having been thrust like a wedge into . . . the Muscovite territory, "the appanage of the sovereign" [the Oprichnina] was supposed, according to [Ivan] the Terrible's plan, not only to be a means for decisive struggle with the feudal princes and the boyardom by rearranging their land- holdings, but also to become an organizational nucleus for creating the possibility of struggle against enemies on the external front™
Thus, the Oprichnina outgrew the infantile tasks in internal policy on which Russian historians had concentrated for centuries, and revealed a completely new military-mobilizational function, which had previously remained in the shadows for some reason. It is no accident that Vipper comments as follows on this discovery by Sadikov:
If, like the malcontents of the princely and boyar opposition, the historians of the nineteenth century liked to speak easily of the disorderly plundering by Ivan the Terrible and his Oprichniki of the entire Trans- Muscovite region, a historian of our time has contrasted to these unsubstantiated assertions documented facts which show . . . the constructive work which was performed within the limits of the territory of the Oprichnina.31
And the constructiveness of this work is seen by Vipper no longer, as Platonov did, in the quarrel with the "formerly sovereign princes," or, as Pokrovskii did, in the "class struggle" (the category of class struggle is completely replaced in his work by "the struggle with treason"), but in the fact that Ivan the Terrible began the transformation of the country into a "military monarchy." For this reason, the Oprichnina was for Vipper primarily a "measure of a military-organizational character."'5 (While I disagree totally with Vipper in the evaluation of this "measure," I am in full agreement with him, and with Sadikov, on the principle: contrary to what the "despotists" think, Ivan the Terrible actually did begin the history of the autocracy, which was militaristic and mobilizational in nature, using the Oprichnina as a tool, a school, and a laboratory for the total militarization of the country.) From this point of view, however, the war in whose name, according to Sadikov and Vipper, the Oprichnina transformation of Russia was undertaken, assumes a completely different significance.
The founders of the "agrarian school" (like their predecessors, the "statists") stood entirely on the tsar's side in the strategic argument with the Government of Compromise. Platonov wrote that "the times called Muscovy to the West, to the shores of the sea, and [Ivan] the Terrible did not let pass the moment to state his claims to a part of the Livonian heritage."[217] Pokrovskii noted that "the Oprichnina terror can be understood only in connection with the failures of the Livonian War."[218] However, for them, the Livonian War, and the terror, were only elements in the great "agrarian revolution." For the "militarists," the "agrarian revolution" was merely an element in the war.[219] The war itself ceased to be for them a prosaic adventure of conquest, a mere claim to "a part of the Livonian heritage," as it had been for Platonov, or a "war over trade routes—that is, indirectly over markets,"[220] as it had been for Pokrovskii. It became a crusade, a sacred task taking on features of national, historical, and almost mystical significance. "In the second half of the 1560s, Russia was solving complex questions of foreign policy," writes Polosin.
This was a time when the struggle for Lithuania, the Ukrrine, and Be- lorussia became especially acute. This was a time when the question of the kingdom of Livonia was being decided. . . . This was a time when the Vatican was going over to the offensive. From behind the backs of the king of Poland and the archbishop of Riga, the figure of the pope, who had closed the Council of Trent in order to develop the attack of Catholicism more energetically, revealed himself. Not only Latvia and Lithuania were under threat, but also the Ukraine and Belorussia. . . . It was with complete justification that [Ivan] the Terrible considered the Vatican his major enemy, and it was not without reference to the papal orders that the Oprichnina was organized."1
What price, then, the Tatar threat or the struggle with the "aristocratic personnel" propounded by the naive Kliuchevskii, or even the struggle against the "class of formerly sovereign princes" mooted by the now hopelessly obsolete Platonov? All of Eastern Europe was under mortal threat of a "Catholic offensive," it turns out, with Muscovy defending Latvia and Lithuania, not to speak of the Ukraine and Belorussia, with its own breast. A general European Catholic conspiracy was developing, if not a worldwide one, and Muscovy somehow turned out to be the only force able to withstand it. In trying to seize Livonia, Tsar Ivan was performing not only a patriotic duty, but a kind of great religio-political mission. He was suddenly transformed "into one of the most significant political and military figures of European history in the sixteenth century."[221]
The contours of the assignment given to Russian historiography by Stalin are starting to become clear. This was at the same time an aggressive and a defensive spirit, both justifying conquests and affected by an inferiority complex—a monstrous amalgam of persecution mania and striving for absolute dominance. It was the same mixture which had compelled Ivan the Terrible to seek salvation from the boyar conspiracy which surrounded him (or so it seemed to him) in the physical destruction of his opponents. In the speeches of a modern Tsar Ivan and in the interpretations of the contemporary Oprichniki, the old boyar conspiracy grew to the dimensions of a world conspiracy, inspired now by the Tatars, now by the papacy, now by imperialism, but always pursuing one and the same goal—to deprive Russia of its independence, to turn it into a colony, and to prevent it from fulfilling its historical mission. It was now no longer sufficient, in order to make absolute the power of the tyrant as the instrument of Russia's salvation, merely to exterminate internal opponents. Now, for this purpose, one had to exterminate the organizers of the world conspiracy, and, therefore, upset not only Russia, but the whole planet. This is how the twentieth-century Ivan the Terrible formulated the task: "We are doing a job which, if it succeeds, will turn the whole world upside down."[222] And what was the alternative to-the success of this job? "Do you want our fatherland to be beaten and to lose its independence?"[223]
Either we "turn the world upside down," or "we lose our independence." There is no middle road. On the one hand Stalin asserted that the history of Russia consisted in her being beaten (and, consequently, that the time had finally come for her to be avenged for the humiliations of the past), and on the other hand he called down the blessings of the victorious tsars on the Russian banners.
As applied to the epoch of Ivan the Terrible, Stalin's approach went: if the tsar had not attacked Livonia, Russia would have been the prey of the Mongols. As applied to the period of Peter: if Peter had not conquered the Baltic, Russia would have been a colony of Sweden, etc., etc. This was not said by Stalin. This was said by experts. In the officially approved textbook of N. Rubinshtein, Russian Historiography, designed for students in the historical faculties of the Soviet universities in the 1940s, we read:
The development of the multinational centralized state in Russia in the sixteenth century was the beginning of the transformation of Russia into a prison of people. But if this had not occurred, Russia would have been the prey of the Mongols or of Poland. . . . The policy of Peter I laid a heavy burden on the peasants, [but] saved Russia from the prospect of transformation into a colony or semicolony of Sweden, which threatened it.[224]