12. Three of the Kingdoms of Moscow, Rus 2 Russia
Studying the history of 16th century Russia, a researcher faces an abundance of information. Whereas in the history of Ancient Rus' we often ran out of information and had to make assumptions.
Chapter I Men of Wrath
Frontier
In the history of modern Russia, we encounter a "surfeit" of factual material. It becomes impossible to integrate all of this into the research system, because then we end up with what in cybernetics is called "noise". Let's imagine the following: there are several people sitting in a room, and suddenly everyone starts talking about their family matters at the same time. As a result, we will hear nothing and learn nothing. An abundance of facts requires selectivity. And just as acousticians select the sound of interest, we must select the facts we need to cover our chosen topic: the ethnic history of our country.
In the 16th century Russia was ruled by three successive monarchs among the descendants of Alexander Nevsky, and under all three of them - Vasily III Ivanovich, Ivan IV Vasilyevich Grozny and his son Fyodor - the range of Russian super-ethnos was steadily expanding. Vasily III completed the unification of the entire Russian land and saw the fall of the Golden Horde, from whose power his father, Ivan III, had broken free: tribute to the Golden Horde ceased in 1480. The Golden Horde fell in 1502, and Russia, having soon annexed Ryazan, Pskov and the Chernigov Principality, became a monolithic country whose borders to the south and east contacted the Tatar states.
The Kazan Khanate, the allied Russian Khanate of the Crimea, and the Nogay Horde, roaming in the Ryn-peski, were weak and no longer able to compete with the mighty Russia, led by Moscow, which was gaining in strength. The Polish-Lithuanian state, which had suffered a series of defeats in the wars with the Turks, was in a state of utmost dislocation, and the Lithuanian and Polish forces, rather large in essence, posed no great danger to Russia. The wars with the Poles and Lithuanians were faltering, their fortunes were swinging to one side or the other, though the military and political power of all Western Europe was behind Poland. The split of the Western European super-ethnos in the fracture phase led to a situation where the passionarity of the Europeans was extinguished within the system, in the civil wars of the Reformation.
The situation in Eastern Europe seemed to be exceptionally favorable to Russia and its people. It is precisely here that one discovers that aims and actions of the 16th century Russian people changed considerably compared to the behavior of previous generations of Muscovites. Passionary people became abundant, and the task of uniting and defending the borders of the country had already been fulfilled. And then passionate Russians found new goals of life, new imperatives of behavior. The world became cramped for them, they stopped performing their duties, and each of them wanted to become himself: not just a prince, but Prince Shuisky, not just okolnichy, but Godunov, not just a Cossack, but Yermak Timofeyevich. The ideal became not a man doing his duty, but a man who had taken the first place and gained power over rivals and circumstances.
Ф. Dyurfeldt. The Old Tsarist Palace in the Moscow Kremlin. Engraving
Prince Vasily III
Elena Glinskaya
In Moscow and on the borders
With the unification of the country, political and economic stability was achieved. In the villages one could quietly engage in agriculture, paying tribute to the owners of the land. The greatest tribute received the service nobles, as they had few peasants, and it was necessary to maintain a horse and spearmen at their own expense; the average - the boyars and the minimum - the monasteries. But the rich land paid off all costs of labor and all taxes, and so the population of Russia for the first 50 years of the 16th century grew by half, reaching nine million people. But to the passionate young men, of whom the poet said:
And all who dare, who seek, Before Russia."
To whom the countries of the fathers are bored,
Who laughs impudently, whistles mockingly,
Heeding the precepts of the grey-haired sages! -
Tsar Ivan IV Vasilyevich the Terrible
There was nothing to do in the countryside, they were insanely bored there. Harmonious people preferred the countryside - quiet, hard-working, quiet; they did not look for anything, but they cultivated the land skillfully and paid taxes on a regular basis. Passionarians tried to leave their quiet village following the idea formulated in antiquity: "Chance is passing us by - blessed is he who grabbed it by the hair". And in sixteenth-century Russia one could make a career only in public service.
It should be said that Moscow princes themselves contributed to the growth of passionarity in Moscow. Thus, Ivan III decided that rebellious Novgorodians (and among them there were also quite a lot of passionaries) should be transferred to Moscow, so it would be easy to watch them. With the same purpose moved to Moscow and a lot of small "princes" from Putivl and Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky, Kursk. Similarly, Ivan III did the same with the most active "feudal" princes. Indeed, there is little that prince Shuisky in Shuya or the town of Odoyevsky, and in the sovereign's capital they are under scrutiny, there are "people walking". This decision was quite logical, governmental, but it led, as always, not to the consequences, which were expected.
Since in Moscow, along with the representatives of the passionate aristocracy, a great number of passionate "servicemen", "adolescents" and common people were concentrated, it was very easy to find supporters. And the boyars immediately found them. As a result, residents of one part of Moscow supported the Shuiskys, other posadsky - Belsky, and so on. Moscow very quickly, by the beginning of the 16th century, had become an incredible hotbed of passéonariness: the entire population of the city was divided into hostile parties.
Fortunately, not all passionaries went to Moscow. Because, once settled there, one had to serve someone, or be a smerd, (soldier). Although for those days it was very profitable: you would get money, you would drink alcohol, and service would be easy, and you would wear a caftan from the shoulder of a lord, - there turned out a great number of passionate people for whom such a perspective was unacceptable, because they were too independent and ambitious. The man used to say: "So what's in it for me if you are Boyar Shuisky? Why should I, Vanka, bow to you and eat your scraps? No, you are naughty!" After that, Vanka had nothing to do in Moscow, and he "drew his clogs" to a place where the boyar Shuisky had no power over him.
Tsar Feodor Ioannovich
Tsar Boris Fedorovich Godunov
Such were the borders of the state. All of them were turbulent in the 16th century and provided plenty of opportunities for purposeful people to realize their excessive energy. Although there was peace on the southern border with the Tatars, the Nogais raided them. In the Volga region there were constant wars with the Mordva, Burtasians and Kazan Tatars. But it should not be thought that these were religious wars: some pagans supported the Russians, other pagans supported the Tatars.
There was no war on the northern border. The vast territories that stretched to the White Sea, and to the east up to the Ural Mountains and beyond, were already developed, but the harsh nature demanded great effort from anyone who wanted to achieve something in life. Wealth and independence were secured not by war booty, but by "soft loot" - precious furs that served as the equivalent of gold. There were two ways to get fur: either by hunting, or by "mooching" foreigners, neither of which was easy. Finally, on the western border it was necessary to continuously reflect the onslaught of the Lithuanians and Livonian Germans.
Tsar Vasily IV Ivanovich Shuisky
Note that the very notion of "border" was different for the 16th century than it is today. In the modern sense, a border is a natural or artificial boundary (a river, a mountain range, a strip of fortifications) separating "our own" from "others". But at that time, in the conditions of the Siberian or South Russian steppes, it was often simply impossible to define borders in such a way. The borders of the growing Russia of the sixteenth century were the vast expanses of the Wild Field and Siberia. (A similar situation occurred during the creation of the United States in the nineteenth century. The Yankees considered the entire vast territory from the Mississippi to the Cordilleras as their border to the south and west.)
Of course, the Russian state was extremely interested in resolving the question of frontier territories. It was vital to determine the boundaries suitable for defense, because it was too difficult and costly to build zasets in the areas from Chernigov to Kazan and Nizhny Novgorod. On the seseks they had to keep a significant number of servicemen, whose duties were to monitor the steppe at all times.
A lad was sitting in a tree and peeped out: whether in the high grass a chambul - a Tatar cavalry troop - was galloping. Seeing the enemy, it was necessary immediately to light a torch in a tree, sending a signal to the next "guard", get down on the ground, jump on a horse and rush at full gallop to the nearest garrison, because the Tatars, noticing the fire, always tried to catch up with the guards. There were usually two watchmen: one watched the steppe, the other watched the saddled horses. The garrisons, seeing the flashes of torches, raised the alarm, sent messengers to other towns, to Moscow and pulled up the troops rather quickly. But the light-horse Tatars during this time had time to catch prisoners in the surrounding villages and had already begun their retreat. The Russians chased them on fresh horses, taking a certain advantages: the Tatars' horses were tired by that time. The captured Tatars were cut down, and the captives were freed and released home.
The Russian state in the 16th century.
Only by 200 years later, in the 18th century, Russia managed to solve the major problem of finding its natural borders. All these 200 years active individuals joined the ranks of the defenders of the borders of the Fatherland. This is why in the 16th century we see passionate groups not only in the capital city, but also on the Russian frontiers. Such a division of passionarians is a characteristic feature of the new phase of ethnogenesis - acmatic.
Increase in passionarity both in the capital and on the outskirts of the ethnic area led in principle to the same consequences: within the ethnic system increased the number of subsystems - consortia and sub-ethnoses, as passionate people felt their "specialness" and united. We have already mentioned above, that the active population of Moscow was divided into parties: the Shuyskys were supported by the people of the merchant ranks, the Bielskys had their quarters on which they relied, the Glinskys had theirs, the Mstislavskys had theirs. Supporters of each of these boyar clans were connected by the commonality of historical destiny, and they were sub-linear consortia.
Moscovite in a military outfit. From a 16th century German engraving.
Russian merchant. From a 16th-century German engraving.
The frontier passionaries were characterized by associations of a higher order, because in the course of a war with the Tatars or Nogais, relations with their boyars ceased to have any significance. For example, a special sub-ethnos was formed on the Don, which later became an ethnos - the Cossacks. They took in all runaway peasants and felt completely independent. Invariably recognizing the Grand Duke of Moscow as theirs. The Don's independence was expressed in two pithy formulas: "There is no extradition from the Don" and "We bow to no one but the Sovereign". The Cossacks were not inclined to take into account the opinion of the Muscovite government and were often arbitrary and were referred to in Tsarist letters as bandits, thieves, murderers and traitors to the Tsar. But still Moscow officials and Cossacks saw each other as their own, and so caravans with grain, vodka, "potions", (gunpowder), lead and... The Don was always the place to go, and the Don was always the only place to go.
А. O. Orlovsky. Bivouac of the Cossacks.
Josephites and Nestorians
Alongside the boyar servants and Cossacks who aspired to riches, victories and success, there were also those in 16th century Moscow whose passion was to strive for the ideal of knowledge and the struggle for their beliefs. They would never go to the border or to be serfs. By the conditions of the time, all thought in the 16th century was church-thought. Questions of faith were very important because a form of confession was identified with a certain behavior, a certain ideological program, and they were easily transmitted in politics and in everyday life. It was questions of freedom of conscience that determined the third area of application for Russian passionaries.
To make sense of subsequent events, we have to go back and recall the phenomenon of negative attitudes. The introduction of the doctrines with which they were based had the same negative result in Catholic France, where the Albigoy wars began, and in Orthodox Bulgaria, where the large Bulgarian ethnos weakened and was defeated and subjugated by Byzantium. Similarly, the propaganda of negative ideology had a negative effect in the Muslim world, where the Karmat and Ismaili movements were accompanied by massacres, arbitrariness, and all kinds of outrages.
In Russia, the negative worldview penetrated in the late 15th century under the guise of the "Judaizers" heresy. Its genetic connection with Judaism is highly doubtful, but the other thing is important. The church hierarchs of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were people with enough sensitivity and broad education to understand the potential danger of such heresies for the future of the country. Unfortunately, there was no unanimity among the church leaders as to how to eliminate heretics. This divergence became an occasion for the struggle for their beliefs by all those who aspired to such a struggle, for whom it was a necessity. Events took a tragic turn after the death of Ivan III (Ivan III fell seriously ill in 1500, and during the last five years of his reign the de facto ruler of the country was his son by his second wife Sophia Palaiologa, - Vasily Ivanovich).
The representatives of one of the church movements were the Nestorite, the followers of St. Nilus of Sora from Trans-Volga and his follower Vassian Patrykeev. Nestyazhites categorically denied the possibility of killing heretics, referring to the fact that "God does not want the death of a sinner, but his repentance", and therefore the duty of the church - to exhort the erring. According to the Nestianists, those who persisted in heresy should be isolated and even exiled abroad, but one should not force the human conscience by the threat of death. The opponents of the Nestyezhatists in the dispute over heresy were the supporters of Joseph Volotsky - the Josephians. They insisted on drastic measures to eradicate heresy, up to and including the application of the Western European experience of “autodafe” - burning at the stake.
View of the city of Moscow by S. Herberstein. 1556 г.
The Icon of Joseph of Volotsk.
Victory in this dispute remained in favor of Joseph of Volotsk. In 1504 a joint decision by Ivan III, the de facto ruler of the country - Vasily - and the Council of Bishops condemned the heretics to death. Fires were lit in Moscow and Novgorod. Many freethinkers and prominent government officials who supported heresy were burned. The Grand Duke's daughter-in-law Elena Voloshanka and his grandson Dmitry were imprisoned, where they died.
But it was not only the problem of the struggle against heretics that divided the Josephian and Nestorian. They also had different views on the fate of the property of the Church. The fact is that Vassily III did not have enough land to hand out for the service of numerous noblemen, and the Grand Duke was in great need of money. Knowing this, the Nestorians offered to take all the property of the Church to the treasury in order to pay for the service of the nobility and to strengthen the borders of Rus'. And in return they demanded the right to freely express their opinions in accordance with their own conscience. The Josephians, for their part, were ready to support Grand Prince Basil III, but only on the condition that he leave the Church all its property: the rich decoration of temples, the beautiful libraries, and the flourishing farms of the monasteries.
And at this truly critical moment the family circumstances of the Grand Duke proved to be decisive. The first wife of Vassily III was Solomonia Saburova. The marriage turned out to be childless, and on this pretext Basil III divorced Saburova. Solomonia was outraged, but the Grand Duke was adamant. He then married the beautiful Elena Glinskaya.
Unknown painter of the early 19th century Maxim the Greek
The Glinsky clan is worth telling about it in detail. Glinsky genus founder was "Cossack Mamai", that is, a descendant of Mamai, whom the Russians defeated at Kulikovo field. Somewhere in Volyn this descendant of the formidable temnik converted to Orthodoxy. Having made a good career on this occasion, he became Prince Glinsky, equal in importance to the Rurikids and Gediminids, and in this capacity served the Lithuanian princes. Having failed to get along with the Lithuanians, his descendant, Vasily Lvovich Glinsky, moved to Moscow in 1508 where he was welcomed with open arms. The daughter of this Lithuanian aristocrat was Elena Glinskaya. From her Vasily III had two sons. True, evil tongues said that the real culprit of paternity was a young and handsome guards’ regiment - Prince Ovchina Telepnev-Obolensky.
Naturally, the Church intervened in the matter of his divorce from Saburova, because, according to Christian law, one cannot abandon a woman without her guilt. The head of the Nestorianists, Vassian Patrikeev, boldly condemned the religiously unmotivated divorce. The Grand Duke, understandably, was not happy with Vassian Patrikeyev's opinion.
The first conflict with Nestorian was followed by a second. Vassily summoned the independent Chernigov princes Shemyachichi - descendants of Dmitry Shemyaka - to Moscow for negotiations. They received a letter of protection, came and were treacherously imprisoned. Again, Vassian Patrikeev condemned the grand duke's act as a breach of an honest word, unworthy of a Christian. This time Basil's patience ran out. Vassian Patrikeyev was sent to the Josephian monastery for strict obedience and there after some time died. The Josephians were victorious.
To the South and East
In 1533, Vasily III died, leaving a three-year-old son, Ivan Vasilievich, as his heir. As was customary, the child was with his mother, but in 1538 Elena Glinskaya died suddenly. The real cause of her death is unknown, but among contemporaries there were people who claimed that the Grand Duchess had been poisoned. What is absolutely certain is that her favorite, Prince Ivan Ovchina, was tortured to death. Power passed to the "boyars," a group of noble boyars who assumed the collective regency until the grand duke came of age. At the head of the coalition were the princes of Shuisky.
M. I. Avilov. Tsarevich Ivan on a Walk
Emblem of Kazan
Later Ivan Vassilyevich bitterly recalled the insults inflicted on him by the Shuiskys. From the point of view of a man of our time, many of the actions of the Shuyskys are quite forgivable: for example, Prince Ivan Shuysky entered the room where little Ivan was playing with his brother, and leaned on the sovereign's bed. No big deal! However, stereotypes of behavior are changing, and very much so. What for our contemporaries is a trifle, for a man of the 16th century could be a disgrace, a "ruin of honour", and such things were taken seriously by passionate people, according to ethics. Such an act was considered in those days a terrible "pride" (such was Ivan the Terrible's own assessment) and arrogance. In general, Ivan did not get along with the Shuiskys and, as soon as he grew up, ordered the head of their clan, Prince Andrei, to be killed. It happened in 1543, after the death of the arrogant Ivan Vassilyevich Shuisky.
Thus began the new reign. The young sovereign faced two foreign policy challenges: the consolidation of the eastern border and the development of economic relations with Western Europe. The solution to the first of these problems began with the war with the Kazan Khanate, which was probably the only truly bloody episode in Russia's advance toward the sun.
There were two parties in Kazan: one pro-Russian, capitulating, and the other anti-Russian, oriented toward the Turkish sultan. The anti-Russian party should more correctly be called "fantasy" because the Turkish sultan whose possessions in Eastern Europe were limited to the Black Sea basin was not able to provide military assistance: his army would not be able to reach Kazan. Nevertheless, the supporters of Turkey prevailed. They provoked a war with Russia and paid for their ambitions with their lives and Kazan itself (1552). A Russian city was built in place of Tatar Kazan, but a significant part of the Tatar population survived. Ivan IV places a cross on the site designated by him for the construction of the first Orthodox church in Kazan.
The other peoples that were part of the Kazan Khanate and subordinated to the Khans of Kazan were annexed to Russia on much easier terms. Of course, one should not idealize our ancestors, but Muslim oppression, with its slavery and the constant slave trade along the Volga, was much heavier than the tribute that Moscow imposed on the Chuvash and Cheremis. We agree that paying tribute is not a pleasant thing, but with the arrival of the Russians, at least no one was seized and sold to Persia or Turkey. As for the Russians, for them the need to take Kazan was obvious. After all, at the end of the war in the lands of the Kazan Khanate up to 100,000 Russian prisoners of war had been released. They all received their share of the war booty and were sent home.
The next step in the eastern policy was the capture of Astrakhan. It passed without bloodshed and even without a single shot being fired. Russian boats with archers and men of war went down the Volga. The troops landed in front of the fortress of Khadzhi-Tarkhan and offered the garrison to surrender. The besieged, after thinking for half an hour, accepted the offer, after which the government was changed and construction of the Astrakhan Kremlin began on the opposite bank of the Volga (1556).12
The conquest of the whole Volga brought the Russians access to the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus and greatly facilitated trade with Persia because the Terek was the boundary of the Persian sphere of influence: the Persians considered it superfluous to move further north. As a result, most of the peoples of the Volga region and the North Caucasus were subjected to the Moscow state. The only exceptions were the lesser Nogais, who occupied the territory of modern Stavropol Territory, adjacent to the Sea of Azov.
(12) The Astrakhan Kremlin is a true "archaeological disaster”. It was built of Tatar pickets made under Batu Khanate and taken from the ruins of Saray, the capital of the Golden Horde. But the most curious thing is that during the construction of Sarai bricks from the ruins of the capital of Khazaria - Itil were used. This is the cultural continuity in the Volga region.
Relations with another wreck of the Great Horde, the Crimean Khanate, which depended on Turkey, were difficult for Russia. From the beginning of the 16th century, the Crimea entered the sphere of influence of the Ottoman Empire, which pursued Muslim expansion. Turkey chose its vassals, the Crimean Girey khans, as an instrument of aggression in Southeastern Europe. The struggle, in which the Rzeczpospolita was also involved, was difficult and bloody and ended only in the 18th century with Russia's victory.
Livonian War
The situation on the western border was also difficult. Conflicts with the Germans occurred constantly. One day the Germans attacked the Russian border, and then our ancestors, attacking the Germans, slaughtered them with hatchet knives. Neither of them liked all this. Mutual bitterness was growing. And so, during one of the skirmishes, the inhabitants of the town of Ivanovo first fought with the Germans across the narrow Narva River. Then all of a sudden, they spontaneously began crossing the river on logs, rafts and barrels to the opposite bank with the cry of "Beat the Germans". With such an insignificant episode in 1558, the difficult, multi-year Livonian War began.
Most important for our subject - the ethnic history of Russia - is the fact that the emotional impulse of the citizens of Ivangorod found support from the Moscow government. Many nobles favored the conquest of Livonia and its incorporation into Russia, and Moscow had enough troops. The high level of passionarity gave a lot of people who from childhood learned only one thing - to fight - and knew no other profession than military service to their sovereign. Only people as passionate as they were could stand up to all these hardy warriors: the Russian noble cavalry, the Northern and Ryazan Cossacks, and the noblemen of the one-hearted courtiers.
П. Korovin. The capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible
Since the middle of the 16th century Livonia had no such men and could not defend itself on its own. Realizing this the Germans made a quick diplomatic decision and resorted to the help of foreign armies: they invited Swedes to the territory of Estland; to the island of Ösel (now Saaremaa) they invited Danes; there was also room for Poles (1560-1561). Nonetheless the Russians managed to seize half of Livonia, but the Moscow government was at odds over what to do next. It must be said that the Swedes initially resisted the Russian onslaught quite actively, but, without decisive successes, took a more restrained stance. The Poles offered to give the Russians the part of Livonia that Moscow had already seized. In that case the rest of Livonia, including Riga, would fall to the Poles, a city of great strategic value that opened the trade route along the Western Dvina.
Pisciels of the 16th century.
Back in 1556 a remarkable man appeared in Moscow - Prince Dmitry Vishnevetsky. He descended from the Turovo-Pinsk princes and, therefore, belonged to the Rurikids. Prince Dmitry himself was a brave and energetic person. Respecting these qualities, the Zaporozhye Cossacks chose him as their Koshevoy ataman, and he arrived in Moscow with a proposal of the Zaporozhye Cossacks to seize the Crimean Khanate. The tsar supported Vyshnevetsky, and in 1558-1559 Prince Dmitry and the tsar's voivod okolnichy Danila Adashev made several raids on the Crimea.
In 1561 the government of Ivan the Terrible had to decide whether to scale down military operations in Livonia by moving their efforts to the south or to attempt to liquidate the Western European bridgehead. Let us judge for ourselves: the intention to conquer the Crimea, which was easy to explain by the constant danger of Tatar incursions, in the real conditions of the 16th century was a phantom dream. Russia was even less able to wage war on two fronts. But the desire to eliminate the German threat and thus continue the policy of Alexander Nevsky was both natural and feasible. The tsar chose to fight in the west, but the war in Livonia dragged on and was far from successful for the Russians.
Meanwhile, in Poland in 1572 the Jagiellonian dynasty was dissolved and the system of government changed. The Poles switched to an almost republican system of government: the office of the king was kept, but the system was made elective. After defining the procedure for electing a king to the throne, the Polish magnates chose the French Prince Henry Valois. Henry arrived, saw the Polish order and... and fled back to Paris. To us, such an action may seem madness, but from the point of view of his time, Henri Valois did absolutely the right thing.
Map of Livonia
In the 16th century, the royal throne was no sinecure. The position of the king was very responsible and the life of the ruler was both difficult and risky. His compatriots demanded that the king govern effectively, but he also had to reckon with the moods of his subjects, for the king's crown was usually removed along with his head. That is why the French prince did not want to contradict the Polish nobles. (However, his sudden departure was provoked by the fact that the French throne became vacant and Henry took it).
К. P. Bryullov. Siege of Pskov by the Polish King Stephen Bathory in 1581.
Having lost Henri Valois, in 1575 the Poles chose as king Stephen Bathory, a seven-country nobleman who was either Hungarian or Romanian in origin. Not being a Pole, Batory was a very good military leader and managed to win the Livonian War for his new subjects thanks to his talent. Russian forces were defeated in the end and Batory was left only at the walls of Pskov (1581).
In 1582, a difficult war for both sides was ended by the Treaty of Jam-Zapolski, while a year and a half later an armistice was signed with Sweden. Thus, the Livonian war, for which so much effort had been expended, ended in tears for Russia. Russia lost her conquered Livonia, the Neva estuary and the Baltic lands passed to Sweden. Russia managed to regain them in 1590, only to lose them again under Peter the Great in the Time of Troubles.
Medal with the image of Stephen Bathory
Coppersmiths
Russia's victory in the Livonian War was hindered not so much by external circumstances as by significant changes inside the country. We have already mentioned, that at the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th century, along with two schools of religious thought represented by the church currents of Nestorius and Josephian, a third one appeared in Moscow, which was essentially anti-church and which we so unluckily dubbed the heresy of the "Judaizers". In the 16th century this system of negative worldview (for simplicity we will call it anti-system) had nothing to do with the Jews.
One of the largest preachers of anti-systemic views in Russia known to us was Theodosius the Kosoy. His preaching was quite accessible: only the Bible was accepted, Church dogmas, principles and the entire hierarchy of the clergy were denied. Kosoy was captured, but with the help of his friends, he escaped imprisonment and went to Lithuania, where he continued to preach his teachings, and then joined the anti-Trinitarian radicals of the Reformation.13
Kosogo's preaching activity was notable: contemporary authors of the heresy ranked the Eastern "Bahamed" or Mohammed, the Western "Martin" or Luther, and the Russian Theodosius Kosogo. It must be said that this comparison was simply a demagogic formula: neither in the content of their teachings nor in their place in the ethnogenesis of Mohammed, Luther and Theodosius the Kosoy are at all alike.
Muhammad was the creator of a new world religion, which was associated with the phase of the passionate rise of an entire super-ethnos - the Muslim world.
Luther, on the contrary, was a man of the phase of the decline of passionate tension - the phase of breakdown, and his preaching was not a new word. Sermons calling for the Reformation - the correction of the shortcomings of the Catholic Church - had been preached in Western Europe before Luther: Hus in Bohemia and Wycliffe in England had said the same thing. Moreover, even his opponents, the hierarchs of the Catholic Church, recognized Luther's denunciations as correct. No one argued that the granting of indulgences had turned into a trade, that "blatant" appointments to church positions were evil, that the ignorance of priests was no less evil. But while agreeing with Luther's arguments, the Catholic prelates argued that it was up to the Holy See to cure the church's ills. True, they themselves did nothing to remedy the situation. Because of that is where the controversy began. The "physical" basis of the Reformation was the split in the integrity of the "Christian world," caused by the sharp decline in its passionarity after it emerged from its acmatic phase. Europe was divided into Protestant and Catholic, and this division took place at the end of Western European ethnogenesis, not at its beginning.
In Russia, the 16th century was the beginning of the acmatic phase, so the sermons of Theodosius Kosogo and his follower Matvei Bashkin resonated only among a small part of the population, which formed heretical sects. The creation of anti-systemic sects in the acmatic phase reminded much more of the episodes of the Albigoy wars in France, the Bogumilian and Pavlikian movements in Byzantium, and the karmat movements in the Muslim world, but not of the events of the European Reformation. The ideas of Huss, Wycliffe, and Luther did not contain anything of the essence of the heresy of Novgorod, which was destroyed at the beginning of the 16th century, and nothing like what Kosoy preached. Kosoy's preaching was not a borrowing from the West or the East. It was a particular expression of that negative perception of the world which is always the consequence of the close contact between two super-ethnoses.
A negative worldview, like a positive worldview, is associated with the creation of specific philosophical, religious or political concepts, which are intended least of all to prove someone's rightness or to convince one's opponents. After all, the expression of a worldview does not require logical proof. For example, some people believe that dogs can and should be beaten, while others believe that defenseless animals should not be beaten. Neither of them will give you any proof: everyone is obviously right, they feel it. One of them says, "What a pig - he took a dog and hit it! And the other one says, "What are you, stupid or something? Why don't you hit it, it's a dog!"
(13) Antitrinitarians are a heretical sect that denies the Holy Trinity.
Э. Sokolovsky. Ivan the Terrible in monastic attire
Attitudes to dogs seem trivial, but it is precisely such behavioral trivialities that make up the global sympathies and antipathies of ethnic and super-ethnic significance. This is why it is impossible to use logical arguments to reconcile people whose views on the origins and essence of the world are polar oposites, because they come from radically different perceptions of the world.
Some perceive the material world and its diversity as good, others as unconditional evil. The latter feeling of the world, embodied in Russia in the movement of Novgorod strygolniks, then in the heresy of the "Judaizers", in the 16th century received its most vivid expression in the oprichnina (1565-1572). The phenomenon of oprichnina, like no other, has long attracted the attention of historians and pre-revolutionary: N.M. Karamzin, S.M. Solovyov, S.F. Platonov - and modern ones: S. B. Veselovsky, A. A. Zimin, R. G. Skrynnikov, and D. N. Al'shitz.
The actual events of the oprichnina are described by them very well in a number of capital works, and we will not dwell on these well-known facts. Let us note the details and points of direct relevance to ethnic history. It should be said that historians of the 20th century, in keeping with the spirit of the times, tried to find a social sense in the phenomenon of oprichnina, for it was believed that a person should not engage in actions that were not socially conditioned or economically disadvantageous to any class or classes. However, attempts to define the social structure of oprichnina were unsuccessful: there were boyars, and "clerics", and villeins among oprichniks. All of them, on the contrary, were "free atoms", which were separated both from their social groups and from their super-ethnic systems. Completely breaking with their former lives, the oprichniks could not exist anywhere but in the entourage of Tsar Ivan IV, taking advantage of his disposition. And what social meaning could their behavior contain?
The oprichnina was created by Ivan the Terrible in a fit of madness in 1565 and officially existed for seven years. The task of the oprichniks was "to plague the treason of the sovereign," and "treason" was to be defined by the same oprichniks. Thus, they could kill any man, declaring him a traitor. A single accusation was all it took to carry out any sentence, any punishment. The mildest punishments were beheading and hanging, but the oprichniks also burned at the stake, quartered, skinned, froze in the snow, poisoned with dogs, and impaled on stakes.
Particularly horrific was the massacre suffered in 1570 in Novgorod, where almost the entire population was exterminated. Even babies were thrown into the icy waters of the Volkhov River. They also undertook to reform morals: Novgorodians liked to drink on holidays, but it was declared that it was forbidden to get drunk. Those caught drunk were whipped and thrown into the same Volkhov ice-holes.
At the massacre of Novgorod as well as at other similar "actions" many boyars died, but the most important (modern historians unlike historians of XIX century have paid attention to it) was that common people: clerks, posadsky, peasants also suffered. After all, oprichniks, executing a boyar, killed his servants, peasants were taken away and driven off their own land. The result of the oprichnina was an absolutely unbearable situation, about which Count A. K. Tolstoy spoke well:
The brass toll is rumbling over Moscow;
The Tsar in his humble garb is rattling;
Whether he calls back to his former peace.
Or does he bury his conscience forever?
But he often and measuredly strikes the bell,
And the people of Moscow hearken to the toll,
And pray, full of fear,
That the day may pass without execution.
In answer to the ruler's chime the towers,
Vyazemsky's fierce bell tolls with him,
All the oprichnja's darkness is ringing,
And Vaska Gryaznoy, and Malyuta,
And here, proud of his beauty,
With a maiden's smile, with a serpent's soul,
John's favourite calls,
God's rejected Basmanov.
Thus, the main content of the oprichnina was completely unprecedented and senseless murders for the sake of murders. However, the most terrible and essential ethnic characteristic of the oprichnina was that both the tsar and his oprichniks were absolutely convinced of the goodness of their monstrous atrocities. At first, while killing the body, Ivan also sought to "kill the soul" - bodies were cut into little pieces, and there was, and still is, a prejudice in Russian popular orthodoxy that a dead man "without a body" cannot stand in the Day of Judgment. Then the tsar began to enter the names of his victims into the synodik, held memorial services for them, and sincerely considered his repentance to be entirely sufficient for a model Orthodox Christian. Moreover, Grozny, as A. M. Panchenko has aptly noted, created a very special conception of tsarist power. He regarded tsarist greatness as equal to God's greatness and therefore deprived his subjects of the right to discuss his deeds in any way.
А. Novoskoltsev. The murder of Metropolitan Philip by Malyuta Skuratov
Thus, in Oprichnina we are confronted in pure form with what is characteristic of every anti-system: Good and Evil change places. The anti-systemic nature of the oprichniks' worldview is expressed not only in their behavior, but even in their name. The old Russian word oprich, meaning "besides", gave contemporaries a reason to call the Terrible's comrades-in-arms tiny, and this word has a definite natural and philosophical meaning. Here is why. A Christian understands hell as a place of torment for sinners. Hell is "pitch black". As we would say today, it is an emptiness, a vacuum in which there is not and cannot be anything material, "corporeal". In those days it was called "nothingness," considering it the very essence of Evil. So, the overcomers are people obsessed with hatred for the world, servants of a metaphysical absolute evil. As we can see, our ancestors were well able to comprehend the essence of things.
Russia was saved from the horror of oprichnina, oddly enough, by the Crimean Khan. In the midst of the Livonian War, the Terrible managed to make peace with the Crimeans. The agreement stipulated that Khan would not raid Russia, and so Ivan the Terrible ordered to withdraw most of the regular army from the southern border and sent them to the west, to Livonia. But the Crimean khan violated the treaty, with cavalry detachments broke through the weakened border, bypassed the barriers that stood around Moscow, and attacked the capital (1571). The Tartars fired incendiary arrows at Moscow, causing the wooden city to burn out in three hours. The fire was a colossal disaster: the people, even those who survived, lost all their possessions and many died in the flames or suffocated in the smoke. It was necessary to repel the Crimeans' attack, and on behalf of the tsar it was ordered to gather all who could bear arms, including, of course, the oprichniks. And here is where the "special people" showed themselves. Oprichniks either simply deserted, or pretended to be infirm and ill, as they used to say at the time, "declared themselves to be in mute condition. Killing the defenseless, they proved unable to fight an armed and powerful enemy.
The heads of the leaders of the oprichnina, frightened by Tatar bows and sabers, fell on the scaffold. Prince Vyazemsky, Prince Mikhail Cherkassky, Vassily Gryaznoy and voi-voda Alexei Basmanov were also executed. Alexei Basmanov's son Fyodor was offered his life if he would agree to cut his father's throat, and he agreed. Ivan kept his promise: Fedor's life was spared - he was shackled, sent north, imprisoned, and allowed to die there.
"Malyuta's Son-in-Law."
The end of the oprichnina (1572) did not mean the end of the anti-system. Only the top of the oprichniks were executed, and not all of them. For example, Malyuta Skuratov, the most terrible of them, died in the Livonian War after the defeat of oprichnina. And although oprichnina as an institution was destroyed, it could not but leave consequences. Most of the people who had been oprichniks survived. Some of them were turned without any privileges into the servant nobility, some went to become monks, some - to the prikazi. And yet former oprichniks remained themselves: having retained their heads, they felt and thought just as they did before the liquidation of the oprichnina. In addition, many boyars, connected in one way or another with the oprichniks, remained at court and in power. One such boyar was Boris Godunov. Everyone knows the characterization given to him by Alexander Pushkin. Pushkin, through the mouth of his literary hero, assesses the first aspects of Boris' accession:
What an honour for us, for all Russia! Yesterday's slave, a Tartar, Maliuta's son-in-law, the hangman's son-in-law and the hangman himself at heart, Will take the crown and the mantle of Monomakh...
In this description Pushkin omits much, although as a fine thinker and brilliant poet he later draws an image of Godunov quite close to the historical prototype. Boris Godunov was of Tatar ancestry, but his ancestors had left the Horde when Ivan Kalita, i.e. 200 years before his birth, so of course his background could not be decisive. "Yesterday's slave" belonged to a large boyar family and was himself an okolnichy under Ivan the Terrible. The okolnichy was the second most senior rank after the boyar. So, they called trusted people who were near the king, his advisers. Boris Godunov was a clever man and an excellent administrator, which is why he was promoted under Ivan the Terrible, and after his death he headed the government, which was facilitated by the fact that Boris's sister was married to Ivan's son, Tsar Feodor.
The gutless, kind and pious Feodor, who began his day by praying: "Grant, O Lord, to do no harm to anyone," was "at the complete will" of Godunov, who practically ruled the country on his behalf autocratically. The first measures taken Godunov after the death of Ivan the Terrible were: the strengthening of borders, the conclusion of an honorable peace with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the restoration of the peasant economy. In addition, there was a successful war with the Swedes. With the beginning of Boris's reign, the people, according to contemporaries, "rested."
Н. Nekrasov. Boris Godunov examines the map his son is learning from
Opposition to Godunov's policy consisted, on the one hand, of opponents of the oprichnina, and on the other, of its supporters, but opponents of Godunov himself. After all, in a passionate sub-ethnos, which was the nobility of the 16th century, each passionarius is the enemy of all other passionarians, and since they disturb him, he shovels them away without remorse. When the boyar Bogdan Belsky attempted to seize power in Moscow, and even occupied the Kremlin with his serfs, posing as a regent, Godunov elbowed him so hard that Belsky was exiled to the Lower Volga.
Vigorous domestic policy and strengthening of borders constantly demanded money, and that is why in 1579 Godunov was forced to introduce the serfdom, i. e. to abolish St. George's Day, on which peasants were allowed to pass from one master to another. It was determined that each peasant must live and work permanently where he lived and worked at the time the decree was issued. Of course, the prohibition on changing owners hit the peasants very hard. And Boris Fedorovich, in an effort to compensate for the damage, allowed us peasants to write any number of denunciations against our masters, and ordered us to accept these denunciations for consideration.
Now, if any boyar said to his serf, "Ivan, how shitty your work is, is that a smell; what are you doing, you must have slept half the day?" - the latter calmly objected: "Not at all, boyar, why are you bothering me?" - and was punched in the teeth. Then Ivan went to a literate man, and there were always such, and for a "small bribe" quickly wrote a denunciation that the boyar blasphemed the sovereign and wanted to flee to Lithuania.
All this shows that Boris Godunov was a true reformer and a just, though tough, man in his own way: he wanted everyone to be treated equally badly. Of course, the order established by Godunov was devoid of the extremes and atrocities that took place under Ivan the Terrible. However, his reign, which officially began in 1598, after the death of Feodor, could be hardly called a police state. It was a rather harsh regime for the whole population. No one felt safe for even a minute; acquaintances, servants, and relatives were always able to inform on people, and the consequences could be most unfortunate. True, there were few executions; the "thieves" were mostly sent into exile, but exile would not be a happy outcome either. It is interesting that the first (under Fyodor) to be sent into exile beyond the Ural Mountains, in Tobolsk, was not a man, but the bell of the Uglich cathedral. All the "fault" of the bell was that it rang about the death of Tsarevich Dmitry. Following the bell went the people.
Thus, the government of Boris Godunov, despite its very sensible foreign policy, despite the fact that the country's economic life had been improved, large amounts of provision had been made, and the tax system had been put in order, it was not popular with the people. Dissatisfaction with Boris's policies matured in all classes and was principally due to the "vestiges of the past", i.e. the legacy of Ivan the Terrible's reign under Boris in the form of the torture and the system of total snitching. General dissatisfaction had to find a way out, and it found it in support of the Impostor.
А. Moravov. The Assassination of Tsarevich Dmitry
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