Stalin's Oprichnina had to be historically legitimized; not only force, but the memory and tradition of the nation had to be mobilized towards its justification. Folksongs about Ivan the Terrible surfaced—a conclusive argument in the dispute with the opponents of the tsar. Serfdom was rehabilitated. "The Oprichnina in its class expression," wrote I. I. Polosin,
was the formation of serfdom, the organized robbing of the peasantry. . . . The survey book of 1571—72 tells how the members of the Oprichnina drowned the peasant rebels in streams of blood, how they burned whole regions, how those of the peasants who survived after the . . . punitive expeditions wandered "in the world" and "between the houses" as beggars.[212]
We have again before us a picture of the collectivization of 1929-33. And what, other than indignation and grief, could this picture of the extermination of one's own people provoke? In a Soviet historian, it provoked a prideful declaration that serfdom was an absolute necessity for the "intensified and accelerated development of production."
This may seem an open revision of Marxism, not to say cynicism. But in the 1940s it seemed to be filled with Marxist fire and pioneer enthusiasm. In the new "myth of the state" created by the new Ivan the Terrible, the first postulate was that the history of society is primarily the history of production. And the second postulate was that as this society-production develops, both the treason within it and the danger from outside grow. The third postulate, that terror ("the struggle against treason") and the cultivation of military might are the sole guarantees of "the intensified and accelerated development" of society-production, flowed logically out of this. Two general motifs, "treason" and "war" and "war" and "treason," are inextricably bound up together.
The new Ivan the Terrible himself spoke of his predecessor in consistent terms. His conversation with the actor N. K. Cherkasov, who played the part of Ivan the Terrible in Eizenshtein's film, has preserved this precious testimony for posterity:
Speaking of the statesmanship of [Ivan] the Terrible, Comrade I. V. Stalin noted that Ivan IV was a great and wise ruler, who guarded the country from the penetration of foreign influence and strove to unify Russia. In particular, speaking of the progressive activity of [Ivan] the Terrible, Comrade Stalin noted that Ivan IV was the first to introduce into Russia the monopoly of foreign trade, and that Lenin was the only one to do so after him. Iosif Vissarionovich also noted the progressive role of the Oprichnina. . . . Referring to the mistakes of Ivan the Terrible, Iosif Vissarionovich noted that one of his mistakes consisted in the fact that he was not able to liquidate the five remaining large feudal families, and did not complete the struggle with feudalism: if he had done so, there would have been no Time of Troubles in Rus'.[213]
Of course, a Marxist historian would have to shudder at this way of putting the question. The contradictions in it are obvious. Was it actually possible in the sixteenth century to "complete the struggle with feudalism," if, as we have just seen, even the Oprichnik Polosin justifies the "economic inevitability of serfdom" precisely by the fact that "sixteenth-century Russia was built and could be built only on the basis of feudal and serf production"?[214] But for Stalin, who confused the Turks with the Tatars, and whose reading in Russian history never went higher than the level of the junior grades of a Georgian theological seminary, such subtleties were immaterial. To Stalin "completing the struggle against feudalism" meant only the need to finish murdering the "five remaining feudal families." For, unmurdered, they ruined all the achievements of Ivan the Terrible in "guarding the country from the penetration of foreign influence." In other words, the cause of the catastrophe which overtook Russia in the sixteenth century lay in the inconsistency and insufficiency of the terror. This, for a fact, was Ivan the Terrible's language.
There was no one around to shudder: the historians, as if enchanted, accepted the new idol. Let us return to their texts:
[New evidence] explains the terror of the critical epoch of 1567-72, and shows that the dangers which surrounded the cause and the person of Ivan the Terrible were still more menacing, and the political atmosphere still more saturated with treachery than might have been assumed on the basis of the sources hostile to the Muscovite state which were known earlier. Ivan the Terrible cannot be accused of excessive suspicion; on the contrary, his mistake consisted, perhaps, in having been too trusting . . . [and] in inadequate attention to the danger which threatened him from the side of the conservative and reactionary opposition, and which he not only did not exaggerate, but even underestimated. . . . After all, it was a matter of treason . . . highly dangerous for the Muscovite state. And at what moment did it threaten to break out? Among the difficulties of a war for which the government had mobilized all the means possessed by the state, had gathered all military and financial reserves, and had demanded from the population the greatest possible patriotic inspiration. Those historians of our time, who, speaking in chorus with the reactionary opposition of the sixteenth century, would insist on the objectless cruelty of Ivan the Terrible . . . should have thought about how antipatriotic and antistate was the mood of the upper classes in that time. . . . The attempt on the life of the tsar was very closely connected with the yielding up to the enemy not only of the newly conquered territories but also the old Russian lands. ... It was a matter of internal subversion, of intervention, of the division of a great state! '"
This is no longer Stalin—or even the state prosecutor at the trial of the boyar opposition of the "Right-Trotskyist bloc." This is the historian Vipper anticipating Stalin's argument about the unmurdered families.
But the main thing for Stalin was nevertheless not serfdom or terror as such. These were merely means. What was really needed was the transformation of the country into a colony of the military-industrial complex, as an instrument of world dominion. It was precisely this, the main thing, which had to be suitably legitimized by the tradition.
For all his ignorance of Russian history, Stalin intuitively picked out from the multitude of Russian tsars his most appropriate predecessors. And they—what a strange coincidence!—proved to be the same ones whose exploits, in the opinion of Lomonosov (during the period of the first "historiographic nightmare"), had made it possible "that Russia should be feared by the whole world." They proved to be the same "two extremely great statesmen," who in the opinion of Kavelin (during the period of the second "historiographic nightmare") "were equally keenly aware of the idea of the Russian state." And Stalin openly valued them for the same thing—their Northern Wars. The main hangman of the Oprichnina, Maliuta Skuratov, that medieval Beriia, he called "a great Russian commander, who fell heroically in the struggle with Livonia."[215] He valued Peter because the tsar "feverishly built factories and workshops to supply the army and to strengthen the defense of the country."[216]
However, Stalin had much to do besides rehabilitating Ivan the Terrible and Peter. He entrusted the concrete working out of a new militarist apologia for the Oprichnina to experts.
One of the first to recognize this patriotic duty was the prominent student of the Oprichnina, P. A. Sadikov (on whose works Platonov had constructed his unfortunate hypothesis). Sadikov introduced a completely new note into Platonov's canonical interpretation. In his opinion,