Bell & Howell Information and Learning: Foreign text omitted ... THE ETERNAL TRAITOR Down centuries, Alexander Yanov has written, Ivan Terrible to Josef Stalin and beyond, whenever confrontation has arisen between individual and state, majority takes side of state, and political emigre is open to an accusation of treason. Even after Bolshevist revolutionaries made transition from traitors to rulers and turned old traitors into heroes, observes Yanov, one illustrious from old regime remained unforgiven-Prince Andrei Kurbskii: Only one verdict remained in force as if there had been no revolution, and this was verdict on Kurbsky.1 This is notoriously case in grotesque villainy of in Eizenshtein's film Ivan Terrible, but even liberal Dmitrii Likhachev referred to letters exchanged by and Ivan IV as correspondence between Ivan Terrible and a traitor.2 Russian historiography began to engage quarrel between Ivan IV and the traitor in eighteenth century. In first attempts to write a comprehensive, documented history of Russia, those of Tatishchev and of Shcherbakov, ideological lines are already drawn. Tatishchev, like later defenders of a centralized samoderzhavie, esteems Ivan as a good shepherd (dobryi pastyr) while at same time condemning boyars as intriguers and traitors.3 Conversely, Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov, a descendant of appanage princes of Chernigov, takes side of boyars. While formally condemning Kurbskii, he tacitly exculpates him and all others who fled from or suffered from Ivan's tyranny.4 Thereafter, Slavophiles, Decembrists, and other supporters of decentralized rule and those who extolled state functions of great prince's druzhina, would tend to take part of and boyars, while advocates of official nationality or of Hegelian conception of state would be likely to find Ivan IV objectively in right, even while sometimes deploring his brutality and erratic behavior. Kurbsk attracted attention of Romantics, owing in large measure to Karamzin's treatment of defector in ninth volume of his History of Russian State. Even while calling Ivan a tyrant, Karamzin set tone by placing Kurbsk just outside radius of forgiveness: Flight is not always treason; civil law cannot outweigh natural law of saving oneself from , a torturer, but taking up arms in service of Russia's enemies negates any sympathy that might have been shown him.5 Here is Richard Pipes's reading of Karamzin's uncompromising judgment: To [Karamzin] Kurbsk was a traitor, and so were boyars who in reign of Ivan IV and during Time of Troubles had tried to weaken monarchical power.... All these endeavors of many-headed hydra of aristocracy, as he called it, had been inspired by selfish motives and inevitably led to internecine conflicts. Aristocracy, judged by past experience, is incapable of providing firm authority. To be efficacious, political authority must not be divided.6 Vasilii Grigor'ev, a poet of Decembrist sympathies, typifies Karamzinian slant in poem Kniaz Andrei Kurbskii (1829) where defector is shown after warring against Russian forces at Polotsk: After coming to his motherland in company of enemies/The burst of passion in his soul abated/And he gazed in tears to east/And cursed bloody feast of swords.7 This version of as repentant and wracked with grief informs a remarkable series of works by Aleksandr Pushkin, Boris Fedorov, Faddei Bulgarin, and Baron Egor Rozen, among others, in which Kurbsk's (incorrectly named) son, abandoned along with his (also incorrectly named) mother by Kurbsk's sudden defection, expiates in later life treason and guilt of his father through heroic and fatal combat against Russia's foes. …