Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/166

 142 venience willed it. They were undisciplined, carping, as unaccustomed to obey as they were difficult to punish.

To protect the interest of the State in this dual system, and, instead of destroying both these elements, without knowing how to replace them, to set one against the other, weakening the stronger—the only one he had to fear—and strengthening the weaker and inoffensive; then, that first result attained, to strike hard, and rid himself of the standing menace; to keep the building intact, to preserve its good pillars, and pull down those that were in the way; to work out that historic evolution which, with slow but resistless force, was putting the Russia of the autocrat and the pomiéstia in the place of the ancient Russia of the appanaged Princes and the vottchiny—this was the plan on which Ivan, on a day yet to come, was to decide; and it was the only one that harmonized with the traditions and present necessities of his Empire.

This is the story which has hitherto been so ill understood; and the whole story of the opritchnina.

Ivan did not arrive at it suddenly. At the period which we have now reached he had probably allowed himself to drift astray between the two currents of thought, the novelty and boldness of which attracted his own open and enterprising mind. He lent an ear to the niéstiajatiéli, and probably encouraged Ivacha Peresviétov. He was feeling bis way, and was destined to begin with experiments, attempts, and compromises: These form the history of 1550–1551, and the events which fill them; the drawing up of a new Code and the assembling of an ecclesiastical council, which, thanks to that habit we have noticed of introducing lay representatives and discussing secular questions, marked an epoch in the political life of the country.

That collection into one volume of the laws and customs of France which had been the dream of the dying Louis XI. was not realized, as my readers know, until the days of Henri III. And was it not a mere codification, then? In Russia the codifiers of 1550–1551 had to amend the Soudiébnik of 1497, which had already endeavoured, under an exaggerated system of unification, to establish a uniform procedure and a unique judicial organization. This advance on Western legislation was, indeed, less real than apparent. The legislator of 1497 had hardly touched the ideas and judicial conceptions of the Rousskaïa pravda of the eleventh century, except where, as in one or two places, he adapted it to the point of view of his own period. Save as to procedure and matters of organization, he was content to transcribe the old Customary. His work