Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/269

 Rh generally speaking, to have been pushed back towards the far ends of the Empire. This was a reversal of the history of Rome, which assumed immediate authority over her most distant provinces, so as to draw the steel-clad circle of her legions round the heart of the Empire.

Towards the year 1572, the Opritchnina lost its original name. It was then called the Court (dvor). At that moment it already possessed all the characteristics of a regularly constituted State organization, and in its working, indeed, it preserved all the administrative forms of the old system, so much so that it is not easy to discover, from any document of that period, which of the two branches thus wedded together has issued it. In principle the Opritchnina did not even suppress the Miéstnitchestvo: it simply forbade the application of that system within its own borders. Its action and that of the Ziémchtchina ran on parallel and concerted lines, and both possessed a common centre in the Offices of War and Finance. Diaks attached to these two branches of the Government overlooked the distribution of the business connected with each. It seems probable, at least, that affairs followed this course, for the coexistence and concerted labours of the two sets of officials are an established fact, which suffices to destroy the legend of an Opritchnina confined to the duties of a mere political police force. In 1570, authentic documents show us the Opritchnina and the Ziémchtchina summoned to deliberate, through their respective representatives—all of them boïars—on questions connected with the Lithuanian frontier. The discussions were held separately, but an agreement was reached. There is no trace of any enmity or conflict. That very same year, and the next, detachments furnished by both organizations went campaigning together against the Tartars, and perfect harmony appears to have reigned between them.

The solution of the problem confronting Ivan furnished by the Opritchnina was certainly not wholly satisfactory. What was needed was something which would have annulled the twofold contradiction which afflicted his whole Empire: a contradiction in politics arising out of the fact that the historical march of events had endued the Sovereign with an absolute power founded on a democratic basis, which he was obliged to exercise through an aristocracy; a social contradiction resulting from the fact that this same Sovereign, in his quest of fresh food for the growing ambitions of his Empire, and to insure it, was forced into making over his productive class, bound hand and foot, to the arbitrary will of his non-producers, his 'men who serve,' his soldiers, and his tax collectors.

As far as the destruction of the aristocratic element is con-