Page:Ivan the Terrible - Kazimierz Waliszewski - tr. Mary Loyd (1904).djvu/296

 272 This is the essential part of the business. It may be, too, that what we see here is the unconscious expression of another feeling besides those of hatred and vengeance. If Ivan, when he fought against the boïars, was not defending the fundamental principles of Russian life—the absolute power, Orthodoxy, nationality—as some writers have asserted, he was certain protecting the integrity of the common fatherland after a more general fashion. Kourbski, as we have seen, was no less orthodox and no less Russian than the most fanatical of his peasants, and devotion to the absolute power can hardly, at that period at all events, be taken to be a feature in the popular psychology of a country in which the memory of the ancient viétchié had not entirely died out. But when Kourbski and his likes entered into secret intercourse with Poland they were betraying their Sovereign and their country. They were conspiring with the foreigner, and treason in every form, dogging Ivan's steps, crushed twenty times over in its own blood, and perpetually raising its head afresh, is the leitmotiv of all the poems which take the Terrible for their hero.

As to the origin of this universal treason, which in itself justifies all the Groznyï's violence, the legend gives an oddly suggestive hint, in connection with which the popular logic would seem to be at fault. This is an accident which not infrequently occurs. Ivan, who numbers all the Kings of the earth among his vassals, as the Tsar of a legend should, calls on them to send him the tribute they owe. They reply: 'We will send thee the tribute, and we will add twelve hogsheads of gold to it, if thou canst guess these three riddles.' In such matters, as we have already seen, all the wisdom of the Sovereign's ordinary counsellors, whether boïars or Princes, is of no avail. The man to help the Tsar out of his difficulty is a poor carpenter, who is promised one of the hogsheads of gold as his reward. But the Sovereign mixes the gold with sand, and the moujik, guessing the imposture as he has guessed the riddles, thus addresses him: 'Thou shalt be punished even as thou hast sinned; thou hast brought treachery into this land, and from treachery thou shalt suffer, more than any other man!' (Rybnikov, 'Collection of Popular Songs,' ii. 232–236).

The populace is an enfant terrible! One more witness must be quoted, and a weighty one. Chancellor, an English traveller who was a spectator of the sanguinary executions ordered by Ivan, is moved by them to the following reflection, which, from a purely practical point of view indeed, expresses the opinion of the enlightened and polished men of his period: 'Would to God our own stiff-necked rebels could be taught their duty to their Prince after the same fashion!' ('Hakluyt Collection,' i. 240).