Eight Hundred Years of Russian Despotism

[Kamaji]

Eight Hundred Years of Russian Despotism:  An Interview with Orlando Figes

In a new book, the historian traces modern Russian aggression to an apocalyptic mythology rooted deep in the nation’s past.

Jonathan Kay
7 Jul 2023

The text that follows is adapted from a July 3rd, 2023 podcast interview conducted by Quillette’s Jonathan Kay with historian Orlando Figes, author of the newly published book, The Story of Russia.

Jonathan Kay: So I’m going to start off with a big question. In your book, you talk about the “sacralization” of the Russian Czars’ authority as a legacy of Byzantium. And until I read your book, I really had no understanding of how much Orthodox Christian theology had mixed with Slav ethnic populism to create this kind of theocratic—and maybe even apocalyptic—vision of the Russian Empire as the “third Rome.”

Can you explain what that means—the third Rome? You used that phrase several times in your book.

Orlando Figes: This concept of the third Rome, which is at the heart of a Russian sense of mission in the world, presents Russia as a sort of messianic land—a little bit like Israel, I guess—in the medieval theology that was adopted by Ivan the Terrible, who was the first to be crowned Czar. It served to reclaim, after all those years of Mongol occupation, the Byzantine legacy, symbolically, through his coronation.

The idea was that after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Moscow was the last true seat of Christian orthodoxy. And there would be no other. The idea was that the west lay in a fallen state. It was fallen from a state of grace that Russia still retained by virtue of its orthodox religion.

Therefore, the true salvation of humanity lay with holy Russia. And this idea, of Russia as a providential land chosen to save humanity, is at the very heart of both the Russian Empire, and, later, [Russian] communism. It’s deeply connected to the sacralization of power because it presents the Czar as the direct manifestation of God on earth—as Ivan the Terrible saw himself. It was his mission not just to save humanity, but also to prepare his people for the final judgment.

*  *  *

And yes, the idea of the state being fused with the Czar, that absolutely is at the heart of my argument about what makes Russia very different from the Western tradition. As you say, around the time of the Renaissance, and arguably earlier in most Western states, there was a growing separation between both King and church, but also between the idea of the King’s office and the idea of the king himself.

That separation didn't happen in Russia, partly because of the Byzantine tradition where church and state are fused and represented through the holy body of the Tsar; and partly because of what I think of as the other great structural continuity in Russian history, namely patrimonialism [a form of governance in which all power flows directly from the ruler].

The idea of state in Russia, which is expressed as gosudarstvo (государство) in the Russian, is completely fused with the idea of the sovereign, the gosudar (государь), which means not just a ruler, but a sovereign or anyone who has a patrimonial property over land—which is, actually, the source of the concept of power itself in Russia.

*  *  *

On Russia’s Western side, the insecurity was more problematic, because there—in contrast to Asia from the 16th century onward, where Russians had gunpowder and the Siberian enemy only had bows and arrows—they were up against much more powerful European states: the Swedes, the Poles, the Lithuanians, and then the Germans.

And they found themselves with growing paranoia, as they couldn't defend their open vulnerable borders in what we would call the Black Sea front. So the conquest and assertion of Russian power over Ukraine, and the conquest of the Blacks Sea area by Catherine the Great in the late 18th Century, and then the defeat of the Crimean khanate—all of that was important geopolitically to the Russians. They felt that otherwise, the Black Sea area would become a threatening sphere due to the presence of Western powers—mainly Britain and France—following the decline of the Ottoman Empire. 

*  *  *

All of which to say, the origins of the war in Ukraine are deeply historical—even if, by now, it's probably more to do with Putin just fighting the west for its own sake, because be knows he can’t really conquer the whole of Ukraine.

*  *  *

Source:  https://quillette.com/2023/07/07/eight-hundred-years-of-russian-despotism/

[Maj. Bill Martin]

I sometimes think that narrative is just a convenient excuse from Russia apologists for Russia to do whatever the hell it wants on the grounds that it feels "threatened".  When I listen to actual statements by Russians justifying what they're doing, it's very rarely "we are threatened".  Except from the propaganda ministry types for western consumption.  But from other Russians who seem to be speaking more off the cuff, it is an affirmative sense of destiny.  "We are the greatest of the slaves -- therefore, all others owe us obedience."

We hear that kind of stuff especially from their most blustery nationalists, who you'd figure are most strongly into Russian history.  They're not scared of the Ukrainians, or Lithuanians, or Poles, etc..  They are indignant that someone dared to resist them, and then go on to say how those resisting should be liquidated.

[PeteS in CA]

... the conquest of the Blacks Sea area by Catherine the Great in the late 18th Century, and then the defeat of the Crimean khanate ...

Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula only became part of Russia in the late 1700s. By way of conquest. Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula are not part of pre-Catherine historic Russia.