it their tool. The dissidents of Ivaniana have never dared to recognize openly and fearlessly the tremendous power of this slave tradition, which seems to come from underground, from the very roots of the national consciousness. And for this reason they have been helpless against it. What good were primary sources and new "factual material," what good was the moral indignation and the martyrology of the victims of the Oprichnina against the terrible power of cultural stereotypes? This was like trying to storm an impregnable fortress armed with goose quills. The tradition of slavery could be destroyed only by an alternative tradition, only by recognizing its weaknesses, the mistakes which it made, and the reasons for its defeats. The dissidents of Ivaniana did not do this. For this reason they were defeated. I will try here to show how this happened.
2. At the Sources of Ivaniana
In 1564, Ivan IV's favorite, the boyar prince Andrei Kurbskii, a hero of the Kazan' and Livonian wars, fled to the protection of the king of Poland, leaving his wife and infant son in Derpt, where he had been governor. From Lithuania, Kurbskii wrote a sharp and reproachful letter to the tsar. The latter—himself a "master of rhetoric and written wisdom" in the eyes of contemporaries—replied with a lengthy epistle of self-justification. With the remarkable correspondence thus begun—which lasted, with long interruptions, from 1564 to 1579— commences what I call Ivaniana.21
The correspondence between Kurbskii and the tsar has been reinterpreted many times in the past 400 years. For declaring it apocryphal, Edward Keenan was given a distinguished prize not long ago.22 Nonetheless, V. O. Kliuchevskii first perceived in it the fatal dichotomy in Russian political culture.23 Paying tribute to Kliuchev-
V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia (2nd ed.), vol. 2, p. 164.
Keenan's The Kurbskii-Groznyi Apocrypha was awarded the first annual Thomas J. Wilson Prize. His point of view is based on a complex and inventive textological analysis, which a well-known emigre expert in the literature of this period has called "a fantastic pyramid of speculation" (N. Andreev, "Mnimaia tema," p. 270). A major Soviet expert comes to the conclusion that "the attentive reading of the sources promised by Keenan is reduced to an inaccurate and arbitrary interpretation of them, and the laws of probability serve as a bridge to unproved and fantastic speculations" (R. G. Skryn- nikov, Perepiska [Ivana] Groznogo i Kurbskogo. Paradoksy Edvarda Kinnona, p. 123). I am prepared, however, to explain this strange coincidence by the prejudice of both reviewers. In any case, this is, as the saying is in Russia, after Pushkin, "a quarrel of Slavs among themselves"—a highly academic conflict between highly qualified textologists. What disturbs me is something else: as soon as Keenan goes beyond the limits of pure textology and addresses himself to the analysis of the content, his whole construction suddenly begins to sound somehow less than professional. Keenan is convinced, for example, that "Kurbskii . . . never really does make clear what he believes in, aside from his complaints against Ivan's personal tyranny, while Ivan, for the most part, is at pains to justify his own actions on personal and historical grounds, rather than by any consistent theoretical program" (p. 60). I would be prepared to agree with Keenan if he had said that Kurbskii did a poor job of defending his point of view. But unfortunately he does not analyze the political content of the correspondence at all. We shall see soon how complex, contradictory, and difficult to analyze this political content is. Keenan's refusal even to notice it rather compels me to agree with the conclusion of Professor Andreev: "What a pity Edward Keenan has thrown his enormous energy and tireless imagination into creation of an illusory theme" (p. 272). It is an even greater pity inasmuch as there are still so many real and difficult problems in the Russian history of this period which demand all of the attention and imagination of the few people working in the field. It is sad to contemplate a specialist playing with dolls, so to speak.
The classical stereotype has it that the dualism in Russian political life takes its origin from the "Westernist" modernization of Peter I (that is, from the second auto- skii's role as trailblazer—but also because he is a brilliant writer, the Pushkin of Russian historiography—I will as far as possible set forth the essence of the correspondence in his words. "Kurbskii's text contains . . . political judgments resembling principles or a theory," he wrote.
He considers as normal only a structure of the state which is based not on the personal will of the sovereign, but on the participation of a "college"—a council of boyars—in the administration. . . . Furthermore the sovereign should share his royal concerns not only with highborn and just councillors: Prince Kurbskii also favors the participation of the people in the administration, and stands for the usefulness and necessity of an Assembly of the Land. . . . "If the tsar is respected by the kingdom ... he must seek good and useful counsel not only from his councillors, but also from men of all the people, since the gift of the spirit is given not according to external wealth or according to power, but according to spiritual rectitude.". . . The prince stood for the governing role of the Council of Boyars and for the participation of the Assembly of the Land in the administration of the state. But he is dreaming of yesterday. . . . Neither the governing role of the Council of Boyars nor the participation of the Assembly of the Land in the administration was an ideal at that time, nor could it be a political dream. [They] were at that time political facts. . . . Thus, Prince Kurbskii stands for existing facts; his political program does not go beyond the limits of the existing structure of the state . . . while sharply critical of the past of Muscovy, [he] cannot think of anything better than this past.[135]