The Origins of Autocracy

[39] "In Russia Eastern despotism served as a model," asserted Chicherin categorically in his fundamental work О narodnom predstavitel'stve, p. 531.

[40] Cited in G. Vernadsky, The Mongols in Russia, p. 389.

[41] N. A. Berdiaev, Istoki i smysl russhogo kommunizma, p. 7.

[42] K. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, p. 225.

[43] L. V Cherepnin, "K voprosu о skladyvanii absoliutnoi monarkhii v Rossii," p. 38.

[44] Ibid., pp. 24-25.

[45] Istoriia SSSR, p. 212.1 am neither an orthodox nor a rebellious Marxist—I simply don't have anything in common with this mode of thought. But even a bitter opponent of Marxism would scarcely parody it as brutally as do these writers who claim to have custody of the pure Marxist flame.

[46] A. Ia. Avrekh, "Russkii absoliutizm i ego rol' v utverzhdenii kapitalizma v Rossii," pp. 83, 85. Emphasis added.

[47] V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, pp. 333-34.

[48] Avrekh, p. 89. Emphasis added.

[49] It should be noted that, in direct form, the category of political progress is lack­ing in Soviet historiography (and before Avrekh it was lacking even in indirect form). Therefore the criterion of political development is also lacking. And there is no know­ing what is good or bad here, what is positive and what is negative, or what is moving from what direction and toward what. I emphasize that what is being spoken of is not the trivial Marxist postulate that the replacement of one socioeconomic order by an­other is inevitable, but political progress—that is, the fact that different political struc­tures possess different dynamic potentials. And, for this reason, Avrekh's attempt to de­clare "St. Petersburg absolutism" (even if it never existed) capable (unlike "Muscovite despotism") of political dynamism, was for its kind a remarkably partisan action in So­viet historiography, as well as a risky one.

[50] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Izbrannye pis'ma, p. 79.

[51] A. L. Shapiro, "Ob absoliutizme v Rossii," p. 71.

[52] A. I. Davidovich and S. A. Pokrovskii, "O klassovoi sushchnosti i etapakh razvi- tiia russkogo absoliutizma," p. 65.

[53] Ibid., p. 62. 34. Ibid., p. 65.

[54] Ibid., p. 142.

[55] V. I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 9, p. 381.

[56] A. N. Sakharov, p. 148. 45. Ibid., p. 111. 46. Ibid., p. 112.

[57] S. N. Eisenstadt, "The Study of Oriental Despotisms as Systems of Total Power," p. 446.

[58] Donald W. Treadgold, ed., The Development of the USSR: An Exchange of Views, pp. 352-53.

[59] Ibid., p. 331.