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“Phrased less kindly, as soon as he became Czar, he began feeding those boyars who questioned his divine right to rule to pits of starving dogs. Then he seized their property and divided it between himself, the church, and the boyars, who did think he had God on his side. It is important to remember here that boyar property included the serfs who lived on the land, and that the various private armies involved were made up of serf conscripts.
“The church—Philip the Second, it must be admitted—was involved in this un-holy scheme of things up to his ears. In payment for telling the faithful that Ivan was standing at the right hand of God, and making the point that challenging Ivan was tantamount to challenging God, the church grew wealthy.
“Ivan also began to form an officer corps from the merchant class. Their loyalty was to him personally, and he bought it by paying them generously. What had been two or three dozen private armies under the control of that many boyars became one army answering only to Ivan.
“This went on for about eighteen years, until 1565, when he decided he had arranged things as well as he could. Then he went into action. 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 a letter to Metropolitan Philip the Second. The Czar said he was going to abdicate and, to that end, had already moved out of Moscow. He posted copies of the letter on walls and, importantly, in every church.
“The people, the letter said, could now run Russia to suit themselves, starting by picking a new Czar, to whom they could look for protection. This upset everybody. The people didn’t want a new Czar who was not chosen by God. The boyars knew that picking one of their own to be the new Czar was going to result in a bloodbath. The officer corps knew that the privileges they had been granted were almost certainly not to be continued under a new Czar, and that the boyars would want their serfs back.
“The Czar 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 Czar Ivan would be like, he announced his terms for not abdicating.
“There would be something new in Russian, the Oprichnina—‘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 of 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 Czar. The Oprichnina would physically include certain districts of Russia and certain cities, and the revenue from these places would be used to support the Oprichnina and of course the Czar, who would live among them.
“The old establishment would remain in place. The boyars not included in the Oprichnina would retain their titles and privileges; the council—the Duma—would continue to operate, its decisions subject of course to the Czar’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 Oprichnina.
“The Czar’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 Second, Metropolitan of Moscow, who let it be known that he thought the idea of the Oprichnina was un-Christian.
“The Czar 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 people and the administration in Russia’s second-largest city, Great Novgorod, were unhappy with having to support Oprichnina.
“Just as soon as he had watched Metropolitan Philip being choked to death in Tver, the Czar went to Great Novgorod, where, over the course of five weeks, the army of the Oprichnina, 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, and chicken.”
He paused, then said, “And so was born what we now call the SVR.”
“Excuse me?” Jake Torine asked. “I got lost just now.”
“Over the years, it has been known by different names, of course,” the archimandrite explained. “It actually didn’t have a name of its own, other than the Oprichnina, a state within a state, until Czar Nicholas the First. After Nicholas put down the Decembrist Revolution in 1825, he reorganized the trusted elements of the Oprichnina into what he called the Third Section.
“That reincarnation of the Oprichnina lasted until 1917, when the Bolsheviks renamed it the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution and Sabotage—acronym Cheka.”
“That sounds as if you’re saying that the Czar’s secret police just changed sides, became Communists,” D’Alessandro said.
It was his first comment during the long history lesson.
“My son, you’re saying two things, you realize,” the archbishop said. “That the Oprichnina changed sides is one. That the Oprichnina became Communist is another. They never change sides. They may have worked for different masters, but they never become anything other than what they were, members of the Oprichnina.”
“Excuse me, Your Eminence,” D’Alessandro said, “but I’ve always been taught that the Russian secret police, by whatever name, were always Communist. Wasn’t the first head of the Cheka—Dzerzhinsky—a lifelong Communist? I’ve always heard he spent most of his life in one Czarist jail or another before the Communist revolution. That’s not so?”
“The Dziarzhynava family was of the original one thousand families in Ivan’s Oprichnina,” the archbishop said. “Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the first head of the Cheka, was born on the family’s estate in western Belarus. The estate was never confiscated by the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks or the Communists after they took power. The family owns it to this day.”
The archimandrite picked the narrative up.
“The Czar’s Imperial Prisons were controlled by the Third Section. How well one fared in them—or whether one was actually in a prison, or was just on the roster—depended on how well one was regarded by the Oprichnina. The fact that the history books paint the tale of this heroic revolutionary languishing, starved and beaten, for years in a Czarist prison cell doesn’t make it true.”
The archbishop took his turn by asking, “And didn’t you think it was a little odd that Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky to head the Cheka and kept him there when there were so many deserving and reasonably talented Communists close to him?”
D’Alessandro put up both hands in an admission of confusion.
“The Cheka,” the archimandrite went on, “was reorganized after the counterrevolution of 1922 as the GPU, later the OGPU. A man named Yaakov Peters was named to head it. By Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, who was minister of the interior, which controlled the OGPU.
“Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926. After that there were constant reorganizations and renaming. In 1934, the OGPU became the NKVD—People’s Commissariat for State Security. In 1943, the NKGB was split off from the NKVD. And in 1946, after the Great War, it became the MGB, Ministry of State Security.”
“What you’re saying, Your Grace,” D’Alessandro said, “is that this state within a state…”
“The Oprichnina,” the archimandrite furnished.
