Ivan the Terrible by Andrei s> Pavlov Maureen Perrie (review)

Abstract

964 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 Pavlov, Andrei and Perrie, Maureen. Ivan the Terrible. Profiles in Power. Pearson-Longman, London and New York, 2003. ix + 234 pp. Figures. Maps. Notes. Chronology. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. ?JI4 99 (paperback). ANDREI PAVLOV of the Institute of Russian History, St Petersburg, and Maureen Perrie of the University of Birmingham have taken on the timely taskof writinga new book on politics under Ivan IV intended for the Western reader.The importance of the authors'undertakingis apparentin the context of the revisionist discourse which has exerted an ambiguous effect on the Westernscholarshipof Ivan IV. The revisionists,who are sometimes vaguely referred to as the Harvard sceptical school, have given a new impulse to source studiesby questioningthe validityof some traditionalsourceson Ivan's reign, mainly the correspondence between Ivan IV and A. M. Kurbskii.At the same time, the outright scepticism of revisionists prevented them from producing a book-length study of Ivan IV's reign and thereby caused stagnation in Western studies of Ivan. The Western reader thus had to be content with the Englishtranslationsof the biographiesof Ivan by the Russian imperial historian S. F. Platonov and the Soviet Marxist historian R. G. Skrynnikov.The Russian reader was in a more favourableposition after the appearance of the updated biography of the tsar written by B. N. Floria. Pavlov'sand Perrie'sbook is thus the firstmajor reinterpretationof the reign of Ivan IV publishedin the Westin the post-Soviet period. The main themes of the book under consideration are the territorial expansion of the Muscovite state under Ivan, the relationsbetween the ruler and the boyars, and the rituals and symbols of power. Pavlov and Perrie arrangetheir materialchronologically. They share a rational attitudeto Ivan IV's policy. The authorsalsopreferto interpretIvan'sbehaviourin termsof a semiotic analysisratherthan psychological explanations. They thinkthat the correspondence between the tsar and Kurbskii and Kurbskii's Histoy are genuine, though they acknowledge the need to verify these sources by using other materials. According to the authors, the main reasons behind the territorial expansion of Muscovy at the expense of the Kazan' and Astrakhan'khanates were the political and ideological (religious)considerations of the Muscovite ruling circles. The conquest of the Tatar states led to a major shift in the balance of power on the international arena, something which allowed Ivan to launch a war against his western neighbours. The authors explain the outbreak of the Livonian war in terms of the attempts of the Russian government to end the isolation of Muscovy from the Baltic trade routes and European markets. Russia stood at a crossroadsin the middle of the sixteenth century and the dynamic of relations between the ruler and his subjects depended on 'the balance of power in the countryand on the politicalwill of its leaders'(p. 55). The authors argue that the I 550S reforms were prompted both by the requirementsof the stateand the interestsof the nobility, the townspeople and peasantry who began to acquire a sense of their common identity as estates (sosloviia). They also contend that duringthe reforms'the leading role in local REVIEWS 965 government [. . .] passed to the elected institutionsof estate self-government' in the main territoryof centralRussia (p. 75). According to the authors, the boyars and embryonic social estates posed some constraintson the tsar'spower, somethingwhich causedIvan to establish his Oprichnina. 'The essence of the Oprichnina conflict lay [... ] in a disagreement between the tsar and his former associates concerning the way in which centralisationshouldbe implemented'(p. I 23).Since the Oprichnina was designed to suppressthe political independence of the estates, the I566 Assemblyof the Land 'cannotbe consideredto be a trulyestate-representative institution' (pp. 131-32). The authors agree with Platonov that Ivan's Oprichnina was directedagainstthe old princelyaristocracy. Not all readers will apparently be convinced by the social rationale for Ivan's politics proposed by Pavlov and Perrie. Their discussion of estates would have benefited from a definition of an estate. Muscovite local administrationwas a rathercomplex mixtureof elected and appointedofficials with considerableregionalvarietieseven in the heartlandof the realm. Pavlov and Perrie are very successful in integrating recent studies of Muscovite culturein theiraccount of Ivan'spolitics.Ivan'sregimemaintained itselfnot only through coercion, but also throughpublic ritualswhich 'helped to promote the integration and cohesion of...