82. Platonov, pp. 231-32. Emphasis added.
speech) reflected only the simple truth: the boyardom was aware that it could not protect its own privileges without at the same time extending the elementary guarantees of life and property to the whole nation? Strangely enough, Platonov did not notice this. But after all, is this really so strange? Platonov was not the first Russian historian or the last for whom the hypnosis of the "myth of the state" cut off the path to the understanding of the dualism of Russian political tradition.
But, at the same time, it is difficult to agree with Kliuchevskii that "the ascent of Tsar Vasilii to the throne marked an epoch in our political history." It might have marked an epoch if it had occurred before the Oprichnina, on a wave of absolutist reforms by the Government of Compromise, as an element of these reforms and their logical development. But it occurred after Ivan the Terrible—after the absolutist structure of the state had collapsed to the ringing of the Oprichnina's bells and in the light of its bonfires, and after the leaden cloud of serfdom had gathered over it. Ivan's "new class" was still there and the problems facing the country had not been mitigated, but, on the contrary, had been sharpened. Mortal battle was raging. This was a time for deeds, and not only kissing of crosses. How could the country be saved from the inexorably advancing autocracy? Could this be done at all? Who knows? But if it was at all possible, it required something considerably more than manifestos—the immediate convocation of an Assembly of the Land, a solemn restoration of St. George's Day, an alliance with the "best people" of the peasantry and of the cities, the organization and arming of a new political coalition, and a strategy of reform going far beyond that of the pre-Oprichnina Government of Compromise. But this was not what the new tsar had in mind—and for this reason Vasilii Shuiskii was destined to play only a walk-on part in political history, as Alexander Kerensky did in 1917.
CHAPTER IX
AGAIN AT THE CROSSROADS
1. At the Boundary of the Ages
An observer who around the year 1900 undertook to make a prognosis of the further development of Ivaniana would have had to report, first of all, that the political (to say nothing of the moral) reputation of the terrible tsar had been ruined. As debatable as Kliuchevskii's methodological premise might be, his verdict on the Oprichnina was, on the face of it, not open to appeal. Whatever new facts were discovered by twentieth-century historians, and whatever new conclusions they might come to, Ivan the Terrible and his Oprichnina were not suited to rehabilitation. Consequently, a new repetition of the "historiographic nightmare" appeared to be excluded. There would be neither new Tatishchevs nor new Kavelins. Lomonosov's arrogant bravado, Karamzin's sentimental indignation, and the servile enthusiasm of Gorskii, all equally must now have seemed the product of a dark, archaic, almost mythological era of Ivaniana.
In fact, a third "historiographic nightmare," the dimensions of which exceeded anything which had occurred up to that time, lay just around the corner. I am not speaking now of the shameless hymns to the "commander of the peoples" and the "great and sagacious statesman" which the coming generation of Russian readers was destined to hear from the coming generation of Russian historians—hymns which would reduce Veselovskii to despair. Nor am I speaking of the fact that the irrationality of the Oprichnina was once again rationalized, and the unjustifiable justified. How all this happened, we shall see presently. But never during the preceding "historiographic nightmares" had a Russian historian openly justified serfdom, the greatest evil which the Oprichnina brought down on Russia. In the 1940s, however, serfdom was to be declared progressive. I.I. Polosin would write: "The strengthening of serfdom at this time—in the sixteenth century—signified the strengthened and accelerated development of the country's productive forces. . . . Serfdom was a natural, spontaneous necessity, morally offensive, but economically inevitable."1
1. I. I. Polosin, Sotsial'no-politicheskaia . . . , p. 132.
2. The Economic Apologia for the Oprichnina
The "state school" died quietly at the beginning of the century. Despite the writings of P. N. Miliukov and G. V. Plekhanov, its triumphs were behind it. The formulas which had once prevailed—whether the "struggle of the state with the clan," the "struggle with the steppe," or the "enserfment of the society by the state"—came to provoke in many experts only a condescending smile. S. F. Platonov admitted with mocking academic politeness that "the scientific method of the historical-juridical [state] school exercised a strong influence on the development of the science of Russian history." He had in mind, however, only the "quantitative and qualitative growth" of the works of Russian historians.[202] He spoke of the "hyperboles" of the founder of the school, Kavelin, with the same contempt for archaic dilettantism with which Kavelin in his time had spoken of Karamzin's metaphors. M. N. Pokrovskii was not even polite: he openly laughed at the old models. In the writings of the historians of the state school, he observes,
there is developed a grandiose picture of how the "struggle for the steppe" forged and created the Russian state. The steppe people, like wild beasts, attacked Rus'; in order to save itself from these raids, the entire state was constructed along military lines: half of it—the service landholders [pomeshchiki]—had to live in constant readiness for battle; the other half—the taxable people [merchants, craftsmen, and peasants]—were supposed to support the first. . . . Thus the state, in the name of the common interest, enserfed the society to itself, but when the struggle for the steppe ended in the victory of the Russian state, emancipation began: first, in the eighteenth century, the military obligations of the nobility were lifted, and then in the nineteenth century, serfdom for the peasants also fell. . . . This grandiose picture has one defect: it does not correspond at all to historical reality. The most intense struggle with the steppe came in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries . . . but it was not just then that the unified state was formed . . . and there was no enserfment. . . . And in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, when both the Muscovite state and serfdom originated, the Tatars had already grown so weak that they could not dream of conquering Rus'.[203]
The "state school" continued to reign but, like the queen of England, it had ceased to rule. A coup d'etat (one might call it an "agrarian coup," because the mythology of the "state school" was replaced by the mythology of the "agrarian school") had taken place in Ivaniana.
The nineteenth century had been tormented by the riddle of the strength of the Russian state, which raised Russia from the "darkness of nonexistence" to the rank of a superpower. The twentieth century began with the riddle of the weakness of the Russian state, which hung over a precipice and threatened once again to plunge Russia into the "darkness of nonexistence." Central to the problem was the "agrarian question"—the question of the redistribution of land resources. As may be supposed, the right wing of Russian historiography favored strengthening the monarchy by giving land to the peasants and thereby creating a strong conservative social base. The left wing, on the other hand, hoped to destroy the monarchy by rousing the land- hungry peasants against it. For both, the aristocracy surrounding the tsar was a hostile force. It was perhaps for this reason that the "agrarian coup" in Ivaniana was carried out by an unnatural coalition of right-wingers (led by the monarchist Platonov) and left-wingers (led by the Marxist Pokrovskii).