Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/18

viii gentleness, politeness, consideration, that made it possible to mingle, and bray, and melt twenty diverse races into the compact block which is the Russia of to-day! That Ivan IV., in the course of his work, may have gone somewhat beyond the atrocity usual in his century, may be. We will go back to that. But both in legendary and in critical history the surname of 'the Terrible' has become synonymous with an unreasonable and inexcusable ferocity, purely barbarous in its origin, and carried to madness in its manifestations. To anybody who knows the power there is in words the consequence cannot be doubted: the word has set its false hallmark on the thing.

The evocation of the man and his surroundings cannot, indeed, be parted from some hideous sights and my readers must brace their nerves to meet some severe shocks. Yet athwart these gloomy visions they will perceive that of which I have spoken—the sunrise. The bright sun, the red sun, of the rhapsodists: in their tongue the two adjectives are one and the same. A blood-stained sun, lighting up a gloomy landscape. That, again, is another matter. The ideal here sought and gained is not, perhaps, the most seductive in the world's history; but an ideal it is, and it gave, and still gives, the law to a great nation.

In the last Rurikovitchy who ruled—for Feodor was a mere shadow—Kaveline, one of the leaders of the Slavophil school, has already recognised 'the central figure' of his country's history. Since then attempts at posthumous rehabilitation and apotheosis have so multiplied as to reach a not less evidently excessive point in the other direction. I shall endeavour to determine, between these opposing currents, what is truth and what justice.

It has not appeared to me possible to begin this study without preceding it by a general view of the geography, political, social, and intellectual condition, and habits and customs of a country into which, even nowadays, the historian must penetrate in the guise of an explorer. To these subjects the first four chapters of the book are devoted. Their length and detail must be excused; without them I should have run the risk of failing to make myself understood, and of talking