Samovlastie

The Tradition of Autocracy in Contemporary Russia

Vadim Mezhuev

Institute of Philosophy
Russian Academy of Sciences

All the political regimes that existed in Russia during the last three centuries
were very peculiar. They were not like any type of political regime that existed
in the history of other countries. Russia’s monarchies were not the same as the
monarchies in Europe. It was neither absolute nor constitutional; instead it was
somehow excessively autocratic. Bolshevism, which was the first of the totali-
tarian regimes in our century, differed from all of them by its excessive cruelty
towards its own population. However, even the President of Russia today, who
views himself as a democrat, acquires in some sense more power than any tsar
or communist leader ever did.

Political scientists compete among themselves trying to find the most suitable
term to define the essence of the present Russian regime: they call it an “elec-
toral monarchy”, “democratura”, or “directed democracy”, using terms which do
not exist in the contemporary political vocabulary. However, the type of politi-
cal regime in contemporary Russia, although different from the old monarchy
and the Bolshevik rule, is surprisingly similar to them. Even if history obviously
does not repeat itself, this similarity points at some specific political tradition
which manifests itself in different forms from monarchy to republic, and simul-
taneously distorts the meaning of these forms to such an extent that we need to
find new terms in order to define them.

However, there exist a word in the Russian language, which most properly can
express the meaning of this political tradition. This word is samovlastie, which
semantically is quite close to the concept of “autocracy”, although it is more
understandable for Russians in its original form. Samovlastie is just another def-
inition of the Russian political authority, whose enigma has preoccupied many
generations of researchers of Russian history. Apparently, it is not fruitful to
2 Vadim Mezhuev

search for the cause of this tradition of samovlastie in an excessive desire of

power, which should distinguish our politicians and leaders from politicians and
leaders in other countries. A desire of power is quite natural for any politician,
of any country. We should neither look for the cause of samovlastie in the so-
called servile submission of the Russian people, meaning a genetically drive to
serve. In this matter, the Russian people are like any other people. No people
would freely accept to endure the arbitrariness of authorities and patience
should not be mistaken for consent. The former can be often explained by the
inability to change the circumstances or a failure to believe in the possibility of
such a change. It can also be a lack of knowledge of how to achieve a change.
By no means can patience be interpreted as a genetic love to being a slave. The
nature of ordinary people is usually recalled as a main stimulus of samovlastie
by those who themselves are afraid of the regime. Still, samovlastie became a
political tradition of Russia, a fact which meaning and cause need to be ex-
plained.

Samovlastie should not be understood as a petty tyranny, a whim or the despot-

ism of officials, or anything of what we usually name power abuse (even if
those kinds of behaviour are often associated with it). Samovlastie does not
necessarily manifest itself in a personal tyranny or distracting terror. It does not
have to go to such extremes. However, it has a capacity to endure as a long-
lasting institution, a legitimate standard of political authority (in, for instance,
the 6th article of Brezhnev’s Constitution, or in the article in the present Consti-
tution which legitimises the strong Presidency in Russian). Hence, samovlastie
is a legitimate and practically unlimited power and is, therefore, not synony-
mous with illegitimate power. The authority of our tsars and communist leaders
was perfectly legitimate according to the law of that time, either hereditary or
revolutionary. It is quite another matter that the law itself was not democratic.
No other political will than the will of the ruling person and the elite was ac-
cepted by the state, whose power of authority was unthinkable in any existing
European monarchy, including the absolutist ones. Louis XIV could say “the
state is me”, but at the same time he was aware of the fact that beyond the state
there existed a society of aristocrats with particular privileges, chartered towns,
monasteries, universities, local self-government, etc. In Russia there has never
been a society beyond the ruling elite, the only entity that existed was the peo-
ple – impersonal, homogeneous and voiceless, an ethnic or confessional (ortho-
dox) community. The ruling elite did not identified itself against the society but
in relation to the people (the ruler was the subject, the people were the object),
and therefore the elite acquired a patrimonial rather than a political character.
 Samovlastie 3

In this way “the people” and “the society” are mutually excluding concepts in Rus-
sia. Since the 19th century, the word society meant either “the higher/aristocratic
society” or “the secrete society”. The people, most of them peasants, were ex-
cluded from the society. They lived their lives in the communities rather than in
the society and were tied together by a higher political auhority that subordinated
everyone. The autocracy of the tsar – the first form of the Russian samovlastie –
did not exclude, but on the contrary presumed narodnost (peoplehood); a specific
mode of national coherence based on a symbiosis of religious belief and power.
An autocrat in Russia was not a tyrant or despot, who enforced his or her power
on the society, but the first persona of the state, raised by God over all and every-
body for the sake of their “common purpose” and “common good”.

However, already under the reign of Peter the Great, the idea of the tsar power’s
divine source was complemented by the idea of a contract between the tsar and
his people. According to the contract, the tsar must serve the people, that is,
guarantee their welfare, moral health and security. Pheophan Prokopovich – the
main ideologist of Peter’s reforms – did not legitimise this responsibility by ref-
erence to the Holy Writing, but by reference to the “natural law”. According to
Yurij Lotman, “the idea of a contract as a source of power was associated with
the idea of a serving tsar and the people being served. The consequent notion
was ‘common popular will’ – the ideal national unity, based on belonging to
that particular state”.1

At the same time the idea of a tsar serving the people did not cancel the idea of
the divine source of the tsar’s authority, but it complemented it. The latter “pre-
sumes the absence of any contractual obligations of the power towards the peo-
ple. The relationship between them is not build on a formal and contractual
ground but on a ‘family-like’ basis. It is regulated not by law but by ‘love’”. 2
Both in the image of a monarch entrusted by law to serve the people (concept of
contract), and in the image of a mundane divinity (“father-tsar”, a “dear father”
who in a fatherly way cares for the “little children”, that is, the subjects) the tsar
is regarded as the only source of power and the higher authority in making laws:
“Every political doctrine of that epoch assumes that higher power exists for the
sake of its subjects. This standpoint remains firm even for the theorists of the
absolute despotism”3. The symbiosis of “love” and “service” conveys a specific

1
Lotman, Y. (1996)’ Ocherki po istorii ruskoj kultury XVIII-XIX veka’ (Essays on history of Russian culture in
18-19 century) in Istoriaj ruskoj kultury (History of Russian culture), V.4, Moscow, p.49
2
Ibid, p.51
3
Ibid, p.50
4 Vadim Mezhuev

feature of the Russian autocracy, which differs from both the traditional “East-
ern despotism” and from the European monarchies. The law, an embodiment of
the contract idea, although being given a superficial respect, did not ever be-
come an antipode to the unlimited power. This is quite comprehensible if we
take into consideration the fact that the people were represented in this contract
as a united collective community rather than as a society with a multiplicity of
different interests. This so-called contract made the Russian state look like a
European – “enlightened” – monarchy, but it preserved the institution of autoc-
racy in a full range.

Undoubtedly, the reference to the law signified a degree of secularisation of

Russian state power, which in its turn made it plausible to build the relationship
with the Church in a completely new way. Herein is probably concealed the
main secrete of the Russian samovlastie. The process of “secularisation of the
state”, started by Peter the Great, was of a special kind: the Church was not sep-
arated from the state as a higher authority staying above it. Instead it was sub-
mitted to the state. The Russian religious historian Florovskij describes this as
follows:

The self-perception and self-identification of the state power changed. The state power
established itself as a single authoritative power, strengthened its self-sufficient sover-
eignty. For the sake of this sovereignty and the superior position, the state demanded
from the church not only to obey and submit itself, but even strived somehow to em-
brace the church within itself, to include and incorporate it into the system of state ad-
ministration and order. The state declined the rights and privileges that marked the in-
dependence of the church. Barely a thought of an independent church was condemned
as “papism”. The state asserted itself as a single, unconditional and all-embracing
source of all rights and legislation, any activity and all creativity. Everything should
emanate from the state, only what belonged to the state was encouraged and allowed to
exist. The church lost its rights and was not allowed to proceed any more any activities
of its own, because the state viewed all the activities as included in the range of its au-
thority. And least of all the church acquired any power whatsoever, as the state per-
ceived itself as an absolute power. Precisely in this act of embracing all and everything
by state power, it was in a sense a “police state” project that was initiated and estab-
lished in Russia by Peter the Great.4

To repeat, “the single, unconditional and all-embracing source of all power…, all
legislation…, all activity and creation” – this is the key essence of the Russian
samovlastie. The state takes over the functions of the Church – not in the sense of
the religious rituals, but in the sense of the spiritual and moral guidance of the

4
Florovskij, G. (1983) Puti russkogo bogoslovia (Ways of Russian theology), Paris, p.83
 Samovlastie 5

people. The state guarantees not only the material well-being but also the spiritual
well-being of people. According to Florovskij (1983), “the police state”, as it was
invented by Peter the Great, “is oriented into the inward world rather than to the
outside reality. It is a matter of the way of life rather than a system of governance.
It expresses a religious attitude rather than a political doctrine”.5 “The ideology of
a police state” is aimed to build up and to “make up on a regular basis” the whole
life of the country, of the people and of every citizen for the sake of his or her
own good and the “common good” or “common purpose”. The spirit of a “police
state” has a founding and guardian pathos. This attitude of guardianship inevita-
bly leads the “police state” to turn itself against the Church. The state not only
acquires a patrimonial manner towards the Church. At the same time it takes
something away from the Church, because takes over its tasks. It ascribes to itself
the entire responsibility for the people’s religious and spiritual well-being”.6 After
all, can we believe those who argue that it were the communists who created such
a state?

The fact that the state took over the Church’s functions – “took over its tasks” –
and ascribed to the latter the role of being the state’s “department for spirituality”,
responsible for communication with heaven but not with the people, can help to
explain a lot in the nature of the Russian state power – something which still exits
today. This power does not exit for the sake of the power itself. It is not the kind
of power which is driven by irrational feeling to expand its domination or which
because of its “metaphysical character” wants to get rid of all competitors, from
nobility to peasantry. This power is for the sake of “high spirituality” and moral
public honour, and simply, for the sake of a “new human being” who is free of
sins and remnants of the past. This is the very core of this power’s internal self-
excuse and self-determination. However, power that remains secular in its nature
tends to secure its spiritual mission by the means available to the state, combining
moral with compulsion, spirituality with obedience. In other words, it is a kind of
power which sets moral goals without political freedom, denying any freedom of
choice. The secret of this power lies in its attitude to the people which it regards
as an irrational child, who is an object of not only oppression and exploitation but
also of a constant “fathers care” for the sake of the child’s moral purity and inno-
cence. The people became an object of amusement, but also an object of severe
punishment if they behave in an inappropriate way. How can the state allow com-
plete freedom to this little and foolish child? Obviously, democracy for that kind

5
Ibid.
6
Ibid.
6 Vadim Mezhuev

of power implies political freedom without morals, or moral decline in general.

Such kind of power dislikes democratic institutions in the form of constitution,
parliamentarism, general right to vote, multiparty system, freedom of press and so
forth. This negative attitude towards the people is usually not motivated by the
power’s love for despotism and tyranny (on the contrary, all this they impute to
democracy, i.e., the majority’s tyranny), but by considerations of a moral sort, by
the conviction, that only the Monarch’s power can unite the people spiritually,
and defend their faith and morality.

In this way the power in Russia becomes an object for a nearly religious adora-
tion. It bears the highest wisdom and all-knowledge. Under the Bolsheviks rule
the power identifies itself as the Church. Although this Church does not have a
God, it has its “holy Bible” (Marxism-Leninism), “saints” and “martyrs” (ardent
revolutionaries), “fathers-founders” (party leaders), “heretics” and “raskolniks”
(opposition of all kinds), “priests” (communists) and “mirjane” (non-party peo-
ple). In this Church God was abolished while the organisation was preserved in
order to satisfy the needs of the ruling power. Earthly gods took God’s place, and
it became an official state cult to worship them. This was the result of “the secu-
larisation a la Russe”. Unlike European secularisation, which separated the state
from the church, Russian secularisation led to the mere absorption of church by
the state, which took over the functions of social organisation and spiritual sav-
ing.

The essence of samovlastie can be defined in different ways. In political theory

samovlastie (autocracy) is defined as a rejection, or non-acceptance, of the divi-
sion of powers, both between the power hierarchies and also between the centre
and the periphery. Nobody liked to share power in Russia. United and indivisible
Russia is only another expression of the vertical hierarchy of power, which al-
ways was the basis of the social order within the state. The weakening of this ver-
tical hierarchy has always turned into a source of “great transformations” in Rus-
sia, the exit from which as a rule was sought in the recovery and strengthening of
the vertical power. Hence it can be concluded here that samovlastie (autocracy) is
the main political tradition in Russia, which is constantly reproducing itself on all
stages of Russia’s historical existence. Moreover, it seems that there does not exit
any social force which can break this long-lasting tradition.

It should now be clear what a political crisis means in the Russian context, and
what the causes of it are. It follows from above that such crisis doesn’t break out
in periods when the regime is strong, but in periods of its relaxation and liberali-
 Samovlastie 7

sation. The tsars’ and the Bolshevik’s’ powers did not collapsed because of their
anti-democracy and despotism (in its extreme development these reigns demon-
strated examples of stability and strength), but because of the political compro-
mise they had to make due to the pressure of external and internal circumstances,
which in the end forced these regimes to limit their authority or to widen the
frame of political life (for instance, this was the case during the last years of Ni-
kolai II’s reign and during Gorbachev’s time). Attempts of this kind ended with
the collapse of those regimes, even with the disintegration of the state. As is well
known, in the West the liberal institutions are the norms, while in Russia such in-
stitutions are out of the norm. Moreover, they are a symptom of illness and de-
pression of the state. As we usually say: “What is good for a Russian is death for
a German”. The liberal institutions emerged in Russia more in a way of disrup-
tion. They lasted a short while, for instance after the revolution in February 1917,
during NEP,7 Ottepel (Thaw) and Perestroika. Each of them resulted in deep
awareness that Russia was in crisis. However, it is not these particular periods
that are of importance, but the reaction following them. The February revolution
was as we know followed by the October revolution, and NEP was succeeded by
Stalin’s collectivisation and terror, after Khrushchev’s Thaw came Brezhnev’s
stagnation, and finally Gorbachev’s perestroika was followed by Yeltsin's presi-
dency.

If we accept these chain reactions as a norm for Russian political life, then today
we undoubtedly witness the ending of the next political crisis, caused by the re-
laxation and liberalisation of the communist regime during Perestroika, or the so-
called political recovery of Russia. One may consider this period as another catas-
trophe, the end of any hope for democratisation and liberalisation in Russia.
However for Russia itself this recovery may mean a way out of troubled condi-
tions. As many times before we are today back again to samovlastie or autocratic
rule, which seems has become a tradition of Russian political life. This time sam-
ovlastie appealed to by various social strata: by ordinary people, out of despair
and tiredness of bespredel (lawlessness); by the political elite, oligarchs (financial
elite) and even by some representatives of intelligentsia, who not long ago swore
faithfulness to democratic values. Once again Russia, tired of granted liberty,
looks for peace and order by a “strong hand” in a “one-man” power.

The turn to samovlastie became obvious already during Yeltsin’s time. The mat-
ter was not only in the powerful character of “the first President of Russia”, which
7
NEP-New Economic Policy, this period lasted in Russia from 1921 to 1928 and was known as an attempt to ap-
ply the capitalistic rule within the frame of the socialist ideology
8 Vadim Mezhuev

had hardly anything in common with his image of a determined democrat and
fighter against Communism. Rather, if Yeltsin did not exist, he would have been
invented. To put it in other words, Yeltsin was taken up to the top of the power by
the wave of an anti-Communist movement, which many have considered as peo-
ple’s sincere strive for freedom. However, Yeltsin himself was least of all a dem-
ocratic politician. His tenure of the office, which put an end to communism, did
not resulted in the completion or even continuation of Russia’s democratic re-
newal. On the contrary, Yeltsin’s reign clearly showed that Russia didn’t stand
the test by freedom and democracy and instead moved on to its usual way of au-
tocratic power, called for some reasons a “ruled democracy”. The truth is that it
was not the democracy that ruled Yeltsin, but it was he himself who ruled the
country, and what is more, he did it the way he pleased.

One may ask: Have not freedom of the press, the rights for meetings and demon-
strations, and free exit abroad persisted under Yeltsin? Have the multiparty sys-
tem, political opposition, free elections and many other undoubted signs of de-
mocracy disappeared? Obviously not. Still, first of all did Yeltsin inherit many of
these freedoms from the perestroika period. It was impossible to abolish them
without failing in the eyes of the West and Russian population who believed
those signs being democracy in its full meaning. Secondly, these freedoms could
quite well coexist together with autocratic power (that was the case again during
the last years of Nikolai II reign). Therefore, samovlastie does not necessarily co-
incide with the power’s control over all private spheres, neither is it synonymous
with direct tyranny, although the danger of the latter always exists. We consider
samovlastie (autocracy) as a process of monopolisation by power (in our case
presidential one) of all public and political life, or simply substitution of those by
samovlastie itself. In this case, politics becomes a matter of the power itself, but
not of the society or the people. One may criticise this power, express dissatisfac-
tion with it, even build up opposition parties and movements, but all this remains
on the level of the private point of view. Such actions cannot influence the pow-
er’s political and ideological choice. It is the power, but not people, who make
policy.

Samovlastie (autocracy) blocks the initiative of democracy’s main political insti-

tution, that is, the parliament, both in its right to form government or at least its
right to control the governmental activities. Even the judicial function of the par-
liament is limited here by the Russian president’s decree-right, which allows him
in particular to pass a negative resolution on already adopted laws. It has been
said that the constitution was written to suit Yeltsin, but Yeltsin is only a symbol
 Samovlastie 9

of a tradition, which has existed many centuries in the history of Russia. The
powerful nature of this tradition made itself visible not only in the episode of the
anti-constitutional dissolution and shooting on the ‘White house’ in 1993, where
the supreme organ of Russian power was situated at that time. It also manifested
itself in the half-contemptuous attitude of the first president, his administration
and the mass media that supported him towards the new elected Duma, by spread-
ing an image of it as a gathering for prattles and idlers. “I don’t like the Duma”,
Yeltsin honestly confessed. One may ask here: When and who of the Russian rul-
ers liked a free elected parliament? Indeed, the Parliament represents the people,
the way they are at the present moment. The power, on the other hand, has always
proclaimed the truth, available only to the power itself. It could be well if it did
prophet for the sake of truth, and not for the sake of its own benefit.

Yeltsin’s presidency was an epoch of a steady rise of the head of the state (which
in principle is a bureaucratic position) over all other power branches – the execu-
tive (the government), the representative and the judicial. The Russian Constitu-
tion, which was adopted in 1993, actually provided the president with an unlim-
ited authority. And this was not all. The isolation of the Duma from the formation
of the government, which consequently became completely dependent of the
presidential will, made the voters unmotivated to fight for a place of their parties
in the Duma. The following attitude prevails: Who cares who will win the Duma
election if in the end it does not influence the membership of the government and
its policy. As a consequence of such an attitude, the multiparty system became an
empty formality, perhaps having some meaning only for the leaders of the parties.
Their political programmes and slogans were just abstract words for the rest of
the population. The logical consequence of such a multiparty system was an
emergence of “the party of a new type”, that is, “the party of samovlastie”, which
was created not for the people but for the power itself. Is this party better than a
party of “professional revolutionaries” that in the end became a party of bureau-
cracy and nomenclature. Paradoxically, it is not the current communist party
(CPRF) that inherits the principles and structures of the CPSU. Instead, it is the
“party of samovlastie” that closely follows the steps of the CPSU. Even if they
are different in their ideologies, these two parties are extremely similar in their
political nature. Just an example: it is widely known how the Kremlin “tamed” the
judicial organs and the General persecutor himself.

However, one can oppose this line of reasoning and say that the Russian president,
who concentrates all the power in his own hands, is only a legitimately chosen politi-
cal figure. Indeed, the president was given his power as a result of free and democrat-
10 Vadim Mezhuev

ic elections. However, due to the subordinated government, weak parliament and

manipulated judicial institutions, such elections can hardly be considered as a demo-
cratic act. Moreover, given the circumstances these elections can not guarantee that
anti-democratic regimes would not be established. Already by the fact of choosing a
follower and providing him an almost non-competitive victory in the presidential
elections of 2000, any sign of democratic affiliation of the Russian power can be seen
as nothing but a fiction. I am not sure whom Putin will become – good or the bad for
Russia – however one thing is certain. He will try to do everything in his power in
order to strengthen the presidential authority and to submit all other power structures
under this authority. In political sense, such power will always make compromises
both with the left and the right, or try to oppose them towards each other. By doing so
this power can only rise above both of them and become stronger then ever. I assume
that the main slogan of such power would be “Discuss with each other as much as
you want, however, you must obey me”. Is this good or bad, one may ask. For de-
mocracy in its classical meaning it is very bad, but for Russia it is rather usual and
habitual.

Nothing can be done. It is a tradition. We cannot live differently. It is hopeless to

dream about democracy in the country where there is hardly any single democrat. To
proclaim oneself anti-Communist and to promote market reforms does not necessari-
ly mean to be a democrat, neither is it enough to be a liberal. Our right wing people,
who equated society with market, individual freedom with free prices, and the citizen
with the private owner, they are not very good democrats. To say even more, this
right wing people were the first to appeal to the politics of ‘the strong hand’ (obvious-
ly their own) while building the market economy. However, the strong hand seems to
exist in Russian, still the market economy is something to strive for. The left wing
priority has always been the strong state and the centralised power.

What we have between the market and the state is an empty space, no alternative
seems to exist besides the two just mentioned. All the troubles of the state’s
overwhelming power we seek to resolve with the help of the market, while we
hope to tame the wilderness of the market with the help of the state. We constant-
ly waver between these two alternatives, without being able to choose any of
them. All the ideological and political debates are focused on these two margins.
Somehow, we are not aware that the market and the state can coexist perfectly
with each other if there is a third element, which does not belong to any of them.
Somehow, “the third is always superfluous” as one Russian proverb says. Regret-
fully for us, because the third element is the civil society, which does not exist in
our consciousness and as a result it is absent from our reality.
 Samovlastie 11

A lot has been said and written on the necessity of developing a civil society in
Russia. However, the civil society in the Russian sense is something very peculi-
ar, not at all similar to the meaning of this concept in the West. For example, for
communist leaders the notion of civil society was basically equated with the one
of the citizenship. During that time, people were communicating with the state in
terms of ‘citizen director’ (grazdanin-nachalnik), while the state referred to its
subjects as the police talks to an arrested person: “Come with me, citizen!”
(proydemte, grazdanin!). On the other hand, people referred to each other as com-
rades (tovarisch), the term which today is understood as “comrade in a general
state of need” (tovarisch po neschastiu). In other words, people related to the
state as citizens, while they never considered themselves as such.

Under market conditions citizenship is understood as a state of being when individ-

uals live their private (chastnoj) lives surrounded by the ‘wild market’. As a result
of it people do not care about anything else then their own private interests. The
famous quotation from Majakovsky “you don’t have to be a poet but you simply
must be a citizen” would in today’s interpretation mean “you have to be a petty
bourgeoisie and private owner”. One extreme during the communism period, when
the citizens were united by the will of the state, has been substituted by another ex-
treme today, when people solely live in their private sphere, preoccupied by the
their personal problems. However, neither of these two extremes have anything in
common with the civil society. A civil society presupposes the existence of a public
sphere, which exists independently of the state monopoly. Civil society should
mean a society in which the citizens act together to resolve issues of their common
interests. Therefore, civil society can not come into existence by the will of the state
or by the rule of the market economy. Instead it exists only on the basis of the citi-
zen’s own initiative, of the free social activities of various groups and associations,
whose free actors can be considered as real citizens. Being mediated by the civil
society, both the state and the market are able to acquire quite different structures
compared to the one they have on their own. Consequently, the transformations to
the market and to the civil society are two different things. They may not even cor-
respond with each other. One can build a market economy by the means of the au-
tocracy, while the same means are unacceptable for the civil society formation. The
fact that these two objectives are mixed up in Russia is to my point of view the
main explanation to all problems and difficulties we experience during the current
reforms. The failure in reforms often results in samovlastie as the only way to rule
the country.
12 Vadim Mezhuev

What kind of power do we need in order to build a civil society? To begin with,
such power should have a parliament as its main political institution. Only a par-
liament makes it possible to initiate and institutionalise both the market and the
political activities of citizens and their associations, which can not only pursue
their own interest but also negotiate those interests with other social groups and
associations. If the market mechanism tends to differentiate and individualise the
citizen’s interests, then the parliament is aiming to unite and connect those inter-
ests. The parliament as a social arena should be able not only to express various
social interests, but also prevent that these interests strongly contradict with each
other, which may result in civil war. Instead, the parliament should strive after
consensus of different social and political interests, without allowing any of them
to be submitted or discriminated. In this sense, the market does not need a parlia-
ment, but the civil society does. In Europe a dawning civil peace was reached af-
ter a long time of feudal wars only due to the emergence of the parliament as a
special institution of power. From this point of view, the parliament is a very im-
portant political instrument for the creation of the civil society, given the fact that
the parliament enjoys a real and not only a fictional power. Denying the parlia-
ment’s role or undermining its role is the same thing as undermining the role of
the civil society, or simply denying it.

From the arguments above it follows that only in combination with “the leading
role of the parliament” can the market economy become a basis for the civil so-
ciety, and not simply a society where people try to survive competing for scare re-
sources. As mentioned above, the market in itself can exist under any kind of
power. This is so because the market presupposes that people pursue their profits.
Doing so they do not have to feel themselves as citizens. Without a special con-
cern for the civil matters, market activities (which can be observed among the so-
called New Russians) can easily become a source for criminal or shadow econo-
my. The market, unlimited by any civil rules, tends to be rather destructive in its
nature. It is not accidental that many speak about the ‘wild market’ phenomenon
in Russia. Given the fact that the mechanisms of the civil society are absent, au-
tocracy can only counterbalance such a market with a powerful bureaucratic ap-
paratus. However, even autocracy has a tendency to be corrupted or be absorbed
by criminal structures. To say it short, without a civil society with its representa-
tive form of power, the market economy is destined to become a wild beast and
the power is destined to become excessively bureaucratic and centralised.

I would like to argue that it is exactly the absence of the civil society in Russia
that has led to the recent turn to autocracy, in the form of a “hard hand” and a
 Samovlastie 13

“powerful personality”. Paradoxically, the appeal to autocracy was not generated

by the left forces, as could have been expected, but by the right forces, who in
principle call themselves democrats and liberals. If the right forces before saw the
state as a mere enemy of the market economy, they now appeal to the strong pow-
er of the state, however not in its parliamentary form, but in the form of the Presi-
dent and a government obedient to him. Certainly, the right forces do not desire a
President dictator. Instead they wish to have a President with a liberal attitude to-
wards the market, although in order to achieve it the right forces are ready to give
the President an almost dictatorship authority. They call it “liberal conservatism”
or “national liberalism”, which in itself combines the rhetoric of both the liberal
market and the patriotism that glorifies the state and traditionally is ready to serve
it. It is quite possible that Putin will undertake this ideology.

Instead of a full transformation to a civil society, the right forces have accepted a
transition to the market led by a strong power. In this sense, they are definitely
conservative, however not in a European, but in a Russian sense. The Russian
conservatism has always preferred autocracy to democracy, with no chance for
self-determination. By supporting samovlastie the right forces have united to-
gether with nationalists and have created a common front from Prohanov and
Zhuganov to Kirienko and Chubais, who all of them consider the new president
of Russia as their leader. These forces are strongly opposed to the centre and de-
cent liberal forces, who make an effort to change some articles of the present
Constitution in order to strengthening the role of the parliament. By opposing the
efforts to limit the samovlastie the right forces have approved once and again that
Russia remains to be just a state, but not a society, at least not a civil society.

Under these conditions, the transformation to the market economy will remain a
matter of the power, but not a matter of the society, or ordinary people, who are
seldom asked their point of view in any matters. Giving a priority to the personal
power of the President instead of the representative power of the parliament, the
right forces, despite their inner disagreements, have united themselves against the
civil society. In order to build a civil society something will be required that can
simply challenge the current power, namely the limitation of its samovlastie,
withdrawal of the current power from the absolute authority over the society, ac-
ceptance of division of power, not in principle but in action. Yet, we may still
hope that the political development that we observe in Russia today is not the on-
ly possible way out of the tradition that our country follows.