Ivan the Terrible as a problem of Russian Philosophy of History

Gorokhov Pavel Aleksandrovich Doctor of Philosophy Professor; Department of Jurisprudence and Humanities; Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (branch in Orenburg) 460000, Russia, Orenburg region, Orenburg, Kuracha str., 26 erlitz@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

Disputes about the historical significance and assessment of the figure of Ivan IV the Terrible do not stop not only in Russian, but also in world historical science. The classic works of N.M. Karamzin, S.M. Solovyov, V.O. Klyuchevsky, R. Whipper, S.F. Platonov are republished annually, in which the figure of the first Russian autocrat is considered and evaluated.

Any major historian is not only a conscientious chronicler who narrates historical events, but also a thinker who seeks to assess the course of the historical process and evaluate the heroes and antiheroes of history sub specie aeternitatis, "from the point of view of eternity." Using this expression, Benedict Spinoza meant eternal and universal truth, independent of the contradictions of changing modernity. Not only talented historians, but also writers, poets and artists have their own philosophy of history – although most often not expressed in a clear and systematic way. Therefore, it is possible to talk about the presence of certain historiosophical ideas as an integral part of the philosophical worldview in relation to any significant historian, whose works have an impact not only on specialists, but also on the broad strata of educated society. Through figures of Ivan the Terrible's scale, historians and philosophers consider such important historiosophical problems as the relationship between the people and state power, politics and morality, the role of personality in the historical process.

But both artists and poets turn to history when they reflect on the laws of history, on the hidden mechanisms of fateful events. Shakespeare, in Henry IV, ingeniously formulated the essence of the philosophy of history when he put such words into Warwick's mouth:

There is a certain order in the life of all people,

That the nature of the past days reveals.

Having understood it, it is possible to predict

With a certain precision, the coming move

Events that have not yet been born,

But in the depths of the present lurk

Like seeds, the germs of things.

Their time will sit them out and grow them up ^[33]

The philosophy of history not only seeks to explain the deep essence of the events of the past, but also poses and tries to resolve ideological issues closely related to the spiritual and moral content of history. After all, our modernity, filled with contradictions, is rooted in the past, it is connected with it by strong economic, socio-cultural and axiological ties. The main task of the philosophy of history is an attempt to identify some objective patterns of the historical process, to discover the "laws of history" and not only to find the blissful traces of the past in the present, but also to help overcome the harmful effects of past eras.

From the "History of Russia" by Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov (1789) ^[35] to the relatively recently published scientific works of V. Kobrin ^[17], B. Flori ^[29] and D. Volodikhin ^[6;7] and fictionalized biographies of the tsar written by historian E. Radzinsky ^[23] and writer A. Bushkov ^[4], understanding Grozny and his era went through a number of important stages. Historians, philosophers and public opinion mutually influenced each other, dialectically shaping the image of Tsar Ivan the Terrible in an effort to create the most objective representation of him. The role of literature, painting and cinema is significant, but writers and artists draw images of the past and give them a historiosophical assessment based on the works of historians and philosophers. Therefore, the role of historians and philosophers in shaping public opinion is extremely great, and it is not for nothing that Alexander Pushkin, himself a talented historian and a brilliant thinker, wrote with friendly irony about N.M. Karamzin's great work that "everyone, even secular women, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, hitherto unknown to them. She was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia seemed to have been found by Karamzin, just as America was found by Columb" ^[22]. But even geniuses of the scale of Karamzin and Pushkin are children of their era and inevitably bear its unique imprint in their work, allowing descendants to judge all the advantages and disadvantages of this era.

If historians, in assessing the deeds of Ivan the Terrible, try to rely on the facts available in fairly extensive sources for that era, then public consciousness, the very "popular opinion" that A.S. Pushkin spoke about in the drama "Boris Godunov", is formed according to its own laws, sometimes very different from the logic of common sense and historical facts. And the philosophy of history cannot ignore this fact, because it is closely related to the problem of the formation of historical memory. Karamzin also exclaimed at the end of volume IX of his "History of the Russian State" that "History is more vindictive than the people!" ^{[15, p.279]} and stated that "... the good fame of Ioannov outlived his evil glory in the national memory: the lamentations fell silent, the victims decayed, and the old traditions were eclipsed by the newest; but the name of Ioannovo shone the acquisition of the three Mongol kingdoms was reminiscent of the Sudebnik: the evidence of terrible deeds lay in book depositories, and for centuries the people saw Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberia as living monuments of the Conqueror Tsar; they revered in him the famous culprit of our state power..., rejected or forgot the name of the Tormentor given to him by his contemporaries... to this day he is called only the Terrible without distinguishing the grandson from the grandfather, so named by ancient Russia more in praise than in reproach" ^{[15, p.279]}.

Historians, for whom facts, as we know, are bread, evaluated the figure of Ivan the Terrible in literature and art differently. Writers and poets, painters and sculptors, composers and artists created images of the terrible tsar, many of which entered the mass consciousness and became decisive for him, rising to the historiosophical level, although sometimes they significantly departed from the historical truth.

This work is an attempt to examine the figure of Ivan the Terrible through the prism of philosophy of history and public consciousness, including through works of Russian literature and art. There are several points of view on the number of forms of social consciousness. Social consciousness includes such forms as science, morality, legal awareness, religion, art and philosophy as a systematic understanding of reality expressed in categories and concepts. But public consciousness, as noted above, can also be understood as a "popular opinion", in the formation of which the role of writers, poets and artists is great. They often come to the truth intuitively, therefore, the translation of the philosophical content of literary works and works of painting and sculpture into the language of classical conceptual philosophy is inevitably accompanied by certain losses.

The methodological basis of this research is historical-philosophical and comparative-historical analysis, cultural approach.

Due to the excessive vastness of the topic, the author used and analyzed only the most characteristic and significant examples illustrating the evolution of the views of Russian historians, philosophers and writers on the figure of Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan IV through the prism of Russian historiosophical consciousness

Public consciousness is a very changeable and unstable substance. But, in fact, even during Grozny's lifetime, there were three main assessments of his personality and deeds that continue to live to this day: 1) impartial and accusatory, 2) uncritical and glorifying, and 3) neutral and objective.

In fact, the main elements of a critical and negative attitude towards the deeds of the Terrible were laid by his childhood playmate, commander and Prince Andrei Kurbsky, who was only two years younger than the tsar and knew all the circumstances of Ivan's difficult orphan childhood and the peculiarities of his contradictory and cruel nature, which were fully manifested even before the tsar's marriage to Anastasia Romanov and the wedding to the kingdom in 1547. Historians subsequently repeatedly noted the goodness of the change that occurred in the young Ivan, who became the husband of a young beauty, and therefore they tell from the time of Karamzin and up to the present day about the "terrible change in the soul of the tsar" since the death of Anastasia in 1560.

Kurbsky was a member of the Elected Rada and, like Priest Sylvester and nobleman Alexei Adashev, enjoyed the full confidence of the tsar. After the tsar cooled down to his former associates, Prince Kurbsky fled to Lithuania on April 30, 1564 due to the threat of disgrace, leaving his family in Russia. Kurbsky's defection to the side of Lithuanian Prince Sigismund not only became a terrible blow for Ivan, but also served as an occasion for the creation of authentic masterpieces of medieval Russian literature and journalism.

A famous correspondence ensued between the tsar and the disgraced prince, which marked the beginning of Kurbsky's accusatory assessment of Tsar Ivan in Russian public opinion. In this correspondence, Ivan justified his view on the rights of the autocratic tsar, who is arbitrarily free to grant or execute his slaves. Ivan's concept formed the basis of the historiosophy of autocratic power in Russia. Kurbsky, in response, reproached and denounced the tsar not only for his cruelty, but also for the mistakes of public administration. In the correspondence, there is a clash of two concepts of public administration, two varieties of philosophy of politics, which in a modified form have survived to our time.

In addition to letters to Grozny, Kurbsky wrote "The Story of the Grand Duke of Moscow", where he first expressed the idea of two stages in the reign of Ivan, and denounced the tsar's tendency to trust informers and slanderers who fanned the inherent suspicion and natural cruelty of the tsar. Kurbsky asks the king: "And if they praise and exalt you as a great and invincible and brave king, then you really were like that when you lived in the fear of God. When he was deceived and seduced by them, what did he get? Instead of your courage and bravery, you have become a runner and a coward in front of the enemy. The great Christian tsar ran in front of the Basurman army in front of our eyes in a wild field" ^[18].

Kurbsky died in exile a year before Grozny's death. But the concept of Ivan's life and rule created by him has remained in the public consciousness to this day, forming in the popular consciousness the image of a tyrant tsar, insane in his anger and illogical in his likes and dislikes.

However, researchers noted that in folk songs and legends, the negative features of Grozny practically disappeared, and instead of a tyrant, a portrait of a just monarch appeared, who appreciates justice and is ready to punish the boyars for disobedience and betrayal. In fact, Ivan himself gave rise to such an approach to assessing his personality when, starting the Oprichnina, in his address to the people he stressed that his anger was directed against the traitorous boyars, and not against ordinary people. It was the masses of the people who initiated the return of the tsar from the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda in February 1565, after which he demanded "special destinies" for himself. Thus, the image of a just and formidable tsar began to take shape in the popular consciousness.

Therefore, even during the life of Grozny, a positive assessment of his rule began to form, not taking into account crimes and despotism, but only glorifying the glorious deeds of the monarch. At first, this approach was observed in many chronicles of that time, but then it took on its own independent life, influencing the works of historians and philosophers. Already a Russian historian of the XVII century Andrey Lyzlov evaluates Ivan unequivocally positively in his "Scythian History" - especially his successes in the war with the Kazan Khanate. For Lyzlov, Grozny is "the bright victorious God–crowned tsar and Grand Duke John Vasilyevich of all Russia, the autocrat" ^[7].

Moreover, the apologists of the tsar did not come up with the idea that if it had not been for the devastation of the country as a result of the Oprichnina and the unsuccessful Livonian war, if not for the murder of his eldest son Ivan by the tsar, distraught with anger, and if not for that "negative selection", as a result of which there were practically no smart and initiative people left on the throne (a sad result of activity all tyrants in world history), then the dynasty of the Moscow Rurikovich would not have been interrupted and there might not have been a Time of Troubles in Russia! But history, alas, does not have a subjunctive mood.

In fact, the apologetics of the tsar continued in the XVIII century, when Vasily Tatishchev (1686-1750), an associate of Peter I, a statesman and historian, wrote The History of Russia. And in the XVIII century, two images of the tsar continued to separate from each other: a wise and formidable autocrat who cares about the welfare of the people, and a blood-sucking tyrant who, in his frenzy of cruelty, reached the extreme degree of insanity. Only Karamzin at the beginning of the XIX century, quite openly and based on the sources he found and analyzed, will tell about the crimes of Ivan the Terrible. In the XVIII century, both V.N. Tatishchev and M.V. Lomonosov (1711-1765), who in many ways expressed the mood of an educated society (very few in those days), adhered, if not to the explicit apologetics of Grozny, then at least to a neutral and striving to be objective position, although they did not focus much attention on atrocities and the outrages of the Oprichnina. Tatishchev gave a positive assessment of the reign of the Terrible and criticized those who saw in Grozny only a cruel tyrant. He did not trust Kurbsky's writings, considering the denunciations of the traitor prince to be an excessively biased and therefore completely biased historical source. For the same reasons Tatishchev did not recognize the value of the memoirs of foreigners who visited the Moscow Kingdom under Ivan the Terrible (notes by Heinrich Staden, Johann Taube, Richard Chancellor and other memoirists).

Lomonosov was more objective, because in his work The Concise Russian Chronicler, although he called Ivan "a cheerful, witty and brave sovereign," he also mentioned his crimes: "This sovereign executed the restless Novogorodians with ferocious punishment and killed his tsarevich Ivan in a steep anger, which after a brief illness was the cause of his death." ^[34].

Both Tatishchev, as an associate of Peter, and Lomonosov, who worked for the most part under the rule of the "daughter of Petrova" Elizabeth, laid the foundation for the historical trend that compares Ivan the Terrible and Peter I, highlighting precisely their qualities of statesmen who sought to construct a strong monarchical power. Since that time, this tradition has been closely rooted in the public consciousness and has not left it, having lived safely through the Soviet period up to our time. Peter's wisdom and rigidity were compared by many to Ivan the Terrible, and later to I.V. Stalin.

Major General and member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Ivan Boltin thought in the same vein, who in the second half of the XVIII century, under Catherine II, for the first time noticed the similarity of many historical processes that took place in Western Europe and Russia. Boltin based his works on the chronicles and writings of Tatishchev and Karamzin, but could not pass by the ideas of the French enlighteners. His assessment of Grozny is closer to a neutral one, taking into account the objective historical processes of that era. He sought to integrate the image of Ivan the Terrible into a single context of Western European history, which had an impact on the historiosophical and socio-political ideas of the educated noble society, including later the Decembrists.

For N.M. Karamzin (1766-1826), who wrote his great work "The History of the Russian State" as an official historiographer under Alexander I, Grozny seemed to be an ambiguous person. The historian also divided Ivan's reign into two large periods, the boundary between which was the death of his first wife Anastasia. But it was Karamzin who first told the Russian educated society about all the crimes of Ivan, which cannot be justified. Of course, Karamzin was much more objective than most of the sweeping critics of the tsar, because he writes with reverence about the military successes of Grozny, the conquest of Kazan, Astrakhan and the colonization of Siberia. Karamzin does not compare Grozny with Peter, on the contrary, he writes about the Russian people, who tolerated the tyrant "in order to have Peter the Great, Catherine the Second in the best of times" ^[36].