names and two faces only: one of these figures is that of a parvenu, the other that of an executioner—Nikita Romanovitch Zakharine and Maliouta-Skouratov. Of the first-named history knows but little. He was the Tsarina Anastasia's brother, and, like a certain witness of the French Terror in the eighteenth century, he was a man of breeding. The legend has turned him into a hero. It shows him refusing the Tsar's favours, and content to beg new laws, 'more tender to the people,' for the lands he already holds. But the popular preference is given to Maliouta-Skouratov, the legendary bully of Prince and boïar alike.
This democratic instinct, so strongly marked in every personification of the popular idea, explains the secret of the Opritchnina and its original conception, and also of the comparative facility with which Ivan was able to force it on certain persons, and induce a still larger number to accept it. The scenes evoked by the popular muse, which show us peasants and boïars set face to face, always assign the shabby part to the boïars. They are either rogues or fools. If the story concerns a riddle which the Sovereign has to guess, and on which his fate depends, it is a peasant who supplies the solution, after all the great lords called into council have failed to find it. One legend, indeed, asserts the Tsar to be descended from a humble stock, and attributes an equally modest origin to his power. A certain Tsar having died, his late subjects all betake themselves to the river bank, bearing lighted torches, which they plunge into the water. The first who can relight his torch is to have the crown. 'Let us go to the river,' says a barine to Ivan; 'if I become Tsar, I'll set thee free!' 'Come, then,' Ivan replies; 'if I am made Tsar, I'll have thy head cut off!' He wins the crown, and keeps his word.
Herein lies the whole philosophy of the populace. It seems to have forgotten all about Ivan's wars, and all it remembers of the administrative reforms simultaneously effected is their levelling action.
'All the masters and princes,
I will flay them alive. …'
sings the Tsar Groznyï, Ivan Vassilovitch.
Or, again:
'I will have you cooked, every one,
Boïars and princes, in a caldron!'
The Groznyï is a pious man, and the poets admire this quality of his, but,
'As soon as he has heard Mass,
He'll cut their little heads
Off princes and boïars. …'
