ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 3 ( 2014/2 ) |
AUTOCRACY IN RUSSIA: A FATE, A NECESSITY, OR THE WILL OF THE
RUSSIAN PEOPLE?
ANIL ÇİÇEK*
Summary
This paper argues that there is a trend
towards authoritarianism in Russia. Some political analysts view this mass authoritarianism
as a product of history, while others argue that Russia’s turn to
authoritarianism is not a cultural phenomenon but rather a result of the
economic collapse and political turmoil that Russians faced in the early
post-Soviet period. The paper, in an attempt to conceptualize Russian attitudes
towards autocracy, briefly examines the foundations of autocracy in Russian
history and tries to find the answer to the question of why autocracy has
become an integral part of Russian political culture. The paper especially
focuses on the periods of Muscovite Russia, Peter the Great, Catherine the
Great, Lenin, and Stalin, during which the foundations of absolutism, despotism,
and autocracy were laid and further strengthened. The paper then examines the
period of Putin and examines the motives behind Putin’s authoritarian turn.
Trying to identify the political, economic, and social developments that were
instrumental in determining the Russian nation’s acceptance of authoritarianism,
the paper finally attempts to make predictions for the future.
Key Words: Autocracy, Centralization of Power, Muscovite Absolutism, Petrine Despotism,
Enlightened Despotism, Official Nationalism, Collectivization, Mass
Terror, Leninism, Bolshevism, Stalinism, Putinism, Neo-Official Nationalism,
The Siloviki, Militocracy.
Introduction
During the first two terms
of President Putin – and during his tenure as Prime Minister under Dmitry
Medvedev – Russia witnessed a slow but steady course towards ever-increasing
control by the central government. The media was brought under the power of the
Kremlin; elections became steadily less competitive and opposition circles
faced growing oppression. Putin developed what he called a “power vertical” that
facilitated central government control over local politics and elections.[1] Though parts of the
political system remain democratic in principle, state practices are becoming
increasingly autocratic.
Some
Russian public opinion polls seem to confirm the impression that ordinary
Russians see little use for “Western-style” democracy. According to polls
conducted by the Levada Center, a respected Russian survey organization, only
about 20 percent of respondents think Russia needs the kind of democracy found
in Europe and America.[2] Ordinary Russian citizens
seem to not be interested in the fairness of Russian elections. They tend to
favor “order” and a ruler with a “strong hand”.
Many
of Putin’s defenders have abandoned the pretence of characterizing Russia as a
“managed” or “sovereign” democracy. Instead, they contend that Russia’s
democratic retreat has enhanced the state’s ability to provide for its
citizens. The myth of Putinism is that Russians are safer, more secure, and
generally living better than in the 1990s – and that Putin himself deserves the
credit. Security, the most basic good that a state can provide for its
population, is a central element of the myth of Putinism.[3]
Some
political analysts argue that the “re-emergence of Russian autocracy” under
Putin has coincided with economic growth but has not caused it. According to
these critics, high oil prices and recovery from the transition away from
communism deserve most of the credit. Whatever we think of the Russian state,
there is no doubt that it has undergone a remarkable recovery under Vladimir
Putin’s leadership. Since coming to power in 1999, Putin has purposefully
employed Russian imperial nostalgia and ethnocentric thinking for the
restoration of Russian national pride. By appealing to
Russian nationalism and the past glories of both Tsarist Russia and the
Soviet Union, the Putin administration has been very successful in boosting Russian
morale.
According
to the latest opinion polls, nearly a third of Russians would like to see Putin
become president for life. This figure demonstrates the fact that the policies
of “centralization of power” and “authoritarianism” of the Putin administration
are prevalently supported and valued by Russian citizens.
Some analysts argue that
there have been important developments since the collapse of the former Soviet
Union that have fueled concerns about security and therefore facilitated the
restoration of an autocratic regime in Russia. The war in Chechnya resulting in
the deaths of over ten thousand Russian soldiers, the steady eastward
advancement of the US-led NATO military alliance along Russia’s brittle western
borders, the American military bases in Central Asia, the Orange Revolutions liberating
ex-Soviet countries from Moscow’s orbit, Washington’s missile defense shield
project that includes some Central and Eastern European countries, the violent
terrorist attacks of Chechen radicals in various Russian cities, the war in
Georgia, and, most recently, the incidents of December 2010 have all played an
important role in the rise of Russian
nationalism. These factors, coupled with the loss of prestige and power and a
plummeting standard of living in the early post-Soviet days, have invigorated
the re-emergence of autocracy in Russia.
Increasing
involvement of the Russian Orthodox Church in politics is also often referred
to as one of the factors that played an important role in the re-emergence of
autocratic rule in Russia. The Russian Orthodox Church, excluding the Soviet
era, has always played a decisive role in supporting authoritarianism in
Russian statehood. Following
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, the Orthodox Church claimed
Muscovy to be the new center of Orthodoxy and the Russian rulers, with the
support of the Church, adopted the term “Tsar”, coming from the Byzantine word
“Caesar”. During the century that followed, the rulers of Muscovy declared
themselves as the world’s only Orthodox sovereigns. Russia’s rulers were also addressed by
another term, “gosudar”, commonly
translated as “sovereign”, which symbolized the absolute authority of the Tsar
over his subjects. Today, the open support of the Orthodox Church for the Putin administration is no doubt considered by ordinary
Russians as validation of increasingly autocratic state rule.
Strong
nationalist circles inside the Kremlin are often considered as one the sources of
increased authoritarianism in Russia. Putin has a circle of advisers dealing
with issues of national security and international affairs that is referred to
as the “siloviki” (men of power). The
siloviki are mostly officials with military or KGB background who
dominate the country’s security and intelligence ministries and believe in the
absolute state control of economic, political, and social life in Russia.
Many
Western political analysts report that the broader masses are heavily inclined
toward authoritarianism in Russia, while only a small minority of Russians
supports democracy. Some view this mass authoritarianism as primarily the
product of history, of a political culture with its strongest roots in either the
Soviet period or in the many earlier centuries in which Russians knew nothing
other than autocracy. The few interludes in this history are seen as exceptions
that prove the rule: they have invariably led to sociopolitical turmoil and a
return to dictatorship.[4]
Others
argue that Russia’s turn to authoritarianism is not a cultural phenomenon; it
is rather a result of the economic collapse and political turmoil that Russians
faced in the early post-Soviet period. Many researchers find evidence that
Russians are both authoritarian and democratic at the same time. In short, despite
the existence of various studies, the key question of whether Russians truly
value authoritarianism or have merely become resigned to it as the only
legitimate available political path remains difficult to answer.
For
a better understanding of the dynamics under the resurgence of authoritarianism
in today’s Russia, it would be appropriate to briefly examine the foundations
of autocracy in Russian history. This will enable us to make a comparison
between the current autocratic statehood and those that prevailed in different
forms in the past. Such a brief analysis may give us clues as to how to
conceptualize Russian attitudes towards autocracy.
Muscovite Russia – The Center of
Autocracy and Absolutism
The political
evolution of Russia has progressed in an opposite direction than that of the
West due to geographic, political, and cultural reasons. After the conquest of
Siberia, the borders of Russia were extended vastly, covering an immense
territory and making it the biggest kingdom on earth in the 17th
century. This vast territory was exposed to the threats of Mongol and
Turkic tribes. These conditions created a suitable environment for the
development and justification of the concept of “autocracy”
in Russia.
This feeling of insecurity led
Muscovite Russia to the development of a “military dictatorship”. The entire
Russian nation consisted of serfs: the development of a privileged aristocracy
and a class of self-governing burghers was impeded. The absence of private
property led to the complete concentration of power in the hands of Russia’s
rulers. Until the 19th century Muscovite cities were mainly made up
of rural populations engaged in agriculture and lacking powers of
self-government. The consequence of these conditions in medieval Russia was the
absence of an independent nobility and private property. Thus, the lack of
these two key institutions, which served to limit the authority of kings in the
West, helped Russian rulers to consolidate absolute power.[5]
Another contributing factor to the
rise of an extreme form of autocracy was the Orthodox religion. Byzantine dogma
represented politics as the responsibility of the rulers and this facilitated the
emergence in Russia of a form of monarchy that in its powers exceeded anything
known in the West even in the age of absolutism. European travelers to Muscovy
perceived its rulers as possessing unlimited authority and disregarding private
property rights.
The Russian monarchy emerged as a
sovereign power in the second half of the 15th century. Until then,
Russian rulers had been vassals of both Byzantium and of the Mongol-Tartar
Golden Horde. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 ended Russia’s
dependence on Byzantine Empire. Shortly afterward, the Golden Horde fell apart.
As a result, by 1480, in the reign of Ivan III, the rulers of Muscovy could
claim, at first cautiously and then boldly, the title of “samoderzhets”, a translation of the Greek “autokrates”, which meant sovereign: that is, a ruler independent of
any external power. The term Tsar, an adaptation of Caesar, now also began to
gain currency: it was formally adopted in 1547.[6]
During the century that followed,
the rulers of Muscovy came to claim imperial prerogatives on the grounds that
they were the world’s only Orthodox sovereigns and, as such, the world’s only
true Christian rulers. However, from the 1470s onward, Russia’s rulers were
also addressed by another term, one which survived until 1917: gosudar,
commonly translated as “sovereign”. This terminology provides a clue to the
patrimonial nature of emergent Russian absolutism. Once they had shaken off
Mongol domination, the rulers of Moscow suddenly became sovereigns. They
considered their realm as patrimonial property, property inherited from their
fathers, for which Russians used the term “votchina”.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that both Ivan III (1440-1505) and his son Basil
III (1479-1533), like Ivan I before them, continued to refer to Muscovy as
their “patrimony” (votchina).[7]
During the reigns of Ivan III, Basil
III, and Ivan IV, neither privileged status nor private property were tolerated.[8] Thus, the kind of aristocracy that was seen
in Western Europe could not be created. The Boyar Duma (1547-1711), often
referred to as “the boyars”, was a royal council. Its officials were invited by
the Tsar. The Duma was not able to take the initiative to convene and it dealt
only with matters submitted by the Tsar himself. In sum, the Duma was unable to
limit the authority of the Tsars.
The “Zemskie sobory”, or the Land Assemblies, considered to have been
founded in 1549 or 1550, were also unable to restrain the Muscovite rulers. The
majority of their deputies were government officials appointed by the crown.
Their sole purpose was to strengthen the government’s control over the
provinces. Thus, these assemblies never became politically influential
institutions like their European counterparts. In this patrimonial state, the
monarchs were free to legislate and were confronted neither with private
property nor with established social estates, which, by their very existence,
set limits to authority.
The Russian Orthodox Church and Its Support of Autocracy
In the 330s, Emperor Constantine
deserted the Tiber for the Bosphorus and built there a “New Rome”, which became
the center of the seven ecumenical councils and the home of the Orthodox
emperors and patriarchs.[9]
In line with the decision of the Council of Constantinople held in 381, the
Byzantines themselves actually regarded their state as the “New Rome”.
For over a thousand years, this “New
Rome” dedicated itself to the duty of preserving three great heritages: those
of classical Greece, imperial Rome, and the Church fathers. The empire and the
church became so inextricably intertwined that the clergy could not imagine
Christianity without the emperor. A corollary of this was the belief that the
emperor must endure as long as Christianity itself.[10]
In search of Western military
assistance against the Ottoman threat, Byzantium agreed at the Council of
Florence-Ferrara in 1439 to rejoin the Catholic Church. Thus, the primacy of
the Pope was acknowledged and all doctrinal issues dividing the two churches
were conceded by Byzantium. This accord was denied by the Russian Orthodox
Church and considered as a betrayal of faith.
In 1453, when the Turks finally conquered the
Byzantine Empire, the Russian Orthodox Church became truly theologically
independent. In the mid-14th century
an early Prince of Moscow, Ivan I “Kalita” (“Moneybags”), convinced the
Russian Church to move its headquarters from the city of Vladimir to Moscow,
and the Russian Orthodox Church was thus centered in Muscovy.
According to Orthodox theology,
there could be no Christian church without a secular power to protect it and
enforce its teachings; there had to be a “Third Rome” with its own emperor. After
Constantinople was conquered in 1453, Russia remained the only rightful
claimant of the title of “Third Rome”.[11]
This notion, in turn, led to the
development of the theory of “Moscow - The Third Rome”, formulated apparently
sometime in the 1530s by the monk Filofei (Philotheus).[12]
Filofei articulated his theory in one terse sentence: “Dva Rima padosha, a tretii stoit, a chetvertom ne byti”: “Two Romes
have fallen, the third stands, and a fourth there will not be.”[13]
Implicit in this was the belief that Russia was destined to rule the world and
that the Russian Tsar was the ruler of all humanity. The responsibility of
preserving the world’s cultural heritage was now on the shoulders of Muscovy.
Even into the 19th century, this religious mission remained one of
the main springs of Pan-Slavist thinking.
The Russian Orthodox Church, directly benefiting from
the kingdom’s international standing and historic importance, gave its support
to the autocratic rule of Ivan III and his successors. As Muscovy’s territories
grew, so did the sphere of influence of the Church. In fact, the Russian
Orthodox Church helped Ivan III’s dynastic successors legitimize their
autocracy by propagating the doctrine of the new Muscovite Kingdom being the
“Third Rome.”
With the
preparation of The Book of Degrees of Royal Genealogy (Stepennaia kniga) by Metropolitan
Macarius[14]
in 1560-1563, Ivan IV was presented as the legitimate heir of the Roman and
Byzantine emperors. With the support of the Church, the Russian rulers were now
endowed with unrestrained power and the Church itself came under the full
authority and control of the Tsars. The rulers of Moscow appointed its highest
dignitaries and removed them at will.
This voluntary subordination of the Russian
Church to the state led to the bureaucratization of the clergy and spared Russia
the kind of struggle between ecclesiastical and secular authorities that had
afflicted Catholic Europe through much of the Middle Ages. The highly
bureaucratized Russian Church also became hostile to all independent religious
thought and condemned all independent thinking.
Thus, at the beginning of its new
autonomous existence, Muscovy was given a sharp thrust towards conservatism and
autocracy, along with an admonition to guard warily against perverting
influences from outside, especially from West Europe.[15]
Peter the Great –
A Reformist Despot
During
the reign of Peter the Great, Russia witnessed such a remarkable transformation
process that the Petrine theme in modern Russian history has often been
compared to that of the Reformation in Germany. The rise of Peter the Great
marked a turning point in Russian history. The great reforms and Westernization
processes initiated by Peter the Great are described as “the Petrine
revolution”[16]
by Sergei Mihailovic Solov’ev, who was probably the greatest Russian historian
of all times. Solov’ev, in his famous work History
of Russia from the Earliest Times, argued that the transformations (preobrazovanija) of the Muscovite state
and society undertaken by Peter were both necessary and unavoidable. The
Westernization process of Peter liberated Russia from medieval “clannishness”
and oriented to the nation towards Europe. The method used to give momentum to
this process was authoritarian rule and, to some extent, despotism.
Peter
the Great was an absolute ruler both in theory and practice. He certainly
considered himself an autocrat, and his view was supported by such political
writers as Feofan Prokopovich. Poet Antioch Dmitrievich Kantemir (1708-1744),
like Prokopovich, was one of the leading supporters of Petrine despotism; he
considered autocracy as the only hope against the stagnant and ignorant upper
classes and the conservative clergy. Peter acted like one of the memorable
autocrats of history. An uncompromising character and a violent temper further accentuated
his decisiveness and the plenitude of his power.[17]
According
to Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, Peter the Great was a true enlightened despot. That
he has not generally been so called is to be explained by the facts that this appellation
has usually been reserved for the second half of the eighteenth century, that
the Russian history of the period has not been sufficiently studied in the
European context, and that the crudity and cruelty of the reformer, as well as
the barbarism of his surroundings, have stood in the way of a full recognition
of his place among the elect of the age.[18]
The Decembrists
took a generally negative view of Peter I, criticizing him as a tyrant,
barbarian, enemy of freedom, and cruel despot. According to the Decembrists,
the Russian people had borne the entire cost of Petrine policies but still remained
serfs, ignorant, poverty-stricken, and legally unprotected. The reformer, above
all, established a total tyranny, destroyed freedom, and brought everything and
everyone under his complete control. Nicholas Turgenev and Nicholas Bestuzhev
are among the leading literary figures who condemned the tyranny of Peter the
Great.
The
great Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, in
his unforgettable poem “Stances” (Стансы) of 1826, gave perhaps the most
celebrated description of the reformer.
Самодержавною рукой With an autocratic hand
Он смело сеял
просвещенье, He
daringly sowed enlightenment,
Не презирал страны
родной: He did not
despise the motherland:
Он знал ее
предназначенье. He
knew her destination.
То академик, то герой, Now an academician, now a hero,
То мореплаватель, то
плотник, Now a
seafarer, now a carpenter,
Он всеобъемлющей душой He,
with an all-encompassing soul
На троне вечный был
работник.[19] Was an
eternal worker on the throne.
In
these lines, Pushkin, while admitting Peter’s autocratic rule, cherishes his reforms
and implicitly admits that these reforms could only have been achieved through
despotic rule. It is also generally believed among scholars that Pushkin, as he
studied Peter the Great and his time, became increasingly repelled by the
cruelty of the reformer.[20]
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky, one of the most reputable Russian
historians, argued that Peter’s reform was a despotic struggle with the people,
with their lethargy. Peter hoped, by his terrible power, to stimulate
initiative in an enslaved society, and via a slave-owning nobility to establish
European science and public education in Russia as the indispensable conditions
of social development; he wished that the slave, while remaining a slave, would
act consciously and freely. This combination of despotism and freedom, of
enlightenment and slavery – this political squaring of the circle, this riddle,
delivered to us from the time of Peter, is still unresolved.[21]
Catherine the Great and Enlightened
Despotism
Catherine
II (1729-96) was born in the German city of Stettin. In 1745, at the age of, 16
she was married to the heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Peter III, and
converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity. With the death of Empress Elizabeth
in 1761, Peter was proclaimed Emperor Peter III and Catherine became empress.
She forced Peter III to abdicate the throne and declared herself sovereign
ruler of Russia in June 1762, following a coup d’état leaded by military
officials. Peter III was first arrested and then murdered in prison.
Catherine
II ruled Russia for 34 years, from 1762 until 1796. The “Catherinian Era”
is often considered the Golden Age of the Russian Empire
and the Russian nobility.
Catherine
II followed the example of Peter the Great and vigorously pursued
Westernization policies to foster economic and social development. The
instrument that she used to enforce Westernization within an ignorant,
conservative, and highly superstitious society was similar to that of Peter the
Great: the iron-fisted
rule of a despotic absolutist.[22]
Catherine was deeply influenced by
the ideas of the French Enlightenment. She read the works of
Montesquieu and Voltaire and accumulated a considerable amount of knowledge on theories
of government and politics. Embracing these ideas, she endeavored to rationalize and reform the
Russian Empire. As an “enlightened despot”, Catherine believed that a wise and
benevolent ruler, acting according to the dictates of reason, could ensure the
well-being of her subjects. In this spirit, Catherine initiated a comprehensive
reform process within Russian society.
The first major
reform was made to Russia’s archaic and inefficient Code of Laws. She
formulated a document named the “Instruction”, which called for a progressive
legal system. The “Instruction” proposed a system granting equal protection
under law to all Russians, abolished torture of criminals, and emphasized
prevention of criminal acts rather than the imposition of harsh punishment.
Catherine
made important innovations in economic fields, as well. She established the Free Economic Society (1765) to
modernize agriculture and industry, encouraging foreign investment in economically underdeveloped areas. She endeavored to expand the country’s educational
facilities and proceeded to increase the number of elementary and secondary
schools. The arts and sciences received much attention, and St. Petersburg
became one of Europe's major cultural centers during her reign. Support for
music, theater, and painting increased, and the Russian Academy of Sciences
became a world-class institution of scholarship. She relaxed censorship and encouraged the
publication of foreign books in Russia.
During Catherine’s reign, Russia
also achieved great military success and gained large tracts of land. Following
two successful wars against the Ottoman Empire, Russia annexed Crimea, which
gave it access to the Black Sea. In addition, Russia’s control over Poland and
Lithuania allowed it to annex three separate tracts of land.
Although
Catherine liked to use the liberal rhetoric of the Enlightenment, she actually
ruled Russia with a heavy hand. Being highly dependent on the nobility
to impose her reforms, Catherine closed her eyes to the hopes for abolishment
of serfdom. On the contrary, she took steps to strengthen serfdom, leaving the
fate of millions of serfs in the hands of the gentry.
The governmental
decree of 1767 instructed the serfs and peasants to show “absolute obedience to
the landlords in all matters”. All persons who dared “to incite serfs
and peasants to disobey their landlords” were threatened to “be arrested and
taken to the nearest government office, there to be punished forthwith as
disturbers of the public tranquility, according to the laws and without
leniency”. The decree further dictated that if “any serfs and peasants should
cease to give the proper obedience to their landlords and should make bold to
submit unlawful petitions complaining of their landlords, they shall be
punished by the knout and forthwith deported to Nerchinsk to penal servitude
for life and shall be counted as part of the quota of recruits which their
landlords must furnish to the army”.[23]
The Pugachev Rebellion of 1773-1775 presented the greatest challenge to the
autocratic and despotic rule of Catherine. It began as an organized
insurrection of Yaik
Cossacks headed by Yemelyan
Pugachev and later turned into a massive revolt
against the imperial administration with the support of peasants, serfs,
Cossacks, and Old Believers. Following the defeat of Pugachev, Catherine
directed her attention once more toward domestic matters. For security reasons,
she reorganized provincial administration to favor the nobility.
The
“Catherinian
Era”, like the reign of Peter the Great,
constitutes one of the much debated topics in Russian history. It has been the subject
of numerous dissertations, articles, books, seminars, and symposiums. One thing,
however, on which all the researchers and historians agree is that Catherine
was an autocrat and a despot who ruled Russia with an iron fist.
The Doctrine of Official Nationalism and
its Connection with Autocracy
In
the 1830s and 1840s, during the reign of Nicholas I, the Russian government,
for the first and only time until the Bolsheviks seized power, formulated an
official ideology. This ideology, later labeled Official Nationalism, was
promulgated by an array of conservative scholars and publicists with the
support of the crown. It had some points in common with the Slavophile
doctrine, except that, while extolling Russia’s unique virtues, it was not
anti-Western: Peter the Great, anathema to the Slavophiles, was the doctrine’s
idol.[24]
The
Official Nationality ideology had its origins in a statement made in March 1832
by Count Sergei Uvarov (1786-1855) to Nicholas I. His ideology was based on
three concepts: orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality. Orthodoxy meant devotion
to the Russian Orthodox Church and a return to the spiritual roots of
pre-Petrine Russia. The affirmation of the principle of autocracy meant a
return to the old Muscovite notion of autocracy as the basic and permanent
feature of Russian statehood. Finally, nationality was interpreted by Uvarov as
devotion to the Russian national heritage and spiritual make-up of the people, with
a refusal to trust Western Europe as a model for Russia or Western European
theories as at all relevant for Russia.[25]
The
doctrine of Official Nationality represented not only the views of Nicholas I
and his government but also, broadly speaking, the convictions of a large part
of the Russian educated public of the time.[26] The Russian elite,
despite having differences on many issues, broadly agreed on one fact: autocracy
was the best way to rule the vast Empire, and many leading figures of the era
praised the new ideology of the government.
The
ideology of Official Nationalism prevailed as the official political doctrine
until February 1917. The successor of Nicolas I, Alexander II, was the only
Tsar who did not strictly followed this ideology. However, it was faithfully
adhered to by the last two Emperors, Alexander III and Nicholas II.
Leninism: From Tsarist Autocracy to Bolshevik
Dictatorship
The February and
October Revolutions of 1917 constituted a dramatic turning point not
only in Russian history but in world history and politics as a whole. The
February Revolution was centered in Petrograd, on Women’s Day in
March (late February in the Julian calendar).
The masses revolted against the tsarist autocracy with
the slogan “bread, peace, and liberty”. The revolution broke out spontaneously
and the Russian capital fell into a state of chaos, leading to the overthrow of
the Tsar Nicholas II. The revolution ended the Russian Empire and the Romanov
dynasty. A Russian Provisional Government under Prince Gregory Lvov was established in the form of an alliance between
liberals and socialists who wanted political reform. The February Revolution
was followed in the same year by the October
Revolution, bringing Bolshevik rule and a change in Russia's social structure, and
paving the way for the USSR.
The
Bolsheviks certainly attempted to transform Russia socially, economically, and
politically. They took steps towards the introduction of a centralized state structure
imposing ever-growing restrictions and curtailing the freedom of Russian
citizens. According to Grigori Petrovich
Maximov, the despotic character of state communism converted the country into
an immense prison and set Russia back to the times of feudalism and serfdom. He
further argued that all that was gained through long centuries of bitter
struggle and great sacrifices with church, feudalism, serfdom, absolutism, and
state democracy was destroyed by Marxist state communism.Voskresenskaya Square[27]
The
Russian Empire had an autocratic state structure, with the Tsar possessing unlimited
power and the authority to make final decisions. After the 1905 Revolution, the
Tsar was forced to rule alongside the Duma, although the Duma had very limited
power. Likewise, in Soviet Russia a five-man Politburo was established as the
central body. In reality, Lenin held supreme power as Chairman of the People’s
Commissars. Before the October Revolution, Lenin, appealing to the Russian
workers and peasants, who were tired of despotism, stated that Soviet democracy
was absolutely incompatible with personal dictatorship. Lenin, however, after gaining
control of the government, argued that “Soviet socialist democracy is not
inconsistent with personal rule and dictatorship, for the will of the class is
at times best brought into realization by a dictator, who alone will accomplish
more and who is frequently more needed”.[28]
The Bolsheviks,
who strongly criticized the restrictions on political freedom during the Tsarist
era, introduced a state control mechanism that went far beyond than that of the
Tsars. During the Tsarist era, the secret police force, the “Okhrana”, was used to suppress political
opposition. Following the October Revolution, this organization was replaced in
December 1917 by its communist counterpart, the “Cheka”, under the leadership of Felix Dzerzhinsky. During the
summer of 1918 the Cheka launched the Red Terror, suppressing political
opponents, especially those who represented the highest levels of Russian
society under the Tsar. Mercilessly executed with his wife and children in
Ekaterinburg in June 1918, Tsar Nicholas II also became a victim of the Red
Terror. In addition to the terror of the Cheka, the Red Army was also mobilized
by the Bolsheviks to suppress political opposition. The suppression of the
Kronstadt Rebellion[29]
constituted one of the bloodiest examples of the intervention of the Red Army. There
were thus many similarities between the Tsarist and the Communist states in
terms of state control and suppression of political freedoms. Indeed, a police
state of unparalleled extensiveness developed under Stalin after Lenin’s death.
In
the economic field, Bolshevik policy was based on the nationalization of
industries, state control on the means of production, and just distribution of
wealth. In the first years of the Bolshevik rule, Russia underwent a great
economic transition in terms of ownership. However, during the Civil War
period, Russia’s economy suffered from inflation and food shortages, which
prompted the government to introduce the New Economic Policy (NEP). The
introduction of the NEP symbolized a step backwards for the Bolsheviks in realizing
their dream of collective ownership of the economy. Despite Bolshevik slogans
of justice and equality, the just distribution of wealth remained a distant
dream.
The
Bolsheviks also transformed the social structure of Imperial Russia to a great
extent. Nobles, landowners, and businessmen were either forced to go into exile
or were murdered. In line with the target of creating a more equal society, wealthy
landowners had their property confiscated and “communal houses” were introduced,
in which many families were forced to live in small spaces, denied of even the
most basic human need of privacy.
Despite
their slogans of social justice and equality, the Bolsheviks created a new
class of wealthy bureaucrats and commissars who grew used to luxuries while the
majority of the population lived in poor conditions. The peasantry suffered to
a great extent as a result of the Russian Civil War and the policies of Lenin’s
government. The forcible requisitioning of grain from peasants caused one of
the most devastating famines in the history of Russia in 1921-22, during which
millions of Russians starved to death.
To
summarize, the Bolsheviks had transformed Russia to a great extent by Lenin’s
death in 1924. Politically, Russia remained an autocracy, with a Communist
dictator replacing an imperialist Tsar. In the field of security, the Bolsheviks
created their own secret police, the tyranny of which went far beyond the
imperial Okhrana. On the economic
front, most industry was nationalized, lands were confiscated, and private
ownership and businesses were destroyed. In social policy, the Bolsheviks created
a new ruling class of party bureaucrats who enjoyed privileges, luxury, and
wealth while the peasantry and the working masses suffered in inhumane
conditions. What Lenin created in 1924 was certainly very far from Marx’s
theory of a Communist state.
Stalinism: Tyranny and Mass Terror
The brutality and
terror of the Stalinist system derived principally from Stalin himself. As an
omnipotent but paranoid leader, Stalin arrested and executed millions of
innocent people, including many of his fellow Communist Party members. Through
this exercise of mass terror, he ensured that no one opposed his policies or
challenged his personal dictatorship.[30]
Stalin was one of the least likely
candidates for a charismatic hero. Short in stature, reticent in meetings and
on public occasions, neither a talented orator like Trotsky or Zinoviev nor an
attractive and engaging personality like Lenin or Bukharin, Stalin did not
himself project the image of a leader – until it was created for him through a cult.
First the promotion of a cult of Lenin, which Stalin actively encouraged, then Stalin’s
identification as a loyal Leninist, and eventually his merger with and
substitution for the image of Lenin were important props for Stalin’s authority
both within the party and in society.[31]
Stalin, after taking control
of the Party, became increasingly paranoid and power-mad, firmly believing that
the country needed his “guidance and leadership”. He drastically departed from
Lenin’s policies and practices and put his personal imprint on the system that
bears his name. Stalin believed in the need for rapid industrialization and
collectivization of agriculture. Soviet heavy industry was weak and in decline,
obviously lacking the capacity to produce enough metal and heavy machinery for
the imminent war. Stalinist industrialization and collectivization policies
generated devastating consequences, especially for the peasantry and the
working masses.
Stalin's “Apparatus of Terror”
relied mostly on the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, better known as the NKVD.[32]
During
the second half of the 1920s, Joseph Stalin employed NKVD repression against
opposition elements within the Communist Party. The first victims were
Politburo members Leon Trotskii, Grigorii Zinovev, and Lev Kamenev, who were
expelled from the party in late 1927. By late 1934, Stalin had eliminated all
likely potential opposition to his leadership and was the unchallenged leader
of both party and state. Nevertheless, he proceeded to purge the party ranks
and to terrorize the entire country with widespread arrests and executions.
The murder of Sergei Kirov on 1 December
1934 set off a chain of events that culminated in the Great Terror of the
1930s. Kirov was a skillful orator who had considerable popularity in the Party
and in public opinion. As a member of the ruling Politburo, leader of the
Leningrad party apparatus, and an influential member of the ruling elite, he
was considered as a candidate for leadership by some party members. Doubtful of the loyalty of Kirov and the
Leningrad apparatus, Stalin began to search for a pretext for launching a broad
purge and decided that murdering Kirov would be expedient. The murder was
carried out by a young assassin named Leonid Nikolaev. Recent evidence has
indicated that Stalin and the NKVD planned the crime.
Stalin then used the murder as an
excuse for introducing a witch-hunt for alleged conspirators. In the following
four-and-a-half years, Stalin’s
political opponents, such as Zinovyev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Tomsky, and Rykov,
were put on “show trials”, where they were declared guilty of charges of
treason. Kirov’s murder
was arguably the crime of the century as it paved the way for the Great Terror that
claimed the lives of millions of innocent people. Stalin never visited
Leningrad again and directed one of his most vicious post-war purges against
the city.
In 1937, the Commander-in-Chief of
the Red Army and 7 leading generals were shot. In 1938-39, all of the admirals
and half the Army’s officers were executed or imprisoned. In the same period of
time, thousands of religious leaders were imprisoned while churches were
closed.
With the start of the Second World War, Stalin's terror transformed into
the extermination of war prisoners and “traitors”. Out of several simultaneous
executions of prisoners of war, the most tragic was perhaps the “Katyn massacre”,
which took place in April and May of 1940 in the Smolensk region. With the
proposal of Lavrenty Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps,
22,000 Polish citizens[33] were
shot. The execution order was approved and signed by the Soviet Politburo,
including its leader, Joseph Stalin.
Given the lack of complete data, it
is difficult to establish the total loss of life brought about by the Stalinist
terror. An average estimate is that in the Soviet Union as a whole, about
500,000 were executed in 1937-39 and somewhere between 3 and 12 million were
sent to labor camps (The Gulag), where nearly half of them died.
Putinism:
A New Combination of Managed Democracy, Centralization of Power, Neo-Official Nationalism, and Authoritarianism
Putin, in his third term as the
President of the Russian Federation, preserves his sound position of
significant power. During Putin’s tenure, the state systematically recovered
firm control of politics and the key sectors of the economy. Democracy
advocates in Russia and the West often voice criticism of Putin, accusing him
of creating a regime that closely corresponds to the traditional definitions of
authoritarianism as described by political scientist Samuel Huntington.
Despite concerns about an
increasingly authoritarian regime, Putin still enjoys the support of the vast
majority of the Russian population as his leadership is considered by ordinary
Russians as a guarantee for order, stability, and economic growth. The support
of the Russian population for Putinism is often explained by scholars by the
tendency of the Russian people to show obedience to a charismatic and strong
leader who has the capacity to mobilize the masses under a common objective.
Looking at the history of Russia, this definition does not seem to be entirely accurate,
since the obedience of ordinary Russians to strong historical figures such as
Peter the Great, Lenin, and Stalin was mostly motivated by “fear” rather than by
“faith”.
In the case of Putin, however, the
authoritarian turn of the Russian State seems to reflect the free will and
faith of the Russian people. In order to better understand the main motives
behind the support given by the Russian people to the Putin administration and Putin’s
policies towards strong central state control and authoritarianism, it would be
useful to take a careful look at the recent history of Russia and to examine
the founding principles of Putinism.
A) The Collapse of the Soviet Union
and the Following Years of Political and Economic Turmoil
The Yeltsin regime, formed after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, had passed through three important stages by the
time power was handed over to Putin. The first stage ended in 1993 as the
former parliament was terminated and a new constitution was adopted. During
that period of reconstructing the old political institutions and forming a new
Russian state, Yeltsin’s regime could be described as a “delegative democracy”,
a term first proposed by Argentine political scholar Guillermo O’Donnell.
Regimes that emerge during a transition from one system to another are
characterized by the presence of a charismatic leader, as well as extremely
weak political institutions with no ability for mobilization. There is a lack
of feedback between the people, who legitimize a charismatic leader’s authority
through popular elections, and the leader himself after the elections. At the
initial stage, a charismatic leader, while being extremely popular, can promise
many changes, but he will not be able to achieve his goals. As a result, the
leader’s charisma is impaired, leading to a loss of support from the
population. In this situation, such a regime may develop according to the
following two scenarios: if democratic reforms are successful and civil
institutions are strengthened, it moves toward consolidated democracy; on the
other hand, if serious problems block economic and social reforms, the regime
may experience a deep crisis, chaos, and even inability to properly govern. At
this point, the country may evolve toward consolidated authoritarianism. The
main feature of a delegative democracy is that this regime is not consolidated
in principle. Such a regime is incapable of putting forth sensible objectives;
it fails to mobilize – via various institutions – the financial, institutional,
human, and information resources that are necessary for resolving the problems
facing the country.[34]
In the case of Russia, a struggle
was witnessed between charismatic leader Boris Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet
and the Congress of People’s Deputies, which resolutely opposed Yeltsin’s
course. Under these conditions, Yeltsin was forced to make very serious
concessions to political and business elites in order to stand against his
opponents.
After President Yeltsin crushed the
Supreme Soviet, his regime entered the second stage in the confrontation. This
was characterized by the president’s loss of charisma and mobilization
potential. As the opposition was defeated, a regime of delegative democracy
drifted toward a rather moderate military-bureaucratic consolidation of power.
During that period, the officials in the top echelons of power began a
large-scale process of transferring state property into select private hands. This
sweeping property redistribution, together with the formation of new segments
in the bureaucratic and business structures with a view toward supporting the
existing regime, was accomplished through the absolute decentralization of
government authorities. However, this decentralization of power, together with
state’s loss of central authority, created an illusion of democracy. Under
these conditions, high-ranking officials and business people that had
connections within the government were able to turn into multimillionaires
overnight. By the 1996 presidential election, when Yeltsin ran for his second
term, Russia still had decentralized power, weak institutions, and a leader who
had totally lost the support of the public.[35]
The third stage of Yeltsin’s regime
started after he won the 1996 election. The regime was then totally degraded
and the Russian state completely lost its central authority. There occurred the
privatization of state institutions by oligarchs, as well as the privatization
of the Cabinet, the president’s administration, and the president himself – or
rather the president’s family. To retain his personal power under such a
regime, the president used his powers to redistribute property and prevent a
transfer of power to the Cabinet. The president constantly instigated conflicts
inside the Cabinet and the parliament, thus effectively paralyzing their
activities. This was the only way for him to retain his personal power and
prevent its transfer to the prime minister and the government.[36]
B) Putin’s Ascent to Power and Steps
toward Political and Economic Restoration
Putin, ending his 16-year career as an officer in the KGB,
retired to enter politics in his native St. Petersburg in 1991. After moving to Moscow in 1996, he joined
President Boris
Yeltsin’s administration, where he became Acting President on 31 December 1999 following the unexpected resignation
of President Yeltsin. Putin started his first term in office as president after
he won the presidential elections in the year 2000.
The
regime inherited by Putin was totally decentralized; the state had lost central
authority, while oligarchs robbed the country and controlled its power
institutions. In order to mend this situation, Putin began to build a hierarchy
of power. He destroyed the political influence of oligarchs and oligopolies in
the federal center. He also ended the omnipotence of the regional elites.
During his first two years as president, Putin succeeded in restoring vertical
governance in general. As a result, the Russian political and economic actors
who had sought to privatize the state were weakened.[37] Putin,
by stripping several actors of their financial and media resources, such as
Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, barred them from
decision-making on key political issues.
Putin’s
attempts to restore central authority by taking control of the financial,
administrative, and media resources of the state faced fierce resistance from
the oligopolies. These efforts were interpreted as the strengthening of
authoritarian and totalitarian trends. Toward the end of his first term, Putin
was able to consolidate his political regime, restoring the effectiveness and
control of the state over its resources. Under Putin, the Russian state became
the largest “corporation”, which defined the rules of the game.
C) Putin and the Ideology of Neo-Official Nationalism
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian
academics, policy-makers, philosophers, and bureaucracy have struggled to
develop a new concept that could play a guiding role in building a new and
powerful Russia reminiscent of the imperial past. “Official Nationalism”, which
was introduced by Nicholas I in the 1830s as an official ideology, has
surprisingly common features with Putin’s state nationalism. The ideology of
Official Nationalism was based on three concepts: orthodoxy, autocracy, and
nationality. The repercussions of these three concepts are visible in Putin’s
interpretation of state nationalism.
The Putin administration has the open support of the
Orthodox Church and there has been an apparent revival of orthodoxy in politics
since the beginning of Putin’s presidency. Autocracy is another undeniable
aspect of Putin’s government. Russia has witnessed a sharp autocratic turn with
Putin’s immense centralization of power. His policies to neuter the Russian
Duma, intimidate the press, and manipulate the levers of the Russian economy
have gained the support of the Russian nation as his popularity among Russians
has never declined. Nationality, albeit not in a discriminative character, is
another concept of state nationalism under Putin.
The nationalist ideology of the Putin administration can be
defined as a “neo-Official Nationalism”, reminiscent of the days of Nicholas I,
who tried to develop a new ideology of nationalism to dominate the domestic and
foreign affairs of Imperial Russia. This neo-Official Nationalism is based on
Orthodoxy, autocracy, and national pride and is strengthened by a Eurasianist
and, to a certain extent, Slavophile influence. Putin’s neo-Official
Nationalism seems to be deprived of irredentist and expansionist policies or
territorial claims. However, it can adopt an aggressive tone and hostility when
the question comes to the ethnic Russians living in the periphery of Russia.
The issue of the “protection” of this Russian diaspora is used as a strong
policy tool to manipulate domestic politics as well as foreign relations with
those countries who are hosting ethnic Russians. The latest example of this was
seen during the crisis with Georgia. The new feeling of having the protection
of the state and being citizens of a “great power” has no doubt boosted morale
and national pride among the Russian people, which, in return, has increased
the support for Putin and his policies toward increased authoritarianism.
D) Putin’s Militocracy: The Siloviki
According to some democracy advocates, a new section of the
elite, the siloviki, has an important
share in the trend towards authoritarianism in Russia. The word is derived from
the Russian “silovye struktury - силовые структуры”, which means “force
structure”. Silovik (силовик) is the
singular and siloviki (силовики) is
the plural.
Siloviki are defined as
anyone with a background as an official in Russia’s armed services, law
enforcement bodies, or intelligent agencies. As a percentage of the elite, siloviki representation has
significantly increased following Putin’s election victory in the year 2000 and
throughout his terms in office. Putin himself served in the KGB for 16 years.[38]
Sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya and political
scientist Stephen White define the siloviki
as a “militocracy” that is committed to the ideals of authoritarian institutions
and centralization of power.[39] Kryshtanovskaya estimates that 26 percent of Russia’s
senior political and commercial leadership are siloviki. If one tries to account for everyone connected to the
security organs in one way or another, Kryshtanovskaya’s estimate rises to 78
percent of the elite.
As
was seen above, the Cheka (чрезвыча́йная
коми́ссия), or the State Committee for the
Emergency Situation, was established in 1917 under Lenin in order to
consolidate Bolshevik control following the October Revolution. The successor
of the Cheka was the KGB (Комитет государственной безопасности), or
Committee for State Security, which preserved its strong position until the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although the KGB was dismantled more than two
decades ago, its successor, the Federal Security Service (FSB), still keeps its
image visible in Russian politics. Many of the siloviki brought into power have personal connections to Putin either
from his past in the KGB and later as the Director of the FSB or from his term
of office as deputy to former Mayor Sobchak[40]
in St. Petersburg.
Robert
Coalson argues that the siloviki, due
to their shared experiences in the security services, are devoted to the “Chekist
ideology” and see themselves nearly as messiahs, the saviors of Russia from
a raft of internal and external enemies. The siloviki feel that they know how to protect Russia and make it
great again; consequently, any actions they take are justified for this greater
good.[41] The
common goal of the siloviki is to
restore the international prestige and power of Russia. A new sort of
state-sponsored nationalism is the method adopted to achieve this goal. Their
strict control of the most powerful institutions has also enabled them to
initiate a nationalization process in the key sectors of the Russian economy.
Conclusion
Russia has
a long history of strong leadership by a single charismatic figure, as seen in
the examples of Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin, and, lastly, Putin. During the years
of Imperial Russia, Tsars were the head of the entire Empire. Following the
October Revolution, Tsarist autocracy was replaced by the dictatorial rule of
the Bolsheviks, introduced by Lenin. The dictatorship of the proletariat turned
into mass terror during the rule of Joseph Stalin. Following the collapse of
the USSR, hopes for democratization soon faded away. Yeltsin, despite his
frequent use of slogans about democracy, freedom, and liberty, took no concrete
steps to lessen executive authority during his term of office. As a result of
the centuries-old state tradition of despotism and autocracy, Russian society was
unable to have a meaningful democratic experience. This authoritarian tradition
created a feeling of respect in the Russian people for a leader whose charisma
and guidance were believed to keep the country in order.
The deep-rooted
authoritarian tradition and feeling of obedience of the Russian people remained
unchanged in post-Soviet Russia. In fact, new steps were taken to preserve this
political structure. The Russian constitution of 1993, by charging the
president with guaranteeing the constitution and taking measures to ensure the
independence and integrity of the state, placed deep responsibility and
significant power in the president’s hands. The president has also been equipped
with broad legislative powers, including the power of submission of draft laws
to parliament, issuing of decrees and directives not subject to approval by
parliament, and authority of initiating referendums on the modification of the
constitution.
When Putin
was elected as the new president, he found an already well-established legal
basis and tradition. He further improved the existing system, placing himself
at the focal point of politics in the Russian Federation. By using his
significant powers of appointment, he established a new network of ruling elites
that is completely dependent on him. His power of decree also enabled Putin to
penetrate his influence deep into regional structures. One may argue that the
presidents of many democratic countries also have extensive powers to appoint
close associates to high posts. What makes the Russian president unique is that
he is able to use these powers with little accountability due to severely
weakened legislative and judicial branches.
Another
important feature of the Russian political system is the secondary role of the
Prime Minister as a subordinate to the presidency. The Russian president has
the power to appoint and dismiss the Prime Minister. This extends presidential
influence deep into the government.
In
addition to the deep-rooted tradition of strong and authoritarian leadership
and to the legally established framework to preserve this political structure,
some political, economic, and social developments also played an important role
in determining the preference of the Russian nation towards authoritarianism.
The initial attempt at democracy during the 1990s was characterized by political
instability, poverty, and corruption. In August 1999, Chechen separatist
invaded the neighboring province of Dagestan, and Chechen terrorists initiated
bloody attacks in Moscow and other Russian cities. Putin took the post of
President as the war in Chechnya was beginning and Russian politics and economy
were swept into an atmosphere of turmoil.
In these
circumstances, the popularity of Putin steadily increased, and his steps
towards a strong centralized state and authoritarianism were considered as
steps towards stability. High energy prices played a vital role in the fast
recovery of the Russian economy, causing a gradual rise in salaries, decrease
in unemployment, and stabilization of the inflation rate. During Putin’s first
and second terms, many of the hated oligarchs were stripped of their political
and economic powers and wealth. Lastly, the gradual restoration of the weakened
role of the Russian Federation in international politics fueled national pride
and the feeling of being a member of a great power. These developments
strengthened the already existing support and confidence that Putin held among
Russian society.
Looking into
the future, it should not be difficult to predict that Russia will continue to walk
its current path. Putin, already in his third term as president, will rule the
country until the presidential elections of 2018. He has already hinted that he
will use his constitutional right to run in the presidential elections in 2018
for the second time. It is very unlikely to see a strong candidate to compete
with Putin, given his immense power, authority, and popularity. Taking into
consideration the weakness of democratic institutions and the lack of social
pressure, it is easy to foresee that democratic reforms can only be initiated
from the top in Russia. There are claims that the Kremlin’s real strategy is to
bring democracy in the long term once political and economic stability is
ensured. However, with autocratic institutions becoming deeply embedded into
Russian political system, the creation of a fully democratic system in Russia
is unlikely to happen in the coming decades.
[1]Ellen
Carnaghan, Popular Support for Democracy and Autocracy in Russia, Russian
Analytical Digest No.117, Saint Louis, 19 September 2012, p.2.
[2]Carnaghan,
Popular Support for Democracy and Autocracy in Russia, p.2.
[3]Michael McFaul
and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, The Myth of the Authoritarian Model, Foreign Affairs,
Volume 87, No.1, January/February 2008, p.74.
[4]Henry E. Hale,
The Myth of Mass Authoritarianism in Russia: Public Opinion Foundations of a
Hybrid Regime, George Washington University, The National Council for Eurasian
and East European Research, Seattle, 2009, p.1.
[5]See Ronald G.
Charbonneau. The Origins of Muscovite Autocracy, Master Thesis, Department of
History of Mc Gill University, Montreal, 1967.
[6]Richard Pipes,
Russian Conservatism and Its Critics A Study in Political Culture, Yale
University Press, New Haven and London, 2005, p.13.
[7]Pipes, Russian
Conservatism and Its Critics A Study in Political Culture, p.14.
[8]See Cherie
Woodworth, The Birth of the Captive Autocracy: Moscow, 1432, Journal of Early
Modern History, 13, 2009, pp. 49-69.
[9]According to
the Apollinarian doctrine taught by Bishop Apollinaris the Younger, bishop of
Laodicea in Syria during the 4th century, Jesus was not a man but the “word of
God dwelling in the human body”. This transgression caused the capital of true
Christianity to shift to Constantinople, where it made its home for the next
nine centuries. This doctrine was condemned as heresy by Roman councils in 377
and in 381 and also by the Council of Constantinople in 381. In spite of its
repeated condemnation, Apollinarianism persisted into the 5th
century. At that time its remaining adherents merged with the Monophysites, who
held that Christ had a divine nature but no human nature, as articulated in the
second half of the 4th century by Bishop Apollinaris.
[10]Thornton
Anderson, Russian Political Thought An Introduction, Cornell University Press,
New York, 1967, p.72.
[11]The first to
claim their capital as the heir of Byzantium were the Bulgarians, who as early
as the 14th century designated the capital of their empire, Tyrnovo
(Tirnova), as the “New Rome.” This claim lapsed in 1393 when Tyrnovo fell to
the Turks.
[12]Старец Филофей
Иван Забелин, Москва - Третый Рим и Семь Московских Холмов 1500-е годы в Марина
Федотова, Кирил Королев, Москва- История Города От Участников и Очевидцев,
Автобиография, Москва 2010, p.88.
[13]Pipes, Russian
Conservatism and Its Critics A Study in Political Culture, p.39.
[14]Macarius served as the Metropolitan
of Moscow and all Russia from
1542 until 1563.
[15]Anderson,
Russian Political Thought An Introduction,
p.74.
[16]See Сергей Михайлович Соловьев, История России с древнейших времен, Publisher: Oleg E. Kolesnikov (Русская история в Библиотеке Магистра, http://www.lib.ru/HISTORY/SOLOVIEV/solv01.txt).
[17]Nicholas V.
Riasanovsky, The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought,
Oxford University Press, New York, 1985, p.8.
[18]Riasanovsky,
The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought, p.18.
[19]А.
С. Пушкин. Собрание сочинений в 10 томах, Стансы,
http://rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/01versus/0423_36/1826/0426.htm.
[20]Riasanovsky,
The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought, p.91.
[21]James Cracraft,
The Petrine Revolution in Russian Culture, The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, London, 2004, p.5.
[22]See Robert K.
Massie, Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman, Random House, Canada, 2011.
[23]George Vernadsky and S. G. Pushkarev, A Source Book for Russian History from Early
Times to 1917, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1972, pp.453-454.
[24]Pipes, Russian
Conservatism and Its Critics A Study in Political Culture, p.98.
[25]Sergei
Vasilievich Utechin, Russian Political Thought, London, 1963, p.72.
[26]Riasanovsky,
The Image of Peter the Great in Russian History and Thought, p.121.
[27]Grigori
Petrovitch Maximov, Bolshevism: Promises and Reality, Chicago, 2011, p.10.
[28]Maximov,
Bolshevism: Promises and Reality, pp.11-18.
[29]Kronstadt rebellion (Кронштадтское восстание) was a major unsuccessful uprising against the Bolsheviks in the later years of the Russian Civil War, which was led by Stepan Petrichenko and consisted of Russian sailors, soldiers, and civilians. The rebellion originated in Kronstadt, a naval fortress on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland that served as the base of the Russian Baltic Fleet. On March 17, the Bolshevik forces entered the city of Kronstadt. Historians estimate that from 1,200 to 2,168 were executed in the days following the revolt and a similar number were jailed, many in the Solovki prison camp. Official Soviet figures claim that approximately 1,000 rebels were killed, 2,000 were wounded, and between 2,300 to 6,528 were captured, with 6,000 to 8,000 defecting to Finland, while the Red Army lost 527 killed and 3,285 wounded.
[30]Ronald Grigor
Suny, “Stalin and his Stalinism: Power and Authority in the Soviet Union,
1930-1953”, in Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, eds., Stalinism and Nazism:
Dictatorships in Comparison, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997, p.13.
[31]Suny, “Stalin
and his Stalinism: Power and Authority in the Soviet Union, p.20.
[32]The first
secret police force, called the Cheka, was established in December 1917 by the
Bolsheviks as a temporary institution to be abolished once Vladimir Lenin and
the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power. The Cheka was empowered only to
investigate “counter-revolutionary” crimes. Nevertheless, it soon began a
campaign of terror against the propertied classes and enemies of Bolshevism.
Once the Civil War (1918-21) ended and the threat of domestic and foreign
opposition had receded, the Cheka was disbanded. Its functions were transferred
in 1922 to the State Political Directorate, or GPU, which was initially less
powerful than its predecessor. Following the rise of Joseph Stalin to Party
leadership, the secret police again acquired vast punitive powers and in 1934
was renamed the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, or the NKVD. No
longer subject to party control or restricted by law, the NKVD became a direct
instrument of Stalin for use against the party and the country during the Great
Terror of the 1930s. The secret police remained the most powerful and feared
Soviet institution throughout the Stalinist period. Although the post-Stalin
secret police, the KGB, no longer inflicted such large-scale purges, terror,
and forced depopulations on the peoples of the Soviet Union, it continued to be
used by the Kremlin leadership to suppress political and religious dissent. The
head of the KGB was a key figure in resisting the democratization of the late
1980s and in organizing the attempted putsch of August 1991.
[33]Of
the total killed, about 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939
Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were
Polish intelligentsia arrested for allegedly being “intelligence agents,
gendarmes, landowners, saboteurs, factory owners, lawyers, and priests”.
[34]Andranik
Migranyan, What is “Putinism”?, Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. 2, April-June,
2004, pp.29-30.
[35]Migranyan, What
is “Putinism”?, pp.30-33.
[36]Migranyan, What
is “Putinism”?, p.33.
[37]Migranyan, What
is “Putinism”?, p.35.
[38]Brian J.
Turnbull, The Siloviki and Autocracy in Russia: Are They the Source?, Master
Thesis, Georgetown University, Washington, 2011, p.2.
[39]Olga
Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, Putin’s Militocracy, Post-Soviet Affairs,
Volume 19, Issue 4, 2003, p.297.
[40]Anatoly Aleksandrevich Sobchak was the
first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg. He served as Mayor of Saint Petersburg from 1991 until 1996. Vladimir Putin was one of the two
deputies of Sobchak. In 1997 a criminal investigation was started against
Sobchak. On 7 November 1997 he flew to Paris on a private plane without passport processing on the
Russian side. There are allegations that Putin, as director of the FSB, helped
Sobchak secretly escape to Paris and avoid trial on charges of corruption and
abuse of power. Between 1997 and 1999 he lived in Paris as a political
immigrant. By June 1999 his friend Putin had become
much stronger politically and was able to make the prosecutors drop the charges
against Sobchak. On 12 June 1999, Sobchak returned to Russia. He died suddenly
on 20 February 2000 in the town of Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad
Oblast, during a trip to support Putin’s
election, shortly after a meeting with Putin on 16 February.
[41]Robert Coalson,
Russia: Why The Chekist Mind-Set Matters, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty,
October15, 2007, http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1078954.html.
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*Anıl Çiçek - Dr., Head of Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, completed his post-doctoral research studies at the University of Latvia as a part of the Jean Monnet Scholarship Program, achieved Russian language certificate TRKI–III (advanced level) of the University of St Petersburg
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