Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/158

 134 indulged to the very letter in the lyric effusions the chroniclers have put into his mouth, and of which he himself has given us several versions, he may very well have discoursed on the Red Square in similar terms and under similar circumstances, for he was always a great talker. But what was the object of the scenic effect and of his speech? In the young monarch's appearance before his assembled subjects the Slavophiles hail a striking example, an ideal relationship between the ruler and the ruled—a relationship rooted in love, a characteristic trait of the Slav race, the only one capable of conceiving such a basis. Many historians, on the other hand, have taken the whole thing to be an appeal to the popular imagination against the boïar domination. These are all fancies.

We have no sure information as to the composition of the assembly of 1550, but if we judge by those convoked on later occasions, the representation of, the popular element in it seems more than doubtful. We have nothing to prove that the representative principle existed in it in any form or to any extent whatever. A passage in the chronicle known as the 'Chronicle of Khrouchtchov,' a manuscript of doubtful origin preserved in the archives of the Moscow Foreign Office, has been interpreted in this sense. This work, like the 'Collection' by Macarius, to which I have already referred, is a 'book of degrees' (Stépiénnaia Kniga), a form of compilation very usual at that period. But at the very place in question, Monsieur Platonov ('Studies of Russian History,' 1903, p. 223) has detected an interpolation, probably dating from the second half of the seventeenth century, and which was most likely made under the influence of ideas which had only then come into vogue. It should be taken, therefore, to reflect the constitution of assemblies convened at a much later date, and under quite different conditions, by Ivan's successors. As to the assembly of 1550, Ivan himself has given us a piece of information which tends in quite a contrary direction. Speaking at a conciliable called in the following year, and referring to his speech on the Red Square, he gives us a glimpse of the reality hidden by a deceptive mise-en-scène and under the flowers of a fallacious rhetoric. At Moscow, people were rely easily satisfied with words, or rather some people there had a marvellous faculty for using coin of this sort in payment of certain intricate scores. No other race ever had so pronounced a taste for face values, fiction, circumlocution; and this time, again, Ivan took good care not to speak quite clearly. 'I have urged,' he said, 'all my boïars, officials, and provincial governors to reconcile themselves with all the Christians in the Empire.' If we compare and condense the