Why was authoritarian government such a strong feature of Russia between 1855 and
1953?
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Russia's patrimonial monarchy was securely in place long before 1855. The peculiar
geopolitical situation of the nation: a hotch-potch of different races, languages and
religions, coupled with the sheer vastness of the territory, demanded the imposition
of authoritarian rule. In no other way could the empire be held together, and the
backward economy be prevented from collapse. Once arrived at this position,
attempts at 'modernisation' often reinforced archaism, whilst the burden of tradition
compelled the ruler to be harsh and overbearing rather than pragmatic and therefore
'weak'. As the 19th century wore on, tsarism, faced with ever more potent external
threats and repeated military failure, increasingly adopted the mentality of a police
state. It was this style of governance that the Bolsheviks revived, not destroyed.
Driven by elitist ideology (the 'professional revolutionaries') and shaped by the
realities of Russian rule, they governed in a way to which the people had become
accustomed.
Russia had always been a nation under attack from without and from within. It had
lacked the security that ethnic homogeneity affords, and, under the banner of
'autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality', tsarism thus attempted to impose conformity from
above. Hence political, religious and social diversity was suffocated by
'Russification'. However, far from uniting, this policy drove minorities from timid
national assertion to vigorous defiance of the regime. It is in this kind of action that
Russian tsarism failed again and again. Crucially, it never took account of the fact
that while there were strong, cohesive structures at the base and apex of Russian
society, between them were weak and labile institutions, and a fatal absence of civil
society. The ongoing lack of a truly independent and powerful nobility (and thus the
failure to achieve a real 'feudal society'), coupled with the absence of enduring
participatory government, led to the imposition of severe, but 'traditional' rule. The
moral rectitude of this system was fortified by the undeniable love that the Russian
masses felt for a strong leader. Whether it was the 'little father' or the 'man of steel',
the people wanted to be led by someone who may not always be successful, but still
'did' things, and at least, for good or bad, put Russia on the map. This kind of
patriarchal relationship between king and subject was reinforced by the tsar's
absolute claim to Russia - he was a 'landowner' and the nation was his royal domain.
This definition of authority was most firmly embodied within military glory invincibility on the battlefield was the primary criterion of legitimacy. Thus the loss
of a war in the region where Russia had the greatest hope of expansion (the Crimea)
made autocracy for the first time seem ineffective, and this was to be exacerbated by
adapted with permission: Sandra Haywood, University of Nottingham
further failures in the Russio-Japanese War and, most damagingly, the First World
War. For 150 years, Russia had been a successful empire and a European great power
on the basis of personalised forms of authority backed by police and military. The
Crimean War served notice that that period was over. Russia's industry and
communications were wholly inadequate for the conduct of a major European war.
Thus, for Russia, the European situation in the second half of the 19th century was
much more testing than in the first. The last half-century of Russian tsardom
witnessed the steady de-sacrilisation of the monarch. When to this was added an
erosion of moral standing, as a result of the Bloody Sunday affair, the days of tsarism
were numbered.
One of the catalysts for this decline in authority was the increased challenge to
autocracy that occurred during the late 19th century. The duality of Slavophiles and
Westernisers - between looking outward and looking inward - typified the type of
insecurity and lack of identity that Russia was experiencing.However, opposition
was rarely liberal; indeed, liberalism made little headway in the 19th century (again,
most likely due to the particular nature of Russian political, and revolutionary,
thought - one that emphasised power over pragmatism, conquest over compromise).
Instead, it was those expounding violent overhaul and radical change that received
the most attention - such as 'Narodnaia Volia' (People's Freedom). However,
attempting to intimidate the tsar would only result in further hostility. In succeeding in
assassinating Alexander II in 1881, the party's greatest success also highlighted the
movement's fundamental failure - it was unable to take power or convene a
constituent assembly. It could not even influence the policies of the new Tsar,
Alexander III, except in a negative way. Likewise, true attempts at reform - the
Decembrists in the 1820s, Bukharin in the 1920s, Khruschev in the 1950s, all failed to
take root in the hostile Russian soil.
By the end of the century, Russia's internal politics hovered uneasily between two
incompatible systems. Alexander II's reforms had severely shaken the traditional
personalised power structure but had not managed consistently to replace it with
institutions of civil society or the rule of law. To plug the gap, the government had to
rely on police and emergency power. As Hosking notes: "having set out to demolish
an old building and erect a new one, the regime had then changed its mind and started
repairing the ruins - the resultant hybrid architecture threatened the equilibrium of the
entire edifice. The regime was in an insoluble dilemma, caught between perception
of the need for civic institutions and inability to introduce them without undermining
its own stability." The contradiction between the static quality of the political and
social order and the dynamism of the economy and cultural life produced a condition
of endemic tension. The old myths of autocracy could no longer hold society
together. The last decade of tsarism is one of every desperate action attempted
(representative government, peasant reform, military force on a grand scale) and
thwarted - either by misfortune, idealism, or the regime's own instinctive inclination
towards conservatism and tradition. In all fairness, however, Nicholas' role as
autocrat was an impossible one. Russian monarchical tradition expected the tsar to
rule, not to hide behind a prime minister or the universally distrusted bureaucracy,
especially in periods of crisis and danger. Nicholas tried to initiate a revival of the
'golden days' of centuries ago, but a tsar can never govern in the present if his mind is
in the past. There was a growing abyss between a people growing ever more educated,
adapted with permission: Sandra Haywood, University of Nottingham
urban and complex, and a fossilised autocracy wedded to 17th century ideals and
stubbornly opposed to reform.
When, for a few, fleeting months in 1917, Russia experienced rule under a democratic
government, the vacuum left by autocracy was all too clear to see. The agony of the
Provisional Government became ever more acute, as, slowly but surely, all those
groups that had pledged support (the tsarists, the nobility, the army) fell away - by the
end it could control no-one. Kerensky, the 'darling of the revolution' could not
govern an increasingly polarised political scene by appealing for compromise - thus
he occupied an ever-narrowing middle ground, resorting to costly concession when
his opponents remained stubborn. As he himself admitted, 'if I move to the left, I have
an army without a general staff; if I move to the right, I have a general staff without
an army'. Thus, the Bolshevik revolution was a reassertion of Russian absolutism
under the guise of ideology. As Pipes notes, "it was the grafting of Marxist ideology
onto the sturdy stem of Russia's patrimonial heritage". Anything else but totalitarian
Marxism would not have succeeded in Russia - the Bolsheviks needed, more than
anything else, to consolidate and control. To do this, they merely ruled the people in
the manner to which they had become accustomed. The very moulding factors that
begot Russian authoritarian rule in the first place - vast territory, the threat of internal
and external enemies, ethnic, religious and social diversity, a backward economy had not melted away; indeed, they had reappeared with a vengeance. This, combined
with Lenin's particular ideology and resulting method of rule - a small elite of highly
trained revolutionaries - fitted perfectly into the long tradition of Russian autocratic
rule. Lenin's authoritarian communism was a continuation of patrimonial monarchy,
as can be seen in the renewed sacrilisation of the leader after his death. Lenin
resembled the most autocratic of the tsars in that he insisted on personally attending to
the most trifling details of state affairs, as if the country were his own private domain.
Concerning police, as late as the 1980s the KGB distributed the Okhrana state
manuals prepared nearly a century earlier. In addition, the Bolsheviks restored the
most oppressive tsarist censorship.
Even more so than his predecessor, Stalin was, in many ways, the Tsar that the
Russian people wanted - a ruthless figurehead to worship and revere. Bolshevism had
begun as an unstable amalgam of internationalism and Russian nationalism, and only
the latter would survive the pressures of realistic rule. Gradually, Soviet policies
began to mirror those of tsarism, and, with the rejection of the idealistic claims of
'world proletarian revolution' and the imposition of 'socialism in one country' and
'great Russian nationalism, Russia was once again a patriotic nation under a 'tsar'.
Stalin revived Russification, he (briefly) restored the Orthodox Church to a position
of eminence, and purged his Party in a more intense and widespread manner than
any Tsar had dared to attempt. Stalin, unlike Nicholas or Alexander, was able to act
free of almost any restraints - the tsars had always, to some extent, attempted to
morally reason out their actions, even if 'morals' became merely another word for the
'divine right'. Where the Tsars were hesitant, the Bolsheviks were savage: the 'peasant
problem' was confronted not with Stolypin-like moderation, but with Stalinist
collectivisation. The economy continued to be state-organised (as was required by its
relative backwardness), but more so - it became a planned economy dictated by
'command-centralisation'. Terror for the Bolsheviks was not a defensive weapon but a
method of governance.
adapted with permission: Sandra Haywood, University of Nottingham
In short, authoritarian rule was not a peculiarity of the Romanov dynasty, but the only
viable (and hardly perfect) method of governance in a vast, diverse and threatened
country. Only rule by force could keep the great empire together. By the time of the
Revolution, it became clear that Russia was not held together not by organic bonds
connecting ruler and ruled, but by mechanical links proved by the bureaucracy, police
and army. In such an environment, the simplest method of rule was merely to do
what had been done in the past. A savage tsar was always more popular than a
reforming tsar. Alexander II had tried to break with tsarist tradition by granting
concessions and loosening the regime's grip upon its people, and was rewarded with
assassination. Szamuely is insistent upon the "intensification, under new forms, of
the old authoritarian structure". Russian rule was marooned in an everlasting past afraid to acknowledge change around it, afraid to change itself. Stalinism, Leninism,
and tsarism: all three continued in the great Russian tradition of authoritarian rule.
original essay by Mark Smith
adapted with permission: Sandra Haywood, University of Nottingham