Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/270

 246 cerned, the Opritchnina proved a failure. But it shook it sorely, and Ivan's plan probably did not go beyond this result. Apart from the great and mighty lords it enrolled, and by enrolling disarmed them, only an elect few of the aristocratic class escaped, such as Prince Ivan Feodorovitch Mstislavski and Prince Ivan Dmitriévitch Biélski, both of them placed at the head of the Ziémchtchina—two inoffensive utility actors. It destroyed all the political importance of the class, and the effect of this was to be manifest, even after Ivan's death, in the preponderating part played by parvenus created by him, such as Zakharine and Godounoy. Others of his subjects, of yet humbler extraction, peasants, Cossacks, Tartars, recruited in increasing numbers to fill the gaps caused by his confiscations and wholesale executions, not to mention his transplantings, ended by forming a comparatively numerous body, and a powerful weapon for levelling and democratic purposes. 'My father's boïars and my own have learnt to be traitors,' wrote Ivan to Vassiouchka Griaznoi, 'so we have resolved to call on you, vile varlets, and from you we expect fidelity and truth!' And Vassiouchka replied: 'You are like unto God! You make a little man into a great man!'

This revolution—for a revolution it certainly was—could not be accomplished without some kind of struggle. Everywhere, in the lowest classes, where it broke bonds that were centuries old, in the towns and country places, into which it introduced strange elements, on the great landed properties which it divided up, calling a new agricultural and industrial proletariat into existence, it wounded innumerable feelings and interests. I have already shown how, by destroying the ancient administrative autonomy of the peasants, now made subject to their new proprietors in all those matters as to which they had hitherto dealt directly with the State, it contributed, indirectly, to the establishment of serfdom. It had a more immediate effect in quickening the current of emigration amongst the elements thus disaggregated, and hastening, through the increase of the calls made on them, the exhaustion of the resources dependent on those elements. From this point of view, Ivan's undertaking is open to much blame, and his conflict with Poland was soon to demonstrate the weak side of a work in other respects useful, and no doubt even necessary.

Its execution was attended by excesses of various sorts, which cannot fail to attract severe judgment. This is the common law of all great crises of this kind, and few which have escaped it are known to history. But the historian cannot regard the Opritchnina from one point of view only, and he must allow for some undoubted exaggeration in all the various