I, the tsar and great prince Vasilii Ivanovich of all Rus' have kissed the cross that I, the great sovereign, will not give over to death any person not judged by a true court made up of my own boyars and will not take his patrimony and his house and his property from his brother and his wife and his children. . . . Likewise, I will not take houses and stores and property from merchants and trading people and peasants. . . . Likewise, I, the great sovereign, will not listen to false information and will try all cases well, by face to face contact, so that guiltless Orthodox Christians will not perish.7"
An end to denunciations, confiscations, executions of entire families, mass plundering, murder without trial and investigation, an end to unlimited arbitrary rule—this is what the tormented Russian land cries for through the mouth of the tsar. It was not a matter of the liquidation of absolute monarchy. It was not a matter, consequently, of political limitations on power. This did not enter anyone's head. It was only a matter of elementary guarantees of life and property—of the latent limitations on power, in my terms—that is, a matter of restoration of the absolutist spirit of Ivan III and the Government of Compromise. And Russian historiography proved unable to explain this, which is like not being able to explain the difference between Khrushchev and Stalin.
Kliuchevskii, though, with his fine historical intuition, felt something unusual and historically significant in the declaration of the new tsar. He says: "The crowning of Prince Vasilii marked an epoch in our political history. On ascending the throne, he limited his power and officially set forth the conditions of this limitation in a document distributed to all the regions, on which he kissed the cross on being crowned."74 This assertion of Kliuchevskii's called forth a protest by another classical figure in Russian historiography—Academician S. F. Platonov, with whom we shall have occasion to become familiar in more detail in the next chapter. In his famous Outlines of the History of
Cited in N. V. Latkin, Zemskie sobory drevnei Rusi, p. 104.
Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia (1st ed.), vol. 3, p. 37.
the Rebellions in the Muscovite State of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Platonov inserted a subsection entitled "The Cross-Kissing Document is Not a Limitation." His commentary deserves to be reproduced:
In all this it is very difficult to see an actual limitation of the tsar's power, and one may see only an abandonment of unworthy means of manifesting these powers. Here the tsar does not yield any of his rights.. . . He only promises to refrain from arbitrary personal caprice, and to act through the court of boyars, which existed equally in all periods of the Muscovite state and was always a law-enforcing and legislative institution, without, however, limiting the power of the tsar. In a word, in the memorandum of Tsar Vasilii one cannot find anything which would essentially limit his power and would be juridically obligatory for him.""
To this Kliuchevskii (shrewdly foreseeing the objections of his opponent) notes:
The oath denied the very essence of the personal power of the tsar in the previous dynasty, which had developed out of the appanage relationships of a liege lord. Do heads of households swear oaths to their servants and tenants? Along with this, Tsar Vasilii renounced three prerogatives in which the personal power of the tsar was most clearly expressed: (1) "disgrace without guilt"—the tsar's punishment without adequate occasion, and by personal decision; (2) the confiscation of property from the family and relatives of a criminal who were not involved in the crime. ... (3) extraordinary trials by police and other investigative agencies, calling upon denunciation, with tortures and slanders, but without face-to-face confrontation, examination of witnesses, and other means of normal legal process. These prerogatives constituted an essential part of the contents of the power of Muscovite sovereigns. ... By divesting himself by oath of these prerogatives, Vasilii Shuiskii transformed himself from the sovereign of bondsmen into the legitimate tsar of subjects, ruling according to law."'
By what law? No constitution existed in the country which specified the interrelationships of executive and legislative power, to say nothing of judicial power. These relationships were dictated by tradition and political practice, but not by law. Shuiskii promised a "true court," but where were the guarantees that he would fulfill his promises? Therefore it seems that Platonov is right in asserting that "in the memorandum of Tsar Vasilii one cannot find anything which . . . would be juridically obligatory for him."
S. F. Platonov, Ocherki po istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosxidarstve XVI—XVIII vekov, p. 230. Emphasis added.
V. O. Kliuchevskii, Sochineniia, 1st ed., vol. 3, p. 40.
However, is not Kliuchevskii right in saying that the tsar renounced the autocratic prerogatives which gave him the opportunity to treat his subjects as slaves? True, these prerogatives proceeded "from the appanage relationships of a liege lord." But after all, Ivan the Terrible had tried to extend them over the entire state by means of mass terror. Vasilii Shuiskii renounced them, and therefore, it seems, actually did limit his power.
Thus it turns out that both Platonov and Kliuchevskii were right. Kliuchevskii was right, in insisting on the fundamental novelty of Shuiskii's antiautocratic manifesto. And Platonov was right in emphasizing its traditional, absolutist character. Both were right, for the restoration of absolutism declared by Tsar Vasilii was an antiautocratic and anti-Oprichnina action.
But at the same time, both were wrong.
10. The Argument With Platonov and Kliuchevskii
For Platonov, who understood the Oprichnina as a revolution by the tsar which liberated him from the tutelage of the reactionary aristocracy, Shuiskii's manifesto was a kind of credo for the restoration of the "old order." The overthrown aristrocracy once again ruled in Moscow, cunningly taking advantage for this purpose of the abuses of the Oprichnina:
The old nobility once again occupied first place in the country. Through the mouth of its tsar it solemnly renounced the system which had just been in operation, and promised "true judgment" and protection from "all violence" and injustice, of which it accused the previous regime. . . . Tsar Vasilii said and thought that he was reestablishing ... the old order. This was the order which had existed before the Oprichnina. . . . this, it seems to us, was the true meaning of Shuiskii's memorandum: it announced . . . not the reduction of the power of the tsar, but the return to its former moral height."2
But what is bad about the "return of the regime to its former moral height," and why is Platonov convinced that it was only the "old nobility" which had a stake in "protecting from all violence" ? Was not "true judgment" in the interests of the society as a whole? And wasn't this precisely what Shuiskii promises, in obligating himself "not to take from the merchants and the trading people and the peasants . . . their houses and shops and their property" ? Isn't it more natural to assume that the manifesto of Tsar Vasilii (like Khrushchev's secret