Meanwhile^this defender of total autocracy_had_become thejirst ruler in Russian^istOTj_Jo_s^mmpn_„a representative national assembly: the zemsky sobor of 1566. This was an act of pure political improvisation on the part of this avowed traditionalist. In an effort to support an extension of the war into Lithuania, Ivan sought to attracTwandering western Russian noblemen accustomed to the aristocratic assemblies (sejmiki) of Lithuania, while simultaneously enlisting the new wealth of the cities by adopting the more inclusive European system of three-estate representation.89 As constitutional seduction gave way to military assault, Lithuania hastened to consummate its hitherto Platonic political link with Poland. The purely aristocratic "diet (sejm) that pronounced this union at Lublin in 1569 was far less broadly representative than Ivan's sobor of 1566; but it acquired, the importahTrbTe of electing the king of the new multi-national republic (Rzeczpospolitd) when the Jagellonian dynasty became extinct in 1572.
Ivan and his successors (like almost every other European house) participated vigorously in the parliamentary intrigues of this body, particu-
larly during the Polish succession crisis of 1586. Then, in 1598, when the line of succession came to an end in Russia also, they turned to the Polish procedure of electing a ruler-the ill-fated Boris Godunov-in a specially convened zemsky sobor: the first since 1566. For a quarter of a century thereafter these sobers became even more broadly representative, and were in many ways thestrpfeme political authority in the nation. Not only in 1598"" but in 1606, 1610, 1611, and 1613 roughly similar representative bodies made the crucial decisions on the choice of succession to the throne.90 / Despite many differences in composition and function, these councils aff / j shared the original aim of Ivan's council of 1566: to attract western Rus-!"-'| sians away from the Polish-Lithuanian sejm and to create a more effective I fund-raising body by imitating the multi-state assemblies of the North ^/European Protestant nations.91
Thus, ironically, this most serious of all proto-parliamentary challenges to Muscovite autocracy originated in the statecraft of its seemingly most adamant apologist. Increasingly torn by contradiction, Ivan brought the first printing press to Moscow and sponsored the first printed Russian book, The Acts of the Apostles, in 1564. Then, the following year, he let a mob burn the press and drive the printers away to Lithuania. He increased the imperial subsidies and the numbers of pilgrimages to monasteries, then sponsored irreverent parodies of Orthodox worship at the oprichnik retreat in Alexandrovsk. Unable to account for the complexities of a rapidly changing world, Ivan intensified his terror against Westernizing elements in the years just before abolishing the oprichnina in 1572. In 1570, he razed and depopulated Novgorod once again, and summarily executed Viskovaty, one of his closest and most worldly confidants. One year later, Moscow was sacked and burned by a sudden Tatar invasion. In 1575, Ivan-the first man ever to be crowned tsar in Russia-retired to Alexandrovsk and abdicated tKeTitle in favor of a converted Tatar khan. Though he soon resumed his rule, he used the imperial title much less after this strange episode/
Ivan's denigration of princely authority provided a shock that terror by
itself could not have produced on the toughened Muscovite mentality? The
. .image of the tsar as_Jeader-ofChristian empire, which IvanJn^donejio .-«-MtaucTTtoTmcourage, was severely damaged. The divinized prince-the focal point of all loyalties and "national" sentiment in this paternalistic society- had renounced his divinity. The image was impaired not so much by the fact that Ivan was a murderer many tinies~Qyef""as by the identity of two of his victims. In murdering Metropolitan Philip of Moscow in 1568, Ivan sought primarily to rid himself of a leading member of a boyar family suspected of disloyalty. But by murdering a revered First Prelate of the Church, Ivan
passed on to Philip something of the halo of Russia's first national saints, Boris and Gleb, who had voluntarily accepted a guiltless death in order to redeem the Russian people from their sin. Philip's remains were venerated in the distant monastery of Solovetsk, which began to rival St. Sergius at nearby Zagorsk as a center for pilgrimage. The close ties between the great monasteries and the grand dukes of Muscovy were beginning to loosen.
An even more serious shock to the Muscovite ideology was Ivan^ "^ murder of his son, heir, and namesake: Ivan, the tsarevich. The Tsar's claim to absolute kingship was based on an unbroken succession from the distant 1 apostolic and imperial past. Having spelled this genealogy out more fully 1 and fancifully than ever before, Ivan now broke the sacred chain with his 1 own hands. In so doing he lost some of the aura of a God-chosen Christian warrior andjQld Testament king, which had surrounded him since his* victory at Kazan.
The martyred Philip and Ivan became new heroes of Russian folklore; and the Tsar's enemies thus became in many eyes the true servants of "holy Russia." In the religious crisis of the seventeenth century both contending factions traced their ancestry to Philip: Patriarch Nikon, who theatrically transplanted his remains to Moscow, and the Old Believers, who revered him as a saint. In the political crises of the seventeenth century the idea was born that Ivan the_ Isareyich had survived after all, that there still existed a "true tsar" with unbroken links to apostolic times. Ivan himself had helped launch the legend by donating the unprecedented sum of five thousand rubles to the Monastery of St. Sergius to subsidize memorial services for his son.92
The struggle between the two became one of the most recurrent of all themesjn the popirlur songs of early modern Russia.93 The most dramatic of all nineteenth-century Russian historical paintings is probably Repin's crimson-soaked canvas of Ivan's murder of his son, and Dostoevsky entitled the key chapter in The Possessed, his prophetic novel of revolution, "Ivan the Tsarevich."
Ivan the Terrible was succeeded by a feeble-minded son Fedor, whose , death in 1598 (following the mysterious murder of Ivan's only other son, the young prince Dmitry, in 1591) brought to an end the old line of imperial -V* successionTThe"accession to the throne of the regent Boris Godunov represented a further affront to"the Muscovite mentality7Boris, who had a non-boyar, partly Tatar genealogy, was elected amidst venal political controversy by "a zemsky sobor, and with the connivance of the Patriarch of Russia (whose position had been created only recently, in 1589, and by the somewhat suspect authority of foreign Orthodox leaders). Kurbsky's anti-autocratic insistence that the Tsar seek council "from men of all the
people" was seemingly gratified by the official proclamation that Boris was chosen by representatives of "all the popular multitude."94
Once in power, Boris became an active and systematic Westernizer. He encoufagecHEe European practice of shaving. Economic contacts were greatly expanded at terms favorable to foreign entrepreneurs; thirty selected future leaders of Russia were sent abroad to study; important positions were assigned to foreigners; imperial protection was afforded the foreign community; Lutheran churches were tolerated not only in Moscow but as far afield as Nizhny Novgorod; and the crown prince of Denmark was brought to Moscow to marry Boris' daughter Xenia, after an unsuccessful bid by a rival ^Swedish prince.