The Origins of Autocracy

For a system of government, however, that was so utterly alien from all earlier Russian tradition, to have taken root and flourished with such intensity, the force of example, the mere accessibility of the tools, could not have been sufficient. After all, Hungary and the Balkan countries remained under Turkish rule for periods, in some cases, far exceeding the duration of the Tatar yoke, yet none of them emerged from thral­dom as Oriental despotisms. This will not do—as in murder investi­gations, not only opportunity and method, but motive also has to be es­tablished. There had to exist in Russia a particular concatenation of circumstances which required, necessitated or called for the introduc­tion of this socio-political system, and that ensured the rationality and success of its operation—or to use the Toynbeean terms, there had to have existed a "challenge" which evoked an appropriate "response.'"'

As for the third peculiarity of "Russian despotism," here Witt­fogel's situation is still more complex. In fact, if his entire explana­tion of Russia's capacity for modernization consists only in the fact that it is situated closer to Europe than the other "agrodespotisms," then the question immediately arises: what about Turkey, which was still closer? Why did the Ottoman Empire prove immune to the Euro­pean industrial revolution and incapable of modernization, as an ordinary despotism is supposed to be, in spite of its geographical ad­vantages? Why did it have to be destroyed to the foundations in a world war and transformed into an ordinary national state before it could embark on the path of modernization? Wittfogel, to do him jus­tice, sees this difficulty himself. Unfortunately, the explanation which he suggests is still more unclear than in the case of the "institutional time bomb." "In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries," he writes, "Ottoman Turkey was faced with just this question [modernization], but internal disintegration and external encroachment prevented a successful industrial and military adjustment. Russia, however, was sufficiently independent to meet the new threat."⁷

What Wittfogel means by this in concrete terms again remains obscure. That at the beginning of the eighteenth century (when Rus­sia, according to Wittfogel, began its march toward modernization) Turkey was "insufficiently independent" for an analogous action? But in that case, on whom did it depend? And whose intrusion prevented it from modernizing itself? In fact, the Ottoman Empire at this time was a great and mighty power. More than this, as the Russo-Turkish War of 1711 demonstrates, it was stronger than Russia—and more independent, if only because Turkey did not require either Dutch sea captains or Scottish generals, of whom Russia stood in such need pre­cisely because she was modernizing. It turns out that the whole situa­tion was exactly the reverse. The Ottoman Empire was more inde­pendent than Russia because of its incapacity for modernization.

Concerning the fourth peculiarity of "Russian despotism," Witt­fogel comments as follows: