The [Muscovite] court was immensely successful in concealing the dynamism of its politics from the outside world and in convincing foreigners that Muscovy was ruled literally by an autocrat. Sigismund von Herberstein, an envoy of the Hapsburg court in the early sixteenth century, declared: "In the sway which he [the tsar] holds over his people, he surpasses all the monarchs of the whole world." It comes as some surprise that the ideology and public ceremony of court politics diverged so radically from the reality that we have seen. There was constant sparring of ambitious men at court, yet Muscovite ideology denies that political interaction occurred. The sovereign is depicted as a literal autocrat; neither the boyars nor other individuals or social groups share authority with him. To some extent this political ideology developed from the theocratic vision of the churchmen who wrote chronicles, but it should not be dismissed for that reason. Not only churchmen promoted the facade of autocracy—the boyars them selves accepted it, which suggests that it was grounded in political reality.

  The sovereign was routinely described in chronicles and other ideological writings as the sole decision maker, regardless of his age or abilities.... Ceremony was an especially effective communicator of this ideology....

In these ceremonies and in written sources, Muscovite political interaction was presented as essentially moral and personal; thus it was denied what might be called public or constitutional legitimacy. Authors of written sources, lacking a term for the collectivity of the boyars, referred to them by name or simply as "the boyars." What modern observers would con sider political relationships the sources re ferred to as personal ties: political conflict and ambition were explained by loyalty, friendship, and kinship. The political realm was depicted as being ruled over by the sovereign alone; therefore, court politics was not characterized by pluralism, conflict, or compromise—all of which are fundamental to politics as generally understood. In ideology Muscovite politics had no dynamism; the state was a harmonious family, each member obediently playing his role in the community of God on earth.

The sovereign was at the center of a theocratic vision of government: court ceremony presented him as separate from and superior to the boyars. When he held audiences, he was seated on a throne raised above the level where the boyars sat; he was surrounded by splendid bodyguards who were regally garbed in white and carried ceremonial axes. The sovereign's omnipotence was demonstrated by the immensity and splendor of his entourage. On festive occasions, the sovereign flaunted jewel-encrusted golden drinking cups, crowns, orbs, and scepters; sovereign and boyars alike were decked out in jewel-encrusted robes.... Even when (or perhaps especially when) the sovereign was incompetent and the boyars were managing the state, court ceremony maintained the fiction that Moscow was ruled by its sovereign....

Political disgrace reinforced the centrality of the sovereign; exile from the presence of the sovereign was the symbolic expression of such disgrace, which also included more tangible punishment, such as incarceration and confiscation of wealth. Unfortunates were said to have been deprived of the sight of the tsar's "bright eyes." The boyars were portrayed as passive and weak, implying that they recognized and accepted their subservience.... Foreign travelers expressed dismay at what they perceived as the humiliation of the great men of the realm, who called themselves "slaves" and prostrated themselves before the sovereign. Olearius  noted: "In addressing the Tsar the magnates must unashamedly not only write their names in the diminutive form, but also call themselves slaves, and they are treated as such." Although these descriptions are in consistent with reality, they evidence a concern for controlling the potentially powerful and ambitious boyars....

In this ideological view of Muscovite politics, boyars were given legitimacy as advisers, reflecting in some measure their real power. Just as the metropolitan oversaw moral and religious matters, the boyars oversaw secular affairs. These men thus acted as liaisons between the grand prince and his people. That boyars had a traditional right to rule jointly with the sovereign is reflected in contemporary illustra tions of court ceremony, where the tsar is depicted associating with his boyars, not dominating over them. It is also shown in descriptions of the grand prince's attitude of comradely loyalty toward his boyars. Vasilii III, for example, entreated his boyars to defend his kingdom and his minor son after his death as follows: "I ... am your born sovereign, and you are my eternal boyars; and you, brothers, stand firm so that my son may be made the sovereign of the state and so that there may be justice in the land."

Through the prism of an idealized ideology, these sources reveal the court's desire that politics be conducted in unanimity without strife. In addresses to the "Hundred Chapters" Church Council attributed to Ivan IV, the sovereign pleaded with the boyars to forget their "prior disputes" and be reconciled. He urged his prelates, boyars, and all his advisers to "help me, assist me, all of you together and in unanimity" in accomplishing the work of the council....

The ubiquity of the theme of harmony and unanimity compels us to take it seriously as a principle of Muscovite politics. It is not consistent with the reality of court politics, which was marked by dissension, but it hints at limits on such fractious disputes. One such constraint was expressed ideologically by the assertion that all boyars were equal—equal in subservience to the sovereign, equal in their degree of access to him, equal in status and power. Implicit in their equality was harmony: the boyars should not disrupt their unity by contentiousness. Unanimity was the implicit way for boyars to prevent and resolve political conflicts. The expectation of rule by unanimity, or consensus, constrained individual boyars, regardless of their personal eminence. Boyars could not rule or aspire to rule. In keeping with the ideology's emphasis on affinitive relations in politics, boyar ambition that caused strife was regarded as a moral defect, not as an unavoidable part of political interaction....

It was the constant threat of instability—resulting from foreign wars, a fragile economy whose functioning was in part dependent upon a hostile climate, the administration of a large state by a small bureaucracy, and the boyars' ambitions for power—that gave rise to such a conservative set of values. The ideology expressed the deepest concerns of Muscovy's political actors; a facade of autocracy was necessary to prevent chaos. The primary purpose of the ideology of autocracy described here was to impose limits on the boyars' political competition. In theory, designation of the sovereign as the only legitimate political figure prevented boyars' competition from threatening the state's stability. Boyars fought to gain a greater share of power but not to replace the sovereign. They sought higher status but did not attempt to prevent others from seeking it. But in 1598, when the dynasty died out, boyar factions ignored all limits on competition and struggled to become sovereign. The result was the state of anarchy that Muscovy's ideology and political controls had been specifically de signed to prevent. Typically, however, boyars were guided by this ideology and thus stabilized their potentially volatile political system.

At most times, relative stability was ensured because all boyars had some degree of power. In the early seventeenth century, a descendant of Prince Ivan Mikhailovich Vorotynskii  sug gested this when he complained that a share of power was being denied to him and his family: "We experienced disgrace, but a role in government was never taken from us." All boyars had a right to consult with the grand prince, but in practice the inner circle met with him more frequently. All boyars lived in or around the Kremlin; they attended court daily and consulted with the grand prince and with each other frequently. They served in the field as military commanders or as vicegerents, but preferred service in the sovereign's retinue, either participating in a campaign or based in the Kremlin. In those assignments boyars could maintain the personal contacts that ensured rule by consensus and that also frequently led to advantageous marriages. The involvement of all boyars facilitated attainment of the ideal of harmony at court; because of the real disparities of power and the resulting constant state of tension, consensus among them was required to maintain stability.

Consensus between the grand prince and the boyars is evident in the distribution of power at court. The boyars in the inner circle had more power than the others, but they never succeeded in totally monopolizing power (although that would seem a logical goal).... [C]onferral of boyar or okol'nichii rank threatened to disturb the balance of power and therefore required the approval of the men already holding those ranks. The boyars and the grand prince sometimes delayed and at other times permitted accessions to boyar and okol'nichii rank. During times of political turmoil, few new appointments were made. However, the resolution of political crises (for example, those of the mid-fifteenth century and those occurring in 1499, 1525, and the 1530s and 1540s) was followed by a cathartic redistribution of power and numerous promotions.

  The integration of new families into the boyar elite also required consensus. The logic of court politics would seem to have encouraged exclusivity. As some clans became more powerful, they expelled their rivals from politics. The inner-circle families, being more power ful, might be expected to choose not to tolerate less powerful boyars at court.... [But] the number of clans whose men held boyar or okol'nichii rank gradually increased from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Boyars consented to the sovereign's desire to add to their numbers....

Consensus politics was clearly in evidence when the members of the court took action against one of their number, as when the boyars and the sovereign agreed to bring disgrace [on someone].... There are numerous references between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries to boyars having their property confiscated or being exiled, forcibly tonsured, or even executed.... [T]heir allies and kinsmen apparently consented, if perhaps grudgingly. When boyar families did seek revenge, political crisis was the result; the mid-fifteenth-century dynastic war and the struggles that occurred during the youth of Ivan IV are examples. These episodes of violence were, however, rare....

Even when he had secured the agreement of his boyars for the punishment of one of them, the grand prince sought to limit the degree of violence inflicted. Men who were imprisoned, for example, often died in captivity, but the punishment initially aroused less animosity among boyars because the possibility of release remained open. Several imprisoned servitors are recorded as having been freed—evidence of the relative moderation of this punishment. Other types of punishment—prohibition of marriage, exile from Moscow, forcible tonsure—all stopped short of the violence that would probably have provoked interfamily vendettas. Execution was used only when the offense was serious and the court was united behind the decision....

The rarity of, and the adverse reaction to, unsanctioned violence among boyars suggests that it violated political norms. In 1356, Aleksei Petrovich Khvost was killed by rivals who then fled Moscow to escape vengeance. The public outrage was so great and the murder so unusual that chronicles and genealogical books kept it in the public memory for generations.... Furthermore, when an execution was carried out without the prior consent of the boyars, the aggrieved family took revenge, which often precipitated further conflict. The fifteenth-century dynastic war is an example of the cost of such violence and illustrates the Kremlin court's determination to avoid it....

Consensus between boyars and the grand prince was perceived as necessary to avoid violence and preserve stability. Recalcitrance and excessive ambition among boyars posed threats to that stability. Such threats were caused by at least two circumstances. First, there was an inequitable balance of power among boyars, even though all had some degree of power and shared in the benefits of rule. Second, the ties of kinship and alliance that united the boyars imposed retributive obligations. To help avoid violence, the court relied on numerous norms and customs. Tradition prohibited murder and the use of extreme violence against individuals in the event of conflict. When murder was resorted to, it was frequently accompanied by another execution intended to reduce tensions rather than to escalate them. Metropolitans offered to mediate and grand princes offered to negotiate in an attempt to avert the violence that could erupt in such an ambitious community.

The grand prince and the boyars also maintained stability by attempting to prevent disputes that might lead to a political crisis, such as disputes over sovereign succession. They strove to ensure that collateral kinsmen of the ruler would not be regarded as legitimate contenders, and in so doing they developed a system of succession that was so predictable that boyars' families could focus marriage strategies on winning a match with the heir to the throne. To boyar families, dynastic succession by primogeniture was preferable to collateral succession, because collateral succession meant that boyar families could not have enjoyed hereditary status: each grand prince's boyars would have been replaced by the boyar elite from the new heir's appanage. Maintenance of succession by primogeniture in the grand-princely family was therefore crucial to the stability of the political system....

Boyar clans benefitted from the stability created by grand-princely succession by primogeniture, and the Daniilovichi [heirs to the founder of the Moscow principality,  Daniil] benefitted from the paucity of heirs in that they avoided divisive disputes over succession such as those that had weakened the dynasties of Tver' and other principalities. Like some of their early medieval West European counter parts, the Muscovite dynasty and boyars found succession by primogeniture to be useful in their drive for internal stability and for regional power....

The ultimate irony was that as a result of this strong suspicion of collateral kinsmen, the Daniilovich dynasty died out in 1598 for lack of collateral lines. Thus Muscovy's future was to be determined by Ivan IV's progeny. Ivan, approaching the end of his life in the early 1580s, had three living sons. The eldest, Ivan Ivanovich, was killed, perhaps at the tsar's own hand, in 1581; the youngest, Dmitrii of Uglich, died in suspicious circumstances in 1591. This left only the feebleminded Fedor Ivanovich, who succeeded Ivan as tsar in 1584. When Fedor died in 1598, he left no sons or daughters. The price of the stability so highly valued by grand princes and boyars was the Time of Troubles.