Ivan lost his strength, finally, under the burden of a dull and quasi- patriarchal environment, which had already become meaningless, and in which he was fated to live and act. Struggling with it to the death over many years, and seeing no results, he lost faith in the possibility of realizing his great thoughts. Then life became for him an unbearable burden, a ceaseless torment, he became a hypocrite, a tyrant, and a coward. Ivan IV fell so far precisely because he was great.25
Do you see now where Belinskii's "fallen angel" came from? Do we not have before us a tragedy worthy of the pen of Shakespeare and Cervantes? A courageous Don Quixote, fatigued by the struggle with patriarchal dragons, is against his will transformed in the end into Macbeth—and since the role of Lady Macbeth is played by History herself, he is worthy not only of our sympathy but also of admiration. Furthermore, the mysterious dualism of the personality, which so tormented Shcherbatov and Karamzin, now receives both explanation and justification: the more bestialities Tsar Macbeth committed in his fall, the greater Tsar Don Quixote was at the height of his powers and hopes. From now on, the bestialities bear witness to greatness.
The jeremiads of Pogodin, based on simple common sense, could not compete with this monumental apologia, which transformed the mystery of the terrible tsar from an empirical problem into the fulcrum of the state and progress. The debate transcended historiography and acquired a philosophical significance affecting the very foundations of the individual Russian's Weltanschauung. The concept of the nation-state was contrasted to the concept of the nation-family. The Slavophile "nation" was represented as a symbol of stagnation, Asiatic quietism, eternal marching in place, and cultural death. If you
21. Ibid., p. 362. 22. Ibid., p. 363. 23. Ibid., p. 361. 24. Ibid., p. 363. 25. Ibid., pp. 355-56.
are for the movement of History—so Ravelin persuaded his reader— if you are for life and against death, then you are for the founder of the Russian state, Ivan the Terrible, and you are for his Oprichnina. The lamentations of moralists, like Raramzin, the slanders of reactionaries, like Pogodin, and the protests of advocates of stagnation, the Slavophiles, cannot conceal the fact that progress in Russia owes its existence to the state, and the state to the Oprichnina, and the Oprichnina to Ivan the Terrible. Thus, for the second time in Russian historiography, Ivan was transformed from a tsar-tormentor into a hero, and—what is more important—into a symbol of Russian power. But if the sentimental eighteenth century was content with this, for the positivist nineteenth he became the symbol of progress as well.
3. The "Historical Necessity" of the Oprichnina
Ravelin developed only the points of departure for the construct which Solov'ev clothed with flesh in his gigantic, multivolume History of Russia. Of course, Solov'ev digressed from Ravelin's abstract models. Many things were dictated to him by the living material of history which Ravelin allowed himself to disregard. Solov'ev had arrived independently at the contrast between the kin-based (old) order and the state-based (new) order as early as his doctoral dissertation, A History of the Relations Between the Russian Princes of the House of Riurik, published in 1847. True, Solov'ev's conception of this was oversimplified and primitive in comparison to Ravelin's. As originally formulated, it would have been easily destroyed by Pogodin, Solov'ev's former mentor, and subsequently his eternal enemy. Nevertheless, the fact that the two conceptions were essentially the same shows once again how much the air of Nikolaian Russia was infected by apologia for Ivan the Terrible.
In his dissertation, Solov'ev's thesis was so marked by special pleading that even Ravelin, in a review which took up 123 pages in three issues of Sovremennik [Contemporary] (that is the kind of review they wrote in those days!) was compelled to reproach him, even though affectionately, with "a certain prejudice ... in favor of Ivan the Terrible."[172] Solov'ev declared that,
the opportunity of [free] departure, which was seen by some as a right . . . and by others as a sacred custom and tradition . . . was defended by the old society with all its strength against the state strivings of the Muscovite grand princes, who justly saw in it absurdity, lawlessness, treason. This is the meaning of the struggle which began long ago in Northern Rus' but. . . reached its extreme point under . . . Ivan IV. If it is just to say, as many do, that Ivan IV was obsessed with treason, then at the same time it must be admitted that the old society was obsessed with [the right of] departure and free movement.[173]
"From these words it is clear how accurately the author views the significance of Ivan in Russian history," Kavelin comments. "We have not yet read anything about Ivan which so profoundly satisfied us."[174]And a little further on: "In Mr. Solov'ev, Ivan IV has found a worthy advocate for our time."[175]
In fact, the "right of departure," which in the fourteenth century had still been a precious guarantee for boyardom against the tyranny of princes, had long since lost its significance by the time of Ivan IV. The boyardom at that time was concerned with quite other problems. It was the peasantry for whom the right of departure had truly fateful significance in the mid-sixteenth century. Ivan Ill's St. George's Day, which was the legislative guarantee of this right, was now at stake. And for this reason its abolition, which Solov'ev depicts as a necessity of state, signified in plain language the enserfment of the peasants. And although Solov'ev does not say a word about the peasantry, he understands very well that it was by no means accidental that the "old society" was "obsessed with the right of departure." "Ivan IV," he says, "was not arming himself only against the boyars, for it was not only the boyars who were infected with the long-standing disease of old Russian society—the passion for movement and departure."3(1 And Kavelin raises no fundamental objection to this. In other words, sympathy with the "necessity of state" proved so great in their liberal hearts that before it all other considerations, including hatred for slavery and revulsion against tyranny, retreated into second place. For Solov'ev, Kurbskii is, of course, the "advocate ... of the ancient claims of the retainers, brought by them from ancient Rus'—[claims] to the custom of counselorship and to the right of free departure"— while Ivan the Terrible, full of "bright thoughts of state" and "clarity of political vision," displays "the great mind of a tsar . . . indefatigable activity . . . and judgment." [176]
For all that, Solov'ev was a historian. In his dissertation, he discussed the time of Tsar Ivan only in a concluding chapter, a kind of appendix, essentially unconnected to the basic theme, and he spoke of it on the basis primarily of the tsar's correspondence with Kurbskii. He still had to familiarize himself with the sources. And this was a terrible trial, which not even such principled adherents of autocracy as Karamzin and Pogodin were able to withstand. When, many years after Solov'ev, the remarkable Russian poet Aleksei Tolstoi familiarized himself with the sources, he admitted that as he read them the pen fell from his hand—not only because, as he wrote, such a monster as Ivan the Terrible could exist on Russian soil, but also because there could exist a society that could gaze upon him without indignation. Even so passionate an advocate of Ivan the Terrible as the well- known late-nineteenth-century reactionary from Khar'kov, Professor K. Iarosh, was compelled to admit, in reading the Sinodik—that is, the memorial to the victims of the Oprichnina, compiled at the order of the tsar himself—that,