Russia under the Old regime

74

1666-7 wrote an invaluable account of Moscow's government, began his narrative with the assertion that Ivan iv became 'tsar and Great Prince of all Rus'' from the instant he had conquered Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia.22 The title 'White Tsar' (Belyi Tsar), occasionally used by Russian rulers in the sixteenth century, in all probability refers to 'White Bone', the clan of the descendants of Genghis Khan, and may represent another attempt to link up with the Mongol ruling dynasty.

Authentic documentation on the political theory of Russian kingship during its formative phase is very scarce. But there is enough authenticated evidence about the political attitudes of the Moscow court to permit some generalizations on the subject. Westerners who visited Russia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were struck by the arrogance they encountered in Moscow. Possevino, a Jesuit ambassador sent by the Pope to Ivan iv, found the tsar convinced that he was the strongest and wisest ruler in the world. When, in response to these boasts, Possevino delicately reminded him of other illustrious Christian princes, Ivan asked - contemptuously rather than incredulously - 'How many of them are there in this world?' (Quinam isti sunt in mundo?). The people of Moscow, Possevino found, shared their ruler's view of himself, for he heard them say:

God alone and our Great Master [Magnus Dominus] (that is, our Prince) know this. This our Great Master knows all. With one word he can unravel all the knots and solve all the difficulties. There exists no religion whose rites and dogmas he is not familiar with. Whatever we have, whether we ride properly, or are in good health, all this we owe to the clemency of our Great Master. Possevino adds that the tsar assiduously cultivated this faith among his people.23

Toward foreign ambassadors, especially if they came from the west, the Moscow court liked to display deliberate rudeness, as if to show that in its eyes they represented rulers of inferior rank. As Moscow perceived it, a true sovereign had to meet three tests: he had to be of ancient lineage, he had to have come to the throne by hereditary right, and he had to be independent of any other power, external as well as internal.2* Moscow was exceedingly proud of its ancient lineage, which it considerably extended by connecting itself to the Roman imperial house of Augustus. From the heights of this spurious genealogical tree it could look down on almost all contemporary royal houses. As concerns the manner of accession, here too the principle of inheritance was greatly stressed; a true king had to be patrimonial (votchinnyi) not elected (posazhennyi). As long as the Polish throne was occupied by a hereditary monarch, Sigismund Augustus, Ivan iv addressed the king of Poland as 'brother'. But he refused to address Sigismund's successor, Stephan Bathory, in the same manner because this king had been elected to office. The greatest importance of all was attached to the criterion of independence. A ruler was a true sovereign or samoderzhets (autokrator) only if he could do with his realm as he pleased. Limitation on royal authority was called urok (instruction) and a limited monarch was an uriadnik ('man under contract' or 'on commission'). Whenever the question of establishing relations with a new foreign power confronted tsarist Moscow it made careful inquiries to determine whether its ruler was indeed in every way his own master - not only in respect to other states, which was standard procedure in western diplomacy as well, but also within his own realm. An early example of such practice occurred in 1532 when the Emperor Babur of the newly founded Moghul dynasty of India sent an embassy to Moscow to establish 'amicable and brotherly' relations with the Great Prince of Moscow, Basil III. Moscow's response to this overture was negative. The Great Prince 'did not order to be brothers with him [Babur] because he was not familiar with his state, and it was not known whether he was a sovereign or under contract'.26 These assumptions were also spelled out in a letter which Ivan iv sent in 1570 to Queen Elizabeth:

We thought that you lord it over your domain, and rule by yourself, and seek honour for yourself and profit for your realm. And it is for these reasons that we wanted to engage in these affairs with you. But [now we see that] there are men who rule beside you, and not only men [liudi] but trading boors [muzhiki torgovye] [who] concern themselves not with our sovereign safety, and honours and income from our lands, but seek their own merchant profit.* Ultimately, only two sovereigns met the high standards set by Moscow: the Turkish Sultan and its own Great Prince - the very two rulers Bodin had singled out as Europe's 'seigneural' monarchs. We can now understand Ivan iv's scornful reaction to Possevino's mention of other 'illustrious' Christian kings.

To conclude the discussion of patrimonial kingship in early modern Russia, attention must be drawn to an interesting etymological fact. Among early Slavs two words were used interchangeably to designate the paterfamilias with full authority over the family's possessions as well as the lives of its minor members (whom he could sell into slavery). These words were gospodin (or gospod) and gosudar' (or gospodar). These

* Iurii V.Tolstoi, Pervye sorok let snoshenii mezhdu Rossiieiu i Anglieiu, 1553-1593 (St Petersburg 1875), P- I09- The opening sentence of this passage reads in Russian: 'I my chaiali togo chto ty na svoem gosudarstve gosudarynia i sama vladeesh i svoei gosudar'skoi chesti smotrish i svoemu gosudarstvu pribytka.' The contemporary English translator did not know what to make of this, so strange was the patrimonial language to his ears. He omitted the phrase 'and rule by yourself ('i sama vladeesh') and translated 'gosudarstvo' and its derivatives variously as 'rule', 'land', and 'country' (ibid., p. 114) which, as we shall shortly see, these words did not mean at all.