Speaking in my terms, Skrynnikov sympathizes with the attempt of Ivan the Terrible to transform Russian absolutism into a despotic system by liberating it from the aristocracy. He rejects only the "political nonsense" and irrationality of despotism in destroying its own allies. As if, for Tsar Ivan, it was only the boyars, and not all his subjects, who were slaves—as Kliuchevskii already knew. In chapter two, by reference to the cases of Henry VIII and Louis XI, I have tried to explore the gulf between outbursts of ordinary tyranny (possible in any absolutist state) and despotism (which by distorting the sociopolitical process makes tyranny permanent). I am not the first to point out the distinction. Aristotle, Montesquieu, and Krizhanich did so centuries ago. But the logic of myth apparently precludes Russian historians, Marxist or not, from perceiving it.
Skrynnikov asserts that "meaningless and brutal beating of the entirely innocent population made the very concept of the Oprichnina a synonym for arbitrariness and lawlessness."[240] But in his analysis he almost unnoticeably shifts the stress from "arbitrariness and lawlessness" to natural catastrophe and increase in taxes:
During the years of the boyar government [as Skrynnikov calls the Government of Compromise] the Novgorod peasants paid a small tribute in money ... to the state. With the beginning of the Kazan' and particularly the Livonian wars, the state increased the money obligations for peasants manyfold. The increase in the tax burden and the exploitation by the landlords placed the small-scale peasant farms under extremely unfavorable conditions. But it was not only the taxes which were the cause of the ruin which began in the country in the 1570s and 1580s. The catastrophe was provoked by natural calamities of enormous scale. . . . Unfavorable weather conditions ruined the harvest twice—in 1568 and 1569. As a result, the price of grain increased by factors of five and ten. Death by famine reduced the population of cities and villages. During the Oprichnina pogrom in Novgorod, starving citizens during the dark winter nights stole the bodies of the victims and ate them. . . . After the famine, a plague brought from the West began in the country. . . . The three-year famine and the epidemic brought death to hundreds of thousands of people. The calamities were completed by the destructive incursion of the Tatars.71
What with taxes, famine, the plague, the Tatars, the Oprichnina becomes almost invisible!
11. Grounds for Optimism
The evolution of Ivaniana during the 1960s nevertheless suggests hope. The foundations of the gray consensus are being irreversibly eroded. Admittedly, the radical revision proposed by Zimin did not bring results. But this in itself, after all, is an ill omen for the consensus. The contradiction between premises and conclusions in Skryn- nikov's work is too obvious. How long can the consensus swing from Solov'ev to Platonov and back again, while continuing to pass itself off as Marxism? In essence it is clear that the consensus is in a cul-de-sac, from which it is impossible to escape without fundamentally new ideas. The following quotations—drawn from D. P. Makovskii (1960), S. M. Kashtanov (1963), S. O. Shmidt (1968), and N. E. Nosov (1969) respectively—suggest that these new ideas are beginning to show on the surface.
In the middle of the sixteenth century in the Russian state, capitalist relationships came into being in both industry and agriculture, and the necessary economic conditions for their development were prepared. . . . But in 1570—90, an active intervention by the superstructure (the massive forces of the state) in economic relationships in the interest of the service landholders took place. . . . This intervention not only hindered the development of capitalist relationships and undermined the condition of the productive forces in the country but also called forth regressive phenomena in the economy.[241]
Considering the Oprichnina in its social aspect, we can persuade ourselves that its main characteristic was its class tendency, which consisted
in the introduction of measures which promoted the further enserf- ment of the peasantry. In this sense, the Oprichnina was certainly more an antipeasant than an antiboyar policy.™
Today it is becoming ever more clear that the policy of the Chosen Rada [the Government of Compromise] in much greater degree promoted the further centralization of the state and its development in the direction of absolutism of European type than did the policy of the Oprichnina, which facilitated the triumph of absolutism, saturated with Asiatic barbarism."
It was precisely at this time that the question was decided about which road Russia would travel—the road of renewal of feudalism through the "new edition" of serfdom, or the road of bourgeois development. . . . Russia was at the crossroads. . . . And if in Russia as a result of "Ivan's Oprichnina" and the "great ruination of the peasantry" at the end of the sixteenth century, serfdom and the autocracy still won out . . . this is by no means proof of their progressive nature.7"
Of course, important unresolved questions remain. For example, Makovskii is unable to explain why "active intervention by the superstructure," which called forth "regressive phenomena in the economy," suddenly took place in the 1570s. Furthermore, it is impossible to explain this by the "development of commodity-and-money relationships in agriculture," as he tries to do. Kashtanov is unable to explain the connection between the antiboyar and the antipeasant policy of the Oprichnina. It is impossible to do this while accepting the postulate of the myth as to the "reactionary nature of boyardom." Shmidt is unable to explain what constitutes the political distinction between "absolutism of European type" and "absolutism saturated with Asiatic barbarism." And without this, the formulations he proposes remain nonfunctional. Nosov is unable to explain what combination of forces predetermined victory for the "renewal of feudalism" and the defeat of "bourgeois development."
These lacunae are not accidental. Zimin, it will be remembered, has called for "a radical reconsideration of the political history of Russia in the sixteenth century." This radical reconsideration cannot be expected (as Veselovskii anticipated in the 1940s) merely from "new facts." New philosophical horizons must be opened up; new means of political analysis must be devised; a new vision of history is required. I have attempted here to make a start at the gigantic task of
Kashtanov, "K izucheniiu istorii oprichniny Ivana Groznogo," p. 108. Emphasis added.
Shmidt, "K izucheniiu agrarnoi istorii Rossii XVI veka," p. 24.
Nosov, Stanovlenie, p. 9. Emphasis added.
constructing an alternative paradigm for Ivaniana—or at least breaking the vicious circle in which for decades we have been revolving like squirrels in a wheel, endlessly and fruitlessly repeating ourselves and our predecessors.
Are we still capable of breaking out of this circle of ancient stereotypes? I do not know. What I do know, however, is that we must try. Otherwise, I am afraid, it could be too late; a new "historiographic nightmare" may strike. After three of them, it is time, it seems, for Russian historiography to come to its senses—to put an end to its serflike dependence on Ivan the Terrible's "myth of the state" and the obsolete classical"vyskazyvaniia." It is time for Western historiography, too, to help in the emancipation of its Russian colleagues. It can do so by putting an end to its own dependence on the bipolar model of history, as well as to its archaic contempt for the "Tatar-Byzantine heritage" of Russia, borrowed from Miliukov, Chicherin, and other classics of the "state school." It is time for the "absolutists" and the "despotists" to end the civil war between them. For the inspiration and intuition of both are needed for positive construction.