CHAPTER IV. FROM IVAN THE GREAT TO IVAN THE TERRIBLE
The great ruler who occupied the throne of Moscow at the end of the fifteenth century, was richly endowed with understanding; to his contemporaries he appeared more lucky than active, but meanwhile it was his active mind that directed all the complicated and tangled threads of the foreign and domestic relations. If his contemporaries did not always do justice to the great unificator of the land of Russia, neither is posterity always just to him. We must allow that much had been prepared by his predecessors, and this was also recognised by contemporaries; but it is nevertheless impossible not to acknowledge that Ivan towers far above his predecessors, both by his solution of ancient problems—the unification of Russia (which he had almost completed) and the throwing off of the Tatar yoke—and the raising of new ones. The ability to take advantage of circumstances places Ivan in the rank of great men. If we do not recognise his greatness, then we must apply the same judgment in part to Peter, who was largely only the more determined successor of his brother, father, and grandfather.—Bestuzhev Riumin.[b]
ACCESSION OF IVAN (III) VASILIEVITCH
[1462-1584 A.D.]
The dynasty of the Muscovite princes, which commenced in the person of Ivan Kalita, and was preserved unbroken in the lineal descent, was fortunately strengthened by the accident of the longevity of his successors. The reigns of Ivan, of Simeon the Proud, of Dmitri Donskoi, of Vasili, and of Vasili the Blind, embraced a period of 130 years. During that time the people had become habituated to a right which saved them from the contests of rival competitors. So many protracted reigns had stamped the legitimate authority with an unquestioned ascendency, and with this growth of time its powers inevitably increased. The manners of the Russians were now formed under a rule in which the succession was fixed and immutable, and under which a progressive system of legislation was gradually assuming a compact and tangible form. The chaos of antagonistic principles—of that misrule which is born of short-lived theories, of constant interruption, and unsettled governments—was rapidly dissolving; the light of defined administration and regulated power was rising upon the empire; and the people, who were now beginning to understand the benefits of constituted rights, were ready to support their maintenance.
Under these auspicious circumstances, Ivan III, or, as he is called by some historians, Ivan the Great, ascended the throne.
It was not to be expected that a liberal and enlightened government could at once spring from the materials which were accumulated in seasons of anarchy, relieved only by interstitial gleams of peace. The natural issue of a power purchased by enormous sacrifices, and reared up amidst difficulties, was unmitigated despotism. The grand princedom was erected in storms. Its power was built up by constant accessions won at the point of the sword, or procured by profligate bribery. It was not the growth of steady improvement, of public opinion, of the voluntary acquiescence of the people. It began by direct oppression, absolute tyranny, and open injustice. The acts of outrage which the grand princes committed in their efforts to sustain their authority were acts of necessity. They were placed in a situation of peril that exposed them equally to barbarian spoilers without, and insidious enemies within; and they were compelled to vindicate their authority by the force of arms and the arts of perfidy. Their whole career was a fluctuating war against a series of resistances. They conciliated less than they subdued, and the unity which was at last gained by perseverance in a mixed policy of violence and hypocrisy was more the bond of an interest in common, than the reasonable allegiance of a free people to a government of their own choice.
Throughout the struggle for the concentration of the supreme control in one head the church, as will already have been perceived, bore a prominent part. The authority of the clergy had gone on gradually assuming a more stern and arbitrary aspect, even while the political affairs of the country were undergoing daily vicissitudes. The evils that afflicted the state passed harmless over the church; and while the one was subjected to disasters that checked its progress towards prosperity, the other was constantly enlarging its powers, profiting by the misfortunes that surrounded it, and gleaning its share of the good fortune that occasionally improved the hopes of the people. In the early periods when Russia was merely the victim of her own dissensions, the church was freely admitted as a mediator, partly in virtue of her office as the dispenser of charity and peace, and partly from the veneration in which religion and its ordinances were held. When the Tatars invaded Russia, they perceived the mighty influence which the priests exercised over the passions of the people, and, fully persuaded of the wisdom of attaching to their cause an order of men who wielded so enormous a power, they increased their privileges, exonerated them from taxes, and placed such premiums of gain and protection upon the monkish habit, that the highest amongst the nobility, and many of the princes, embraced the clerical profession, and added their rich possessions to the revenues of the church. To such an extravagance was this estimation of the benefits of the cowl carried, that the majority of the grand princes took vows before their death, and died in the retired sanctuaries of the religious houses. The monks of the Greek religion, loaded with the spoils of friends and enemies, lived in fortified dwellings, like the nobles of other lands, and were defended by formidable retinues. The primate held a court superior in magnificence to that of the grand prince, and surrounded by boyars, guards, and all the luxuries of the east, he possessed almost unlimited power over life and death; he was the first person who was consulted on all questions of difficulty, and, as a means of exhibiting the supremacy of his station, he instituted public ceremonies, at which the princes assisted, holding the bridle of the ass on which he rode. This tendency of the church to outgrow the space wherein its roots were laid, was greatly forwarded by the fertilizing contributions which flowed in upon it from all quarters. Whenever a phenomenon in the physical world alarmed the superstitions of the people, the major part of the population bequeathed their wealth to the monasteries, with the hope of propitiating the favour of Heaven and securing happiness in the next world. The corruptions of the church of Rome had already crept into the administration of the Greek faith. The system of donations that prevailed in Papal Italy, where even the kingdoms of earth were bartered for the kingdom of heaven, had set an example of which the Russian clergy were not slow to avail themselves. It was, perhaps, a natural conclusion that the clemency of the Godhead could be purchased in a country where earthly justice and exemptions from punishments were sold for pecuniary considerations.