The Origins of Autocracy

The two Oriental nations that especially affected the history of Russia prior to recent times were Byzantium and the Mongols of the Golden Horde. It is generally agreed that during the Kievan period, when By­zantine influence was very great, Russian society was pluralistic ("multi- centered") . . . whereas, at the end of the Mongol (Tatar) period there emerged in Muscovite Russia a single-centered society dominated by an autocratic state that exerted great power. This historical evidence sug­gests that this state fulfilled a number of managerial functions which in this form—and/or dimension—were not fulfilled by the states of late feudal and post-feudal Europe. It suggests on the other hand that in the Orient many states fulfilled such functions.[58]

Let us assume for a moment that this is precisely how it was: the Muscovite state fulfilled certain functions not carried out by the abso­lutist states, which at the same time were carried out by the despotic states. However, as we already know, there were also a large number of features, functions, and peculiarities in the Russian social, eco­nomic and political process—in the very institutional dynamics of it—which were characteristic not of despotism but of absolutism. What is the logical consequence of this? That Russia belonged to the despotic family, or that it belonged completely neither to despotism nor to absolutism? For a historian who believes in the "multilinearity of social development," this, it would seem, should serve as a stimulus for the analysis of a new "line."

Alas, the same theoretical contradiction from which Wittfogel's conception suffers on the abstract level continues to haunt him on the historical level. He again neglects the logic of the theory he is de­fending. It is true that whereas in the 1950s he emphasized only the similarities between Russia and "Oriental despotism," in the 1960s he noticed the differences. But, having encountered resistance in the historical material, Wittfogel reacts to it, not as a phenomenon requir­ing new insight, but merely as an annoying hindrance which must be overcome, in order that one may, in spite of it, prove the thesis set up in advance. Let us see how he sets about doing this.

Where does Wittfogel see the difficulties in interpreting Russia as a "nonhydraulic subtype" of hydraulic despotism? In the first place, the Tatars, who, it is assumed, "infected" Russia with the organizational and fiscal methods of despotism, by no means occupied it. They did not live on Russian territory, or mix with the local population, or edu­cate it, so to speak, by personal example and shared experience. In­stead, they exercised what Wittfogel calls "remote control" over Rus­sia. This naturally made more difficult so total a degree of "inf ection" as his hypothesis requires.

In the second place, when the youthful Muscovite state threw off the Tatar yoke in the process of its Reconquista, it did not turn out by any means to be fashioned on the Tatar pattern. A whole century was needed before it began to take on those f eatures which gave Wittf ogel a basis for considering it a despotism, even though "semimarginal." This strange disjunction in time, which G. Vernadsky has defined by a kind of metaphor ("influence through delayed action"), requires explanation. In fact, if in the first case we have to do with "remote control" in the spatial dimension, here we get the same oddity in the temporal dimension.

The third peculiarity of "Russian despotism" was the influence ex­erted on it by the "European commercial and industrial revolution," an influence which gave it an entirely unique character. Answering the challenge of Europe, it behaved as a "hydraulic structure" should under no circumstances behave—even one of semimarginal status. It developed; it underwent institutional modernization.