Writing Russian history in Nazi Germany: the case of Viktor Vladimirovich Leontovitsch

Ivan justified his authority as tsar partly by appealing to Orthodox Christian teaching concerning royal power, yet his reference to Christian teaching had led historians of Russian politics, such as Diakonov and Fedotov, to wonder whether Ivan had departed from Orthodox teaching. Diakonov had contended that Ivan had introduced “nothing new to this [Christian] theory [of the state],” whereas Fedotov had classified Ivan's political theory as a clear deviation from OrthodoxyIbid. S. 44-46.. In this dispute, Leontovitsch sided with Diakonov against Fedotov. According to Leontovitsch, the main disagreement between Ivan and Metropolitan Filipp over the exercise of royal authority focused on the oprichnina. Filipp disputed the tsar's ethical choice in using the oprichniki to destroy the tsar's imagined opponents but not the royal prerogative to establish such an institutional entityIbid. S. 49-51..

Leontovitsch also disagreed with Fedotov's assessment of Prince Andrei Kurbskii -- namely, with Fedotov's view that Kurbskii had departed from typical Muscovite thinking about the state. According to Leontovitsch, Kurbskii upheld the Muscovite view of the realm as “the homeland of Orthodox Christianity,” and of the tsar as religious leader charged with the care of Muscovites' souls. Kurbskii criticized Ivan for failing to defend the Orthodox realm, for acting as an “inner enemy” of the Church, and for violating good conscience -- that is, for failing to act as loyal Muscovites expected a just ruler to be- haveIbid. S. 51-56.. In Leontovitsch's opinion, “Kurbskii represented the same ideology as Tsar Ivan and as most other thinkers of the age.” The difference between Ivan and Kurbskii was that the prince concentrated not on the tsar's prerogatives as ruler, but rather on Ivan's failure to fulfill his royal dutiesIbid. S. 55-56.. According to Kurbskii, Ivan should have heeded his wise counselors” advice, but did not do soIbid. S. 56-58.; the tsar had also failed in his duty to try disgraced advisors, including those suspected of treason, according to established rules and taking into account their status as high priests and as members of the aristocracyIbid. S. 58-63.; neither had the tsar respected the property of Russian aristocratsIbid. S. 63-64.. However, according to Leonto- vitsch, Kurbskii was well aware that the tsar had no legal obligation to heed counselors' advice, no legal obligation to try disgraced advisors according to customary methods, and no enforceable legal duty to respect aristocrats' property.

Leontovitsch maintained that the ideology upheld by Ivan and the tsar's chief critics (Metropolitan Filipp, Prince Kurbskii), was rooted in the all-encompassing thinking of Iosif Volotskii, who had “left to [Muscovite] subjects no autonomy, no sphere of personal rights”Ibid. S. 66.. According to Leontovitsch, Iosif's central teaching -- that royal power comes from God -- probably reached Ivan in early childhood, most likely from the lips of his father Grand Duke VasiliiIbid. S. 68-70.. Leontovitsch called this ideology “theocratic absolutism”Ibid. S. 70..

In chapter three of his book, Leontovitsch addressed the debate between those historians who had attributed the oprichnina to Ivan's irrationality or “madness,” and those scholars who had treated the oprichnina as a response to changing historical conditions. Leontovitsch argued that Ivan was a political “rationalist,” that the tsar's political theory and state system were based on a series of deductions from the “ideology” of theocratic absolutism, and thus that the terror imposed during the oprichnina flowed from the tsar's political principles. Leontovitsch did not deny that, when Ivan ordered the death of political opponents, the tsar acted “with cold heart,” or even sadistically; however, the historian insisted that “an ideological justification must rest at the heart of any system of terror, for, without an ideological underpinning, a system of terror -- a planned, prolonged application of terror aimed at entire groups in the population -- would be unthinkable”Ibid. S. 79-80.. Of course, Ivan's psychological make-up -- his childhood hatred of the boyars, his sadistic impulses -- played a role in initiating and executing the terrorIbid. S. 80., but more important was the link between this psychology and the tsar's ideological assumptions. The tsar imagined Muscovy as an “ideal kingdom”Ibid. S. 81-82., and pictured active and passive opponents of this ideal kingdom as “adversaries of righteousness”Ibid. S. 82-83..

In sketching the connection between terror and ideology, Leontovitsch admitted the influence of Vasilii Osipovich Kliuchevskii's Kurs russkoi istoriii, the second volume of which discussed the oprichnina by linking Ivan's psyche and youthful political outlookIbid. S. 72-85. However, the most striking influence on Leontovitsch seems to have been volume five of Hippolyte Taine's Les origines de la France contemporaine, which, according to Leontovitsch, attempted to derive the Jacobins' psychology from their radical political views, not the reverseIbid. S. 72. fn. 1.. According to Taine, the Jacobins had identified themselves with virtue and had asserted that virtue cannot be opposed “without crime”; in Taine's opinion, the Jacobins therefore took it upon themselves to suppress unvirtuous “malefactors” by all necessary meansIbid. S. 83. fn. 1. See: Taine H. Les origines de la France contemporaine. 27 éd. Vol. 5. Paris, 1911.

P. 36.. In implementing their program, Taine maintained, the Jacobins drew justification from “an axiom of political geometry which constituted its own proof.” The Jacobins did not see their opponents as “real human beings”: “[The revolution] did not see them; it had no need to see them; with eyes closed, it ground this human material into dust”Leontovitsch V. V. Die Rechtsumwalzung. S. 85, fn. 2; Taine H. Les origines... P 23..

In Leontovitsch's opinion, Ivan IV was a kind of Jacobin avant la lettre. What distinguished Ivan from his contemporaries was not his theocratic absolutism per se, but rather his will to impose that ideology on the country. According to Leontovitsch, “Ivan was consequent, others were not. He wanted to incorporate the idea into reality rigorously and uncompromisingly, while others confined themselves to judging existing reality on the basis of ideology”Leontovitsch V. V. Die Rechtsumwalzung. S. 86.. Ivan upheld a theology of autocratic sovereignty, just as Jacobins fashioned an ideology of revolutionary sovereignty. In Taine's formulation, Ivan transformed himself in a fashion resembling “the way a theologian becomes an inquisitor”Ibid. S. 87; Taine H. Les origines. Vol. 5. P. 37..

If the tsar's ideological views never changed, what accounted for the different periods of his reign? According to Leontovitsch, “the tsar didn't change, but the milieu in which he worked did; the tsar's politics didn't change, but the reaction of this milieu did”Leontovitsch V. V. Die Rechtsumwalzung. S. 89.. Ivan's opponents, such as Metropolitan Filipp and Prince Kurbskii, shared his political assumptions, and therefore they could offer only moral objections to his methods of absolute rule. Leontovitsch compared the fecklessness of the clerical-aristocratic opposition to the “helplessness” of the modern bourgeoisie in its encounter with socialismIbid. S. 90.. As the tsar's critics pressed their case against his “pride and fanaticism,” Ivan's determination to have his way intensified. To capture this turn, Leontovitsch quoted Mikhail Osipovich Gershenzon's description of the Russian-intellectual-turned-Catholic-priest, Vladimir Sergeevich Pechorin: “The closer he [Pechorin] came to his ideal, the crueler his heart grew”Ibid. S. 93; Gershenzon M. Zhizn' M. S. Pechorina. Moscow, 1910. P 105..

Leontovitsch contended that, over time, as Ivan's anti-aristocratic impulse more deeply impacted Muscovite politics, the aristocrats' opposition sharpened. In effect, Leonto- vitsch argued, there occurred a dialectical process in which criticism of the tsar led him to greater cruelties, and these “fanatical” methods of rule further reinforced the opposition to him. As a consequence, the old “subjective” notions of aristocratic rights vanished into the air, and a new “objective” order based on state service took shapeLeontovitsch V. V. Die Rechtsumwalzung. S. 95-96..

Leontovitsch traced the tsar's anti-aristocratic thinking to early moments in his reign: to Adashev's advice “never to fear the strong and the titled”Ibid. S. 99.; to Ivan's efforts at the Stoglav council to support the poor, the elderly and victims of warIbid. S. 99-101.; to Ivan's candid declaration that, in his childhood, boyars had tried to wield power in their own interestIbid. S. 101-102.; to Ivan's decision to limit the principle of mestnichestvo in staffing the armyIbid. S. 102-103.. Ivan reduced the boyars' influence in the state apparatus and the army, “while leaving the private interests of the boyars more or less undisturbed”Ibid. S. 104..

On 20 September 1556, however, Ivan ordered every possessor of hereditary landed property to supply a horse to the army for each hundred cheti of arable land in his possession. According to Leontovitsch, the 1556 decree flowed directly from the tsar's commitment to defend his subjects against external aggression, and therefore it rested on a bedrock ideological principle of theocratic absolutismIbid. S. 106-109.. Because the decree encumbered the boyars' landed estates [votchiny] in unprecedented fashion and therefore undermined their “subjective” rights as a group immune from taxation, it constituted the beginning of a new social order in MuscovyIbid. S. 106-107., an order that “degraded” boyars to the level of the service nobility. Most boyars regarded the decree as a challenge to their social pre-eminence, and thus, following Kurbskii's example, they intensified their opposition to Ivan. They called at court for the revocation of the “unbearable” 1556 decreeIbid. S. 109-110..

Leontovitsch noted that Ivan had issued the decree at a pivotal military junction -- just after the sacking of Astrakhan and after the army's devastation of the Tatar Horde: at this moment, the boyars could not easily prey on popular discontent with the victorious tsar. Leontovitsch wrote that, “On this occasion as well, a despotic leader used an external threat to undercut his subjects' rights”Ibid. S. 110.. This remark linking war, despotism and assaults on civil rights was probably an oblique reference to the Russian revolution and to Nazi Germany.

Leontovitsch contended that the tsar's attempt to enforce the 1556 decree “entailed fundamental difficulties that led ultimately to the establishment of the oprichnina”Ibid. S. 113.. In Leontovitsch's telling, the oprichnina was an attempt, by means of state terror, to resettle small-holding service nobles on boyars' confiscated lands, but it was also a social war against the boyars, even against those who had obeyed the 1556 decree. In Leontovitsch's opinion, therefore, the oprichnina was a “genuine revolution”; an attempt by the tsar to establish a “new, ideal, objective social order”; a social transformation in which Ivan made use of previously marginal people now hungry to seize opportunities the state offered themIbid. S. 114.. Leontovitsch quoted Hauriou's comment on the fate of religious reformers who had announced a “beautiful sounding program” only to find themselves surrounded by confidence men and thieves, and to witness their splendid plans degenerating into something “mediocre, awful and lamentable”Ibid. S. 114-115; Hauriou M. La science sociale traditionnelle. Paris, 1896. P. 191..

Leontovitsch interpreted the oprichnina not as an unsuccessful attempt to restore the best features of the Kievan federation with its service-based property arrangements, but as a successful revolution that laid foundations for the serf system, which dominated Russia's future until 1861Leontovitsch V. V. Die Rechtsumwalzung... S. 115-116.. According to this interpretation, the establishment of state service in 1556 as a prerequisite for use of landed property led, in the next decades, to fixing peasants on the land: in other words, the spread of the pomestie system among the social elites was the logical first step toward the nadel system, which gave peasants use of pomestie land contingent on payment of dues or performance of duties. In the process of this development, Leontovitsch suggested, uncontingent ownership of property virtually disappeared in Russia. In his terms, “consequently, the abolition of the titled aristocrats' private landed property led swiftly to the general abolition of landed property [in Muscovy]”Ibid. S. 117-118..

Leontovitsch held that the serf system did not appear accidentally, but rather as a result of the “rationalizing tendency” stemming from Ivan's determination to subordinate all his subjects to the state and to transform material goods into instruments of state controlIbid. S. 118.. In Leontovitsch's opinion, Ivan IV had laid the foundation for subsequent centuries of Russian history. The tsar's “binding” [prikreplenie] of Russian nobles to state service and of peasants to the land in the sixteenth century triggered centuries later a countervailing process -- the “unbinding” [raskreposchchenie] of society and peasantry from their obligations. Leontovitsch asserted that the “unbinding” of individuals' obligations was “the essence of Russian liberalism.” He also linked the serf system to the rise of Russian socialismIbid. S. 120.. Thus, all of Russia's subsequent history stemmed from Ivan's ideological assumptions and from his “relentless, fanatically impatient, uneasy spirit”Ibid..

Was Leontovitsch's book a reaction against the official Soviet tendency in the 1930s and early 1940s to idealize Ivan IV?

Maureen Perrie has noted that, by the mid-1930s, Soviet cultural authorities had begun to turn against earlier interpretations of history emphasizing tsarist oppression and the wickedness of Russian foreign policy: the perceived need to foster patriotism to hold the populace together in case of war now led to “a reversion to older approaches to history, which emphasized the role of individual `great men' as national heroes”Perrie M. The Cult of Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia. Houndmills, Basingstroke, Hampshire, 2001. P. 192. A similar point can be found in: Brandenberger D. National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity. Cambridge (Mass.), 2002.. Perrie has argued that the new interpretive scheme celebrating great patriots emerged gradually. At first, in the mid-1930s, cultural leaders constructed heroic analogies between efforts of earlier Russian patriots to resist foreign invaders, and efforts by the Soviet government to ready the workers' state to fight the country's enemies in Europe and Asia. Later, in the winter 1940-1941, the campaign to find historical analogues for Soviet patriotism reached a new stage: at Stalin's initiative, high Soviet officials commissioned various creative works treating Ivan IV as a strong, wise patriotic leader. Among the prominent new works on Ivan were the novelistic trilogy Ivan Groznyi by Valentin Ivanovich Kostylev, the play Ivan Groznyi by Aleksei Nikolaevich Tolstoi, and the monumental films under the same name by Sergei Mikhailovich EisenshteinKostylev V. I.: 1) Ivan Groznyi (Moskva v pokhode). Moscow, 1944; 2) Ivan Groznyi (More). Moscow, 1945; 3) Ivan Groznyi (Nevskaia tverdynia). Moscow, 1947. For Tolstoi's play, see: Tolstoi A. N. Ivan Groznyi. Dramaticheskaia povest' v dvukh chast'iakh. Moscow, 1944.. The authorities expected the new works to show Ivan as “people's tsar” aligned with peasants and other commoners against treacherous boyars. By highlighting the historical necessity to defend the state against external and internal foes, the new work was supposed to justify the oprichnina. It is easy to see how such a flattering portrait of Ivan supported Stalin's iron rule, the purges of the late 1930s, and Soviet absorption of the Baltic states after 1939. Perrie has rightly classified the tsar's rehabilitation as “the Stalinization of Ivan the Terrible”Perrie M. The Cult... P. 77-178..

It is unlikely, however, that the Soviet rehabilitation of Ivan IV had a direct impact on Leontovitsch's view of his subject. Kostylev's novel appeared in installments from 1944 to 1947, and Tolstoi's play was staged only in 1944 -- that is, long after Leontovitsch had started writing his book. The first part of Eisenshtein's film Ivan Groznyi premiered only in January 1945; the second part, which dealt with the oprichnina, was not released until 1958The Soviet Artistic Council viewed Eisenshtein's original cut of Ivan Groznyi, Part Two, in February 1946, but blocked its public release. On 24 February 1947, Eisenshtein and the actor Nikolai Konstantinovich Cherkasov, who played Ivan in the films, met Stalin, Andrei Aleksandrovich Zhdanov and Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov in the Kremlin to discuss possible changes in the film, but Eisenshtein did not manage to complete the editing before his death in February 1948. See: PerrieM. The Cult. P. 170-178; Mar'iamov G. B. Kremlevskii tsenzor (Stalin smotrit kino). Moscow, 1992. P. 84-92, gives a text of the conversation between Eisenshtein and Stalin. For the production history of the film, see: Neuberger J. Ivan the Terrible. London; New York, 2003. P. 13-24. Kostylev V. I. Literaturnye zametki // Izvestiia. 1941. 19 March. P. 4.. It is conceivable, of course, that news of the official campaign to rehabilitate Ivan IV reached Leontovitsch in March 1941, when he might have read Kostylev's article on Ivan in Izvestiia¹⁵⁴. Leontovitsch may also have caught the drift of official Soviet thinking on Ivan even earlier, from V. G. Verkhoven''s 1939 essay, Russia in the Age of Ivan Groznyi, which stressed the impact of the boyar “treason” against the crownPerrie M. The Cult. P. 81-82; Verkhoven V. G. Rossiia v tsarstvovanie Ivana Groznogo. Moscow, 1939. According to Perrie, Verkhoven''s essay was published in a mass edition of 100,000 copies.. But the evidence in Leontovitsch's book on Ivan suggests that he reacted not to the Soviet “Stalinization of Ivan the Terrible,” but rather to two earlier “waves” of scholarship on Ivan.

A major impact on Leontovitsch's thinking about Ivan probably came from scholarship in the half-century from 1880 to 1930. Leontovitsch closely studied Mikhail Aleksandrovich Diakonov's 1889 essay on political ideas in Old Russia, a book which underlined the importance of Ivan IV's emphasis on the tsar's sacred authority inside Muscovy and also outside it, amongst Christian rulersDiakonov M. A. Vlast' Moskovskikh gosudarei. Ocherki iz istorii politicheskikh idei drevnei Rusi do kontsa XVI veka. St. Petersburg, 1889. P. 136-144.. Leontovitsch must have been familiar with Sergei Fedorovich Platonov's 1899 essays on the Time of Troubles, essays which underscored long-term developments making Muscovite grand dukes into “popular/national leaders” [narodnye vozhdi], and which stressed the tension between the boyars and the crownPlatonov S. F. Ocherki po istorii smuty v Moskovskom gosudarstve XVI-XVII vv. 3^rd ed. St. Petersburg, 1910. P. 120-128.. Platonov described the oprichnina as a “political coup” [gosudarstvennyi perev- orot] against the boyarsIbid. P. 130. -- a view Leontovitsch came to share -- but also as an attempt “to undermine everything in the state that supported aristocratic landholding”Ibid. P. 142-143.. In a sense, Platonov anticipated Leontovitsch's contention that Ivan sought to obliterate private or “subjective” law by destroying its source -- local principalitiesIbid. P. 147-148.. Platonov made the argument that the oprichnina, by driving peasants out of their homes near Moscow, eventually prompted the state to try to “fix” peasants to the landIbid. P 158.. Platonov repeated his main interpretive claims about Ivan in his 1924 biography of the tsarPlatonov S. F Ivan Groznyi. Berlin, 1924., a book Leontovitsch cited several times in his study of Ivan IV. Diakonov also repeated Platonov's ideas on the peasantry in his 1904 book on the political and social structure of Old RussiaDiakonov M. A. Ocherki obshchestvennago i gosudarstvennago stroia drevnei Rusi. 2^nd ed. St. Petersburg, 1908. P. 343-348., a volume Leontovitsch would likely have known but did not cite in his book on Ivan IV.

Another key interpretation of Ivan IV came from Robert Iurevich Vipper's 1922 biographical essay Ivan GroznyiVipper R. I. Ivan Groznyi. Moscow, 1922., which classified Ivan as a military monarch trying to overcome the fragmentation of aristocratic principalitiesIbid. P 103-131; see the intelligent remarks on Vipper's book by: Perrie M. The Cult... P 12-13. and to build in their place a unitary stateIbid. P 13-14.. Vipper used the term “autocratic-communist” to describe the pivotal 1556 reformsVipper R. I. Ivan Groznyi. P 138.. As Perrie has noted, the medievalist Ivan Ivanovich Polosin adopted Vipper's term when he compared Ivan's “revolution” to the events of 1917Polosin called Ivan's domestic policy “military-autocratic communism” [voenno-samoderzhavnyi kommunizm]. See: Polosin 1.1. Zapadnaya Evropa i Moscovija v XVI veke // Shtaden G. O Moskve Ivana Groznogo. Zapiski nemtsa oprichnika / ed. by I. I. Polosin. Leningrad, 1925. P 40; Perrie M. The Cult. P 16-17.. It is not clear whether Leontovitsch read Vipper's book or Polosin's discussion of the oprichnina by Heinrich von Staden; if he did, consulting these books may have prompted him to conclude that Ivan's economic policy anticipated Soviet “absolutism.” In any case, we know from two sources that Leontovitsch was familiar with Vipper's and Polosin's argumentsLeontovitsch's bibliography for Die Rechtsumwälzung unter Iwan der Schrecklichen referred neither to Vipper nor to Polosin's 1925 edition of Heinrich von Staaden. Leontovitsch would have known of Vipper's book and interpretation from Platonov's Ivan Groznyi, which commented on Vipper. For von Staaden, Leontovitsch used the 1930 German edition: Staaden H. von. Aufzeichnungen über den Moskauer Staat: nach der Handrschrift des Preussischen Staatsarchivs in Hannover / Hrsg. von F. Epstein. Hamburg, 1930. However, Leontovitsch would have known of Polosin's interpretation of Ivan IV from the historiographical “excursus” at the end of Fedotov's book on the Metropolitan Filipp (see citation below)..

A crucial reference for Leontovitsch was Georgii Petrovich Fedotov's 1928 book on the Metropolitan FilippFedotov G. P Sviatoi Filipp, Mitropolit Mokovskii. Paris, 1928.. In it, Fedotov highlighted the bloody confrontation between Ivan and Filipp, a confrontation that proved to Fedotov's satisfaction that the oprichnina was tyrannical. Fedotov maintained that Ivan's policies, whatever their secular justifications, were “immoral.” In fact, the policies were manifestations of Ivan's psychological “abnormality” [nenormal'nost']. The historian also pointed out that, from the Russian nationalist perspective, the oprichnina was a disaster, because it contributed to Muscovy's defeat in the Livonian war. In a sense, Fedotov's moralistic reading of Ivan's reign constituted a return to Karamzin's early nineteenth-century understanding of Ivan as a tyrant. As we have seen, Leontovitsch registered Fedotov's opinions on Ivan's political ruthlessness and psychological imbalance, but rejected Fedotov's suggestion that Ivan's policies were unnecessary or irrational.

The earliest influences on Leontovitsch were perhaps the most profound. Aside from volumes VIII through X of Karamzin's History of the Russian State, which labeled Ivan a tyrant but validated his centralizing policies, Leontovitsch drew on two mid-nineteenth-century historians affiliated with the so-called “juridical school” of historical writing: Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin and Sergei Mikhailovich Solov'ev. These historians treated Ivan's reign as a key moment in the construction of a unified Russian state. For Leontovitsch's purpose, Chicherin's essay on Muscovite charters was emblematic, because Chicherin contrasted the “anarchism” of Old Russia with the “order” of the Muscovite state after Ivan IVSee: Chicherin B. N. Dukhovnyia i dogovornyia gramoty velikikh i udel'nykh kniazei // Obzor isto- rii russkago prava. Moscow, 1858. P. 232-375.. Chicherin's main juridical idea was that the early legal system was based on private law promulgated by local princes, whereas from the mid-sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, there came into existence a system of public law applying to everyone. In his multi-volume history of Russia, Solov'ev treated the oprichnina as regrettable to the degree that it was a manifestation of armed conflict, but he nevertheless saw it as contributing to the central state's victory over fractious boyarsSolov'ev S. M. Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen. Kniga vtoraia. Vol. VI-X. St. Petersburg, 1894. P. 135-180; 345-534.. In the end, Solov'ev thought, Ivan's policies constituted an administrative “necessity”Ibid. P. 327-328..

In passing we should note that the impact upon Leontovitsch of nineteenth-century Romantic views of Ivan IV, which emphasized the tsar's contradictory, multi-sided personality, is unclear. Natal'ia Nikolaevna Mut'ia has shown that, in the second half of the nineteenth century, Russian writers and artists elaborated on the Romantic vision of the tsar to construct an even more complex portrait of Ivan capturing his heroic, quotidian, arrogant, democratic, religious and brutal aspects. She has suggested that the tsar's cruelty, when refracted in works of plastic art and theater, “no longer horrified [spectators], but attracted and edified [them]”Mut'ia N. N. Ivan Groznyi. Istorizm i lichnost' pravitelia v otechestvennom iskusstve XIX-XX vv. St. Peterburg, 2010. P. 451.. It is possible that, in his Ukrainian childhood, Leontovitsch encountered precisely these aestheticized images of Ivan. Leontovitsch may therefore have recoiled against Ivan's legendary cruelty, while at the same time recognizing the tsar's intellectual consistency.

In Leontovitsch's short book on Ivan IV's “legal revolution,” there is much to criticize: Leontovitsch introduced no new sources to historical scholarship; he misread the complicated Iosif Volotskii as a fanatical partisan of Muscovite absolutism; he underestimated the principled differences between Ivan and his chief critics, Kurbskii and Filipp; he exaggerated the importance of the 1556 decree as “trigger” for the oprichnina; he erred in suggesting that the oprichnina was an attempt to destroy the boyar eliteNancy Kollman has suggested that Leontovitsch could not have written his book after the wave of Soviet scholarship on the oprichnina between the 1960s and 1990s, because this scholarship established in detail the social profiles of the policy's victims. The most important of the books on this subject belong to Ruslan Grigor'evich Skrynnikov. See: Skrynnikov R. G.: 1) Nachalo oprichniny. Leningrad, 1960; 2) Op- richnyi terror. Leningrad, 1969; 3) Tsarstvo terrora. St. Petersburg, 1992.; he asserted but never proved that the peasants' enserfment was a consequence of the 1556 decree; he was almost surely mistaken in interpreting the Time of Troubles as “an aristocratic counter-revolution” aimed at the undoing of Ivan's legal revolutionThis point about the Time of Troubles can be found in: Leontovitsch V. V Die Rechtsumwalzung... S. 116, fn. 1..

At a deeper level, Leontovitsch's book made a problematic equation between religious postulates concerning the tsar's duties as Christian magistrate and state “ideology,” between Ivan's Christian Ideenwelt and the Jacobins' modern rationalistic and rationalizing mentality. No doubt, Leontovitsch's equation of religion and ideology is suggestive. After all, there are functional similarities between religion and ideology: both are cognitive systems that help individuals to interpret the world, to understand their role in the world, and to place normative bounds on individual and collective behavior; both, therefore, shape the political order and set the parameters for virtuous political conduct. Because of these functional similarities, both religion and ideology “fit” Hauriou's ideocratic model of state power, a model that considers the state's institutional “personality” a function of its fundamental assumptions or “idea.” In Hauriou's thinking, both religious and ideological mentalités may accommodate charismatic leadership of the sort Ivan manifested, alongside the rationalizing elements of a “revolutionary” worldview like the one Ivan allegedly adopted.

And yet, religion and ideology are different. Orthodoxy focuses on duties of the magistrate and of his subjects for the sake of their salvation; moreover, in Orthodox thinking, virtuous conduct depends on adherence to rules mandated by God. On the other hand, a secular ideology advocates the performance of public duties for the sake of mundane objectives, such as the common good and the defense of the realm against external attack. In secular ideological systems, the matter of an individual's salvation is irrelevant, so long as the individual obeys the sovereign authority. Put another way, in secular polities, custom and law regulate private and public conduct, but these regulations do not always coincide with religious norms governing individual conduct. The difference between religion and ideology is both epistemological (that is, they are distinguished by the different sources from which political precepts and thus political behaviors derive) and functional (that is, religious norms and ideological mandates do not necessarily coincide in substance or in effect). The difference may also be historical, insofar as religious polities preceded secular, ideological polities. If Muscovy was, in fact, a “theocratic absolutism,” then Leontovitsch perpetrated an anachronism by reading the ideological mentality back into the sixteenth century.

The virtues of Leontovitsch's book are reverse images of its weaknesses. His emphasis on Ivan's “legal revolution” forced readers to consider whether Russian socialism and the 1917 revolution amounted to echoes of Ivan's earlier, more profound revolution against property. Leontovitsch's term “legal revolution” focused readers' attention on the possibility of a revolution based on statutory innovation as well as on state violence. Finally, Leontovitsch's book on Ivan IV prepared the way for his later book on Russian liberalism, where he defined liberalism's method as the “unfettering” or “unbinding” of the individual. Both books flowed from a comprehensive conception of the Russian historical process that Leontovitsch had painstakingly worked out in Prague, Paris and Berlin.

In retrospect, it is astonishing that Leontovitsch finished his small book on Ivan IV. Even though he had the benefit of an excellent domestic education in Kiev, of training in the Naumenko school, and then of study in Prague and Paris, his life after 1917 can only be described as a fractured existence. He escaped death in the Volunteer Army, avoided denunciation as a “socially hostile element” in Kiev, reconnected with his family in Prague, and made the best of his educational possibilities in the Russian imperial diaspora only to take up a series of academic posts in Nazi Germany. In Berlin he methodically, and cautiously, made himself into an analyst of Soviet power, a critic of modern dictatorship, and a historian of sixteenth-century Muscovy. In Germany, against considerable odds, he held to his religious beliefs and, with the aid of his wife and others, linked his Orthodox outlook to her Lutheranism. His religious outlook helped him see the errors of National Socialism and to grasp what he might do in his scholarship to resist its slogans.

It will not do to describe Leontovitsch's intellectual network in the 1930s and 1940s -- his quiet friendship with Makarov, his admiration for Chizhevskii and Stepun -- as a political or intellectual “circle,” for that word implies the possibility of regular meetings to exchange ideas. Nor was his network a political “cell”: so far as we know, Leontovitsch belonged to no political party and cannot even be said to have taken part in a political “movement” He and other members of the imperial diaspora who rejected both Soviet power and National Socialism were, in spite of their similarity of outlooks, frighteningly alone. Perhaps that is a common fate of decent human beings in dark times.

References

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