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She went on: "So Ivan made a deal with the church. If they would"--she switched to English--" 'scratch his back, he would scratch theirs.' "
When she got the now-expected chuckle from Davidson and exchanged the expected smile with Castillo, she went back to Russian: "The Metropolitan of Moscow found scripture which said that Ivan had a divine right to rule. Ivan developed an overnight religious fervor, and in January 1547, the Metropolitan presided over the coronation of Tsar Ivan the Fourth. He was then seventeen years old.
"As soon as he was Tsar, his boyars began throwing into pits the boyars who he suspected weren't so sure he had a divine right to rule. There, they were eaten by starving dogs."
"A really nice guy," Castillo said.
"The property--lands and serfs who belonged to the land--were split between the Tsar and the boyars who believed that it pleased God to have Ivan the Fourth as Tsar.
"Over the next eighteen years, while Ivan did a really remarkable job of turning Russia into a superpower, he consolidated his power. He took care of the church, and the church responded by telling the faithful that Ivan was standing at the right hand of God, making the point that challenging Ivan was tantamount to challenging God.
"Then he started separating the best of the good boyars from the bad ones. A good boyar was defined, primarily, as one who didn't harbor any ideas about assassinating him and then taking over. Those he suspected had such ideas were removed from the scene in various imaginative ways--for example, by being skinned alive--which served, of course, to remind those that remained that even thinking of displeasing the Tsar was not smart.
"The more clever boyars came to understand that the key to success was in getting close to the Tsar, most often by denouncing those who could be safely accused of having possibly treasonous thoughts. The most clever of the clever boyars further understood that getting too close to the Tsar tended to increase their risk of being tossed to the starving dogs or thrown from the Kremlin walls. The Tsar was naturally suspicious of anyone whose power seemed possible of threatening his own.
"The point here is that as he passed out the serfs taken from the bad boyars to the good boyars, this increased the size of the good boyars' armies. Soldiers, so to speak, were serfs equipped with a sword or a pike, who went into battle because they might live through the battle, and refusing to go into battle would certainly see them killed.
"So he began to recruit a corps of officers from the merchant class, and even from the peasant class. They were treated almost as well as the good boyars, and realized that their good fortune depended on ensuring that the Tsar, who had appointed them to command the serfs he had taken away from the bad boyars, remained in power."
She paused to take another cigarette out of the pack, light it with what Castillo thought was great style, then exhaled.
"By 1565," Svetlana continued, "he thought he had arranged things as well as he could. First, he moved his family out of Moscow to one of his country estates. When he was sure that he and they were safe in the hands of his officer corps, he wrote an open letter--copies of it were posted on walls and, importantly, in every church--to Philip, the Metropolitan of the church in Moscow. The Tsar said he was going to abdicate and, to that end, had already moved out of Moscow.
"The people, the letter suggested, could now run Russia to suit themselves, starting by picking a new Tsar, to whom they could look for protection. This caused chaos at all levels. The people didn't want a new Tsar who was not chosen by God. The boyars knew that picking one of their own to be the new Tsar was going to result in a bloodbath. The officer corps knew that the privileges they had been granted would almost certainly not be continued under a new Tsar, and that the boyars would want their serfs back.
"The Tsar was begged not to abdicate, to come home to Moscow. After letting them worry for a while, during which time they had a preview of what life without Tsar Ivan would be like, he announced his terms for not abdicating.
"There would be something new in Russian, the Oprichina--'Separate Estate'--which would consist of one thousand households, some of the highest nobility of the boyars, some of lower-ranking boyars, some of senior military officers, a few members of the merchant class, and even a few families of extraordinarily successful peasants.
"They all had demonstrated a commendable degree of loyalty to the Tsar. The Oprichina would physically include certain districts of Russia and certain cities, and the revenue from these places would be used to support the oprichniki and of course the Tsar, who would live among them.
"The old establishment would remain in place. The boyars not included in the Oprichina would retain their titles and privileges; the council--the Duma-- would continue to operate, its decisions subject of course to the Tsar's approval. But the communication would be one way. Except in extraordinary circumstances, no one not an oprichniki would be permitted to communicate with the Oprichina.
"The Tsar's offer was accepted. God's man was back in charge. The boyars had their titles. The church was now supported by the state, so most of the priests and bishops were happy. Just about everybody was happy but Philip, the Metropolitan of Moscow, who let it be known that he thought the idea of the Oprichina was un-Christian.
"The Tsar understood that he could not tolerate doubt or criticism. And so Ivan set out for Tver, where the Metropolitan lived. On the way, he heard a rumor that the p
eople and the administration in Russia's second-largest city, Great Novgorod, were unhappy with having to support Oprichina.
"Just as soon as he had watched Metropolitan Philip being choked to death, the Tsar went to Great Novgorod, where, over the course of five weeks, the army of the Oprichina, often helped personally by Ivan himself, raped every female they could find, massacred every man they could find, and destroyed every farmhouse, warehouse, barn, monastery, church, every crop in the fields, every horse, cow, chicken--"
"At the risk of repeating myself," Castillo interrupted, "nice guy."
The look she gave him was one of genuine annoyance.
What's that all about?
How long is this history lecture going to last?
Where the hell is she going with this?
She went there immediately.
"And so, Colonel Castillo, what we now call the SVR was born."
"Excuse me?"
"Over the years, it has been known by different names, of course. And it actually didn't have a name of its own, other than the Oprichina, a state within a state, until Tsar Nicholas the First. After Nicholas put down the Decembrist Revolution in 1825, he reorganized the trusted elements of the Oprichina into what he called the Third Section."
