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11. Internal Debate within the Party Hierarchy about the Rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible
- University of Wisconsin Press
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Internal Debate within the Party Hierarchy about the Rehabilitation of Ivan the Terrible The following is a draft of the only known official record testifying to the direct involvement of the party hierarchy in the campaign to rehabilitate Ivan the Terrible. This internal memorandum, written by A. S. Shcherbakov, the party’s ideology chief, assails A. N. Tolstoi’s play about the sixteenth-century tsar, which had been commissioned by the AllUnion Committee for Artistic Affairs in late or early . Its criticism of the play’s dramatic dimensions and failure to focus on Ivan’s qualities as a strong leader and state-builder clarify the priorities underlying the campaign.1 Shcherbakov’s memorandum exists in three drafts: a concise, signed version, dating to April , which is stored at the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation;2 a somewhat longer, unsigned version, located in the former Central Party Archive;3 and the longest, most detailed redaction, also from the Central Party Archive, which is presented here in print for the first time.4 Only a month after the first draft of the memorandum was completed, the head of the Committee for Artistic Affairs, M. B. Khrapchenko, published an article in the newspaper Literatura i isskustvo lambasting Tolstoi ’s play in almost precisely the same terms used in Shcherbakov’s memorandum, indicating a broad unanimity of views regarding the play within the party hierarchy.5 Later versions of the document attest to Shcherbakov’s continued opposition to Tolstoi’s plays. Shcherbakov’s intermediate draft was submitted to the Central Committee archive on December . The final draft was filed at the same archive on May , although it is clear from the language of this version that it too was written in or early in . Indeed, Tolstoi seems to have referred to it in as he rewrote the play to accommodate some of Shcherbakov’s objections. Premièring later that year, the play ultimately won Stalin prizes for dramaturgy and performance after the war.6 The delay in consigning the memorandum to the archive speaks to the continuing controversy that surrounded the play throughout its composition and various performances. A. S. S, “M S c A. N. T’ P Ivan the Terrible” – A. N. Tolstoi’s play “Ivan the Terrible” was nominated by the Stalin Prize Committee for a prize for the year . Yet upon analysis of the play, it was decided not to act on the nomination , both out of formal considerations (the play had not been printed or staged in a single theater, it was unknown to the Soviet public, the critical establishment had not expressed any opinions concerning it, etc.), and out of material considerations, as the play distorts the historical image of one of the greatest representatives of the Russian state—Ivan IV (–). Yet it is hardly sufficient to simply withdraw A. N. Tolstoi’s Ivan the Terrible from consideration for a Stalin Prize. The fact of the matter is that this play was written by a special order of the [All-Union] Committee for Artistic Affairs, following the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) establishing the necessity of rehabilitating the authentic image of Ivan IV in Russian history—an image that has been distorted by aristocratic and bourgeois historiography. Ivan IV was an outstanding political figure of sixteenth-century Russia. He completed the establishment of a centralized Russian state, a progressive endeavor initiated by Ivan III. Ivan IV fundamentally eliminated the country’s feudal fragmentation, successfully crushing the resistance of representatives of the feudal order. There is literally not a single aspect of domestic policy, beginning with finance and ending with the army, that did not undergo revision or reorganization during this period (court reforms, rural church reforms, the restructuring of the central administration, the creation of a new army, the introduction of new forms of weaponry, etc.). Ivan IV himself was one of the most educated men of the day and a champion of the broad dissemination of knowledge. He passionately supported Ivan the Terrible such progressive endeavors as the introduction of the printing press in Russia. All of these reforms met with vigorous resistance on the part of representatives of the feudal order—entrenched patrimonial estate-holders, tenaciously insisting on the preservation of the feudal order. Ivan the Terrible was forced to resort to harsh measures in order to strike at the feudal, patrimonial privileges of the boyars. Ivan was the bearer of the...
