The Origins of Autocracy

In the first place, however, can we seriously speak of an equi­librium between the enserfed and downtrodden peasantry, which precisely in the seventeenth century became "legally dead" and politi­cally nonexistent, and the mighty "new new class," which was really able to influence the regime? Equilibrium by definition presupposes equality of power between the contending classes. In the second place, why would this struggle between the governed and the governors (or, what is the same thing, between the exploited and the exploiters) nec­essarily have led to absolutism, and not to despotism? By reducing the structure of Russian society to two polar classes, Sakharov makes the identification of absolutism with despotism irresistible. The logic of his thought (or more accurately, of Porshnev's thought, which he "borrowed") erases any difference between these two political struc­tures. And the task of the debate consists precisely in establishing this difference.

We can now understand why, for example, A. Chistozvonov is com­pelled to note that "a careful analysis of the statements of the found­ers of Marxism-Leninism about absolutism in various countries and of the concrete historical material shows that these complex phe­nomena cannot be fitted into the models which are currently in cir­culation among us."²¹ This also explains why Avrekh, in initiating the discussion, hastily crosses out both artificial alternative replacements of the "equilibrium," and embarks on a venture extremely rare even for the era of pseudoabsolutism—that of suggesting his own defini­tion of absolutism.

Of course, Avrekh masks his impudence with a battery of "vyska- zyvaniia" from Lenin. Of course, after quoting Lenin, he humbly

B. F. Porshnev, Feodatism, i narodnye massy, p. 354.

A. N. Sakharov, "Istoricheskie faktory obrazovaniia russkogo absoliutizma," p. 123.

A. N. Chistozvonov, "Nekotorye aspekty problemy genezisa absoliutizma," p. 49.

asks: "What does all this lead to?" Innocently attempting to give out his own definition as a logical extension of these "vyskazyvaniia," he makes a deep bow to classical authority: "It seems to us that precisely this thought is contained in the words of V. I. Lenin which we have cited, only it is expressed in an indirect form." However, he still does not succeed in fooling such experienced witch-hunters as A. Sakharov or S. Pokrovskii, and they will in time demonstrate this to him convinc­ingly. But now, in a moment of desperate boldness, Avrekh offers a definition: "Absolutism is a kind of feudal monarchy which by virtue of its internal nature is capable of evolving and being transformed into a bourgeois monarchy."[48] He continues:

What basic features separate the absolutist state from, let us say, the feudal state of the Muscovite tsars? The major difference consists in the fact that it ceases to be despotism—or more accurately, to be only despo­tism. By the latter we understand a form of unlimited autocratic power, under which the despot's will is the only law—a regime of arbitrary per­sonal rule which does not take account of legal process or of laws, cus­tomary or written. Absolutism consciously acts against this order of things.²⁹

The weakness of this definition is obvious. Even by defining despo­tism as a regime of arbitrary personal rule (which corresponds to the Aristotelian definition of tyranny) we come out with a paradox: pre­automatic Russia, with its hereditary aristocracy, Boyar Duma, and Assemblies of the Land, Russia with its free peasantry, proto-bour- geoisie in process of formation, and growing cities, experiencing an economic boom, is declared a despotism ("incapable of evolving"); and autocratic Russia, which has eliminated the proto-bourgeoisie and the limitations of power, the Boyar Duma, and the Assemblies of the Land, which has enserfed the peasantry and halted the urbaniza­tion of the country, and is therefore politically stagnating, is declared an absolutism ("capable of evolving"). Nevertheless, Avrekh's sugges­tion implies the following conclusions as to the nature of Russian absolutism:

It excluded (for unspecified reasons) a regime of arbitrary per­sonal power and tended toward some form of due process;

It determined (apparently for the same unspecified reasons) the

capacity of the Russian political structure for evolution toward bourgeois monarchy;