An objective, scientifically grounded assessment of the historical role of the Russian autocracy at all stages of its existence is becoming important in the context of modern ideological struggle. The denial of the historical legitimacy of the socialist revolution in Russia is invariably justified in the works of Western Sovietologists with the help of a distorted image of pre-revolutionary history. Much attention is paid to the autocracy as a kind of supra-class force that supposedly united its subjects, without distinction between their class and class affiliation, on the basis of the "national ideal", the unity of faith and eternal morality. Bourgeois historiography often connects such ideas with the initial period of the autocracy's history, which is facilitated by insufficient knowledge of this period. In science, there is no unity of views even on such a question as the time of the emergence of an autocratic system. Some researchers attribute the establishment of an autocratic monarchy to the end of the XV century, others-to the second half of the XVII century. Some see its beginning in the XVI century. The historiography of the Oprichnina is also controversial: there is no consensus about the meaning of its establishment and the terms of its existence, about its role and significance in the history of the Russian centralized state. The lack of clarity in the solution of both these problems - the emergence of autocracy and the actual historical role of the Oprichnina - is largely due to the fact that these problems are not directly connected with each other. Noble historiography was "embarrassed" by the Oprichnina, tried to separate it from the history of the autocracy, to portray it as a phenomenon alien to tsarism, not characteristic of it. Bourgeois historians, who did not part with constitutional and monarchical illusions, although they considered the Oprichnina as a significant socio-political phenomenon, nevertheless also believed that it had no conseque ... Read more