The Origins of Autocracy

And here we approach the basic question of this book: why? Why was it that Russia, which in the sixteenth century could claim a pri­mary role in European politics, was in the eighteenth glad even of the status of a second-class power? Why was a brilliant future predicted for it in the sixteenth century, while in the eighteenth "we were not considered human beings"? What was the political basis for the eco­nomic and military catastrophes which plunged the country into the "nonexistence" of which Russian politicians and historians speak so glibly?