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THE ORIGINS OF AUTOCRACY

ALEXANDER YANOV

THE ORIGINS OF AUTOCRACY

IVAN THE TERRIBLE IN RUSSIAN HISTORY

Translated by Stephen Dunn

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY LOS ANGELES LONDON

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd. London, England

© 1981 by

The Regents of the University of California Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Yanov, Alexander, 1930- The origins of autocracy. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Russia—History—Ivan IV, 1533-1584. 2. Ivan IV, the Terrible, Czar of Russia,

1530-1584. I. Title. DK106.Y36 947'.043 80-39528 ISBN 0-520-04282-4

То ту wife, Lidia, to whom I owe this book as well as everything I have, and have not, written

No society in modern times has been more subject to conflicting assumptions and interpretations than that of Russia.

CYRIL E. BLACK

The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery, not the rude glory of the Norman epoch, forms the cradle of Mus­covy, and modern Russia is but a metamorphosis of Muscovy.

KARL MARX

What was Russia's place in history? Was she properly to be regarded as one of the families of the Asian sys­tems, as one of the European polities and societies, a variety of either, or as entirely sui generis, belonging neither to Europe nor to Asia?

DONALD W. TREADGOLD

foreword

by Sidney Monas xiii

acknowledgments xv

introduction The Hypothesis

From Greatness to Obscurity ? 1

The Alternatives 7

On the Path to Re-Europeanization 10

The Choice 11

The Catastrophe 14

"A Riddle for the Mind" 16

Scholarship and Expertise 19

PART I

THE ADVERSITIES OF THEORY

chapter i The Language in Which We Argue

Justification of the Chapter 27

The Science of Despotology 32

Despotism 36

Absolutism 42

The Historical Function of Absolutism 48

Russian Autocracy 52

The Political Spiral 59

An Explanation to the Reader 65

The Oprichnina 67

chapter и The Serf Historians: In Bondage to "Statements"

The Struggle With Elementary Logic 71

The Lost Paradise of "Equilibrium" 77

Under the Ice of "Genuine Science" 83

The Punitive Expedition 87chapter hi The "Despotists": Captives of the Bipolar Model

The Three Faces of "Russian Despotism" 96

The "Tatar" Interpretation 97

Opportunity, Means, and Motive 104

The "Byzantine" Interpretation 107

The "Patrimonial" Interpretation 111

PART II THE ABSOLUTIST CENTURY

chapter iv The Grandfather and the Grandson

The Stereotype 123

"Patrimonies" Versus "Patrimony" 128

A Historical Experiment 132

The Reversed Stereotype 138

The Reformation Against the Reconquista 145

chapter v Josephites and Non-Acquirers

Money Versus Corvee 147

Two Coalitions 151

The Political Function of Secularization 153

The Preparation for the Assault 155

The Arguments of the Counter-Reformation 160

Before the Assault 162

The First Assault 166

The Pyrrhic Victory of the Josephites 173

chapter vi The End of Russian Absolutism

The Heritage of the Absolutist Century 183

The Great Reform 186

At the Crossroads 191

The Anti-Tatar Strategy 197

Russia Versus Europe 201

The Last Compromise 203

The Autocrator's Complex 206

PART III IVA NIA N A

215 222

chapter vii The Dawn

Methodological Problems

At the Sources of IvanianaA Strange Conflict 225

The First Attack of the "Historiographic Nightmare" 230

"Hero of Virtue" and "Insatiable Bloodsucker" 233

Pogodin's Conjecture 234

The Political Crisis 236

Prolegomena to the Second Epoch 239

chapter vni The Hypnosis of "the Myth of the State"

Absolute and Relative Uniqueness 241

A Symbol of Progress 246

The "Historical Necessity" of the Oprichnina 251

The Capitulation of Slavophilism 255

The "Old" and the "New" 260

The Bugbear of Oligarchy 267

Kliuchevskii's Premise 269

An Impossible Combination? 270

Platonov's Argument With Kliuchevskii 275 10. The Argument With Platonov and Kliuchevskii 278

chapter ix Again at the Crossroads

At the Boundary of the Ages 280

The Economic Apologia for the Oprichnina 281

Platonov's Contradiction 283

Pokrovskii's Paradox 286

The Political Meaning of "Collectivization" 289

The Militarist Apologia for the Oprichnina 291

A Medieval Vision 299

The Mutiny of Dubrovskii 306

The Sacred Formula 310

The Attacks of the 1960s 311

Grounds for Optimism 318

appendixes

I. Russia at the Crossroads:

Establishment Political Forces in the 1550s 323

II. The Cycles of Russian History 324

335

selected bibliography 325

index

FOREWORD

by Sidney Monas

One of the reasons, I suspect, that Americans show little interest in history (except as a diversion or as a picture of alternative glamor) is that they have almost no sense of the past as something compulsive and limiting. For Americans, at least until the last few years, the fu­ture has seemed unlimited in its possibilities—all horizons "wide open." For Russians, on the other hand, the past has always held a compelling power over the future, exerting a force so constraining that it might foster the illusion, in an extreme instance, that if one changed the accounts in which the past is recorded and interpreted, one might well lay a magical hold upon the future.

Alexander Yanov's attitude to the past is quite different from the one and from the other. A well-known and iconoclastic Soviet jour­nalist before he came to the United States in 1974, a victim of the re­gime's all-too-limited tolerance for iconoclasm, he also possesses an advanced degree in history. His journalistic assignments took him all over the USSR and into all sectors of Soviet life; his historical training provoked him to place the problems he confronted in a long-term