This was an essentially medieval vision, symbolized and confirmed by the divine mandate of the suzerain. But, surprisingly, in the nineteenth century it was again reborn in Russian historiography. Only now justification was provided in the shape of the alleged need to destroy the "clan element," or by the postulate of a poor nation, deprived of "stone," or of a nation threatened by the fate of Poland. And once again it seemed that Russia could not overcome these obstacles without an Ivan the Terrible. In other words, the "myth of the state" took on the scholarly form of the state school, but it was based as before on the vision of the consensual society, in which the administration performed the necessary historical function of organizing and defending the system, of saving it—whether from the clan element, from aggressive neighbors, or from the oligarchy. For this reason, the interests of the administration not only could not differ from the interests and goals of the system, but properly speaking, the latter did not even exist in and of themselves. The system and the administration were one—undivided and indivisible.
When later, in the twentieth century, the time came for the "agrarian school," with its "class struggle" and its "economic revolution," it seemed that the time to part company with the vision of the consensual society had finally arrived. The "class struggle" itself presupposed that the society is neither a family nor a homogeneous unit, that the interests of its various groups not only differ, but are opposed to each other. And still, in some strange way, it again turned out that the goals of the state coincided with the goals of a "progressive" class, and thereby, just as in the time of Ivan the Terrible, were indistinguishable from the goals of the society.
Once again—for both "agrarianist" and "militarist" historiography—the state is perceived as having saved the nation: in the one case from the "class of formerly sovereign princes," from the reactionary latifundia, and the opponents of commodity-and-money relationships; and in the other from the "Catholic assault," from military backwardness, from the world conspiracy of the Vatican. The oppositionists remained "enemies of the people."
None of these historiographic schools, which successively replaced each other, admitted that there could exist a divergence between the goals of the administration and those of the system, that the leader could pursue his own interests, opposed to the interests both of the state and of the nation. The medieval vision of the consensual society hung over both the "left-wingers" and the "right-wingers." Even the Marxists, for whom the state in theory constituted "the organization of the ruling class," could not keep from officially proclaiming it "the state of all the people"—that is, capitulating before the thesis of the bourgeois state school.
However, history has confirmed Aristotle, who, as we have seen, argued 500 years before the birth of Christ that divergences between the goals of the administration and those of the system are in the nature of things, and, consequently, that consensual political structures are simply not found on earth. It was already clear to him that "deviations"—that is, the striving of the state to subject the society to the interests of particular groups or to the personal interests of the leader—were politically inevitable. The problem, therefore, consists not in preserving a mythical consensus, but in making society capable of correcting the "deviations" of the state. And the sole means of such correction invented by the political genius of mankind—the sole means of preventing destructive revolutions which sow chaos and anarchy—is the very opposition which in Russian historiography is traditionally branded "treason." In this sense, the political history of mankind can be summed up as the history of the legalization and legitimization of the opposition.
It was neither the heritage of the primeval clan which threatened the integrity of the nation, as the "statists" thought, nor feudal economics, as the Marxists had it. With these the nation was learning to cope; but there was something against which it was, and still is, helpless: the elemental force embodied in arbitrary state power, which was, and still is, fraught with the like of Ivan's Oprichnina and Stalin's Gulag. It is this force which thus proves to be the real source of chaos in social systems, and the only tool for curbing its terrible power (that is, for preserving the much-desired "order") is the free functioning of the opposition. We thus come to the heretical and—from the viewpoint of the "myth of the state"—criminal conclusion that the basis of order is freedom. A historiography which depicts opposition as treason falls inevitably—and always will fall—into a logical trap, the only escape from which is in lies, collaborationism, and Stalinization.
Open the well-known trilogy by V. Kostylev, which received not only the Stalin Prize, but an enthusiastic review by so experienced an expert as Academician N. Druzhinin.[225] Russians would rather forget about this shameful matter. But this is precisely what one should not do. To remember, to remember as much as possible—this is the only thing which can save us from ourselves. The whole meaning of Ivaniana lies in compelling us to remember. In Kostylev's trilogy the tsar speaks in garbled quotations from his letters to Kurbskii, and his Oprichniki in quotations from Vipper, but let us leave it to the literary critics. Across its pages there walk disreputable, stinking, bearded boyars, occupied exclusively with oppressing the peasants and committing treason. The Oprichniki, on the other hand, are all as if specially selected, stalwart young men out of the epic ballads, real scions of the people, liberating it from bloodthirsty exploiters, and eradicating "the enemies of the people," without regard to the danger to their own lives. These Oprichniki have warm hearts, cool minds, and clean hands, just as the modern official version depicts the "Chekisty"[226]— that is to say, Stalin's Oprichniki. Let us accept this picture as sound. Let us even accept, further, the entreaties of Kostylev and Vipper not to believe the oppositionists, explaining all the shadows cast upon the tsar exclusively by their sinister influence. "The failures in the external war," Vipper complains,
the bloodshed of the internal war—the struggle with treason—overshadowed even for the immediately following generations the military triumphs and military achievements of the reign of [Ivan] the Terrible. Among the subsequent historians . . . the majority were subject to the influence of sources originating from oppositionist circles: in their eyes, the significance of his personality was diminished. He was included in the list of "tyrants."14
If we remember that even Karamzin, who was precisely the one who included the tsar "in the list of tyrants," not only did not deny, but even glorified his services to the state, we will see immediately that Vipper is lying (or does not know his subject). But this is not what is important. Let us turn to sources free of the "influence of oppositionist circles"—to the sources which Vipper himself recommends. Who, in the Russia of that time, was free from "influence"? Naturally, Ivan the Terrible's Chekist, the Oprichnik Heinrich Staden. True, he was a German, and, of course, a low-life—this much Vipper willingly admits. But his testimony is precious (we already know for what reason) to such a degree that in Vipper's eyes he is quite qualified to be a defense witness. His Notes on Muscovy "may boldly be called a first- class document of the history of Moscow and the Muscovite state in the 1560s and 1570s."5°
Let us agree that "opposition circles" were wrong in characterizing the Oprichnina of Ivan the Terrible as riffraff gathered by the tsar from all corners of the country and even hired from abroad in order to destroy its elite. Let us agree that the Oprichniki were the most honorable servants of the tsar, who helped him in the fateful struggle with treason, which was beyond his own powers. Now let us see what the defense witness says about the fate of these devoted "hounds of the sovereign." In 1572 the tsar suddenly "began to take reprisals against the top people of the Oprichnina," Staden writes.