The Origins of Autocracy

"The Muscovite high nobility or service elite occupied the highest positions in a society and an administrative system that shared char­acteristics with many contemporary polities and societies but was, in the final analysis, unique," writes Robert Crummey, a modern Ameri­can historian. On the one hand, this was a patrimonial, aristocratic elite, whose representatives, "like their counterparts to the West . . . derived the core of their income from ownership of land and power over the peasants who lived on it." On the other hand, they were "im­prisoned in a system of universal service to an absolute ruler like the

Ottoman. It was precisely this combination of land ownership, family solidarity, and compulsory state service that made the Muscovite high nobility unique."[15]

I am in full agreement with this perceptive conclusion. It is exactly because of this uniqueness that I call the Russian political structure an autocracy, differing both from absolutism (where there was no obliga­tory service) and from despotism (where the elite was never in a posi­tion to transform itself into an aristocracy). The only thing which dis­turbs me in Crummey's schema is the chronology. In fact, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, refusal to perform service was not regarded as a crime in Russia (at least according to law), and two cen­turies later it again ceased to be regarded as such. If we employ Crummey's criteria, it transpires that the Russian elite (and the Rus­sian political structure) was "unique" only during these two centuries. And before this? And afterwards? Was it then perhaps similar to its Western counterparts? Or to the elite of the Ottoman Empire? Why was it that the Ottoman elite appears to have been incapable of over­coming the bondage of universal service, while the Russian elite succeeded?

We see still more clearly the results of the conventional approach (without any "what ifs" at all) in the attempt of another American his­torian to divide the history of the Muscovite elite (1450-1700) into three periods. "The first period," Richard Hellie writes,

lasted about a century, with 1556 serving as a suitable terminus. The first service class revolution in Russian history, initiated by mobilizing land (the pomest'e system) to support cavalrymen, gathered momentum in those years. . . . The second period also lasted about a century, from 1556 until the Thirteen Years' War (1654-1667), when the old middle service class cavalry was deemed technologically obsolete and replaced by "new formation regiments" of commoners commanded by foreign mercenaries. . . . The third period followed the Thirteen Years' War . . . and lasted until Peter the Great initiated the "second service class revolution" by again requiring service from everyone."

Let us not go too deeply into Hellie's periodization (which, inciden­tally, leaves us completely ignorant of why a second "service class revo­lution" was needed at all, and of what happened to the Russian ser­vice elite after this revolution suffered defeat). Let us merely note that Hellie here imprudently does what Crummey avoids—that is, he extends the uniqueness of the Russian elite (or what is, from his point of view, the same thing, its service-based character) to the period be­fore 1556.

To be sure, the free movement of Russian peasants was indeed restricted in the fifteenth century, and the Russian nobles usually served. What is more, the traditional system of dividing inheritances among male heirs made service especially attractive to the latter as a means of maintaining and increasing their wealth. But, after all, the system of dividing inheritances still existed in Russia in the eigh­teenth and nineteenth centuries, after universal service was abol­ished, and the Russian elite managed to cope with it without so much as giving a thought to returning to obligatory service. Why, then, would it have been impossible for it to have coped with the same problem in the sixteenth century if things had turned out differently? Does this not at least call for explanation?