The periodic alternation of "rigid" and "relaxed" phases in the Russian political process has led to an oscillation in the scale and functions of terror. In the "rigid" phases, the Russian political structure frequently became a terrorist structure par excellence; in the "relaxed" phases, it used terror as an exception, and only against those who could be looked upon as a threat to the existing regime.
The first Russian intellectual to note and describe this difference in the functions of terror in the various phases of the Russian political process, as far as I know, was Gavriil Derzhavin, in his famous ode "To Felice," dedicated to Catherine II:
There one may whisper in conversation And, without fear of death, while dining Not drink to the health of the tsars. There Felice's name can be Scratched out by a slip of the pen Or her portrait carelessly Thrown to earth.
There mock weddings are not played out, People not steamed in ice baths, The moustaches of diplomats not tweaked Princes do not cluck with brood-hens, Favorites do not laugh openly at them And black their faces with soot . . .
A decade later, Nikolai Karamzin noted that Catherine had "purged the autocracy from admixtures of tyranny." And finally, in the twentieth century, trying to define the specific character of Catherinian liberalization, Plekhanov wrote: "He who did not stand in the mother- sovereign's way, he . . . who did not interfere in matters which should not concern him, could feel secure."[35] That is, whereas in the rigid phases the fate of an individual did not, as a rule, depend on his behavior, in the relaxed phases it did.
It will probably be objected that both despotism and absolutism also experienced their periods of flowering and decline, of hardening and relaxing. This is certainly true. But neither has exhibited the rigorous and terrible regularity in the alternation of rigid and relaxed phases which has distinguished Russia. In no other place has it virtually become a pattern of political development. Historical analogies are, for this reason, much feared by the Soviet censorship, which cannot eliminate them despite the greatest vigilance, not even by attempts to control the "uncontrollable allusions," as the censorship bitterly calls them. For in describing the time of Ivan the Terrible, for example, the historian involuntarily—and this is excellently understood by every publisher, every censor, and every reader—at the same time describes the Stalinist period, just as in describing the time of Vasilii Shuiskii, he cannot help describing the period of Khrushchev. This is why the study of history in Russia has always essentially been a political act, dangerous both to the regime and to the historian.
7. The Political Spiral
Russian political history unfolds before our eyes as a kind of spiral, in which one historical cycle, or coil, is regularly and periodically replaced by the following one, which then returns the system to its point of departure and repeats the basic parameters of the preceding cycle, each time at a new level of complexity. And this pattern extends not only to the cycles themselves but to their internal structure, to the phases from which they are built up.
As an example, let us compare the starting phase (1564-84) and the latest phase (1929-53), which obviously took place before the eyes of at least some of my readers. I will take only these two extremes, precisely because in my view they provide the greatest scope for the model which I have promised.
ivan the terrible
Oprichnina revolution, halting the process of Europeanization of the country.
Liquidation of the latent limitations on power.
The establishment of terror as a means of administration: liquidation of political opposition, and abolition of the category of "political death."
Explosive modernization: radical transformation of the economic, political and institutional structure of the country.
joseph stalin
Stalinist "revolution from above," leading to the rout of the NEP (along with accompanying hopes for the political modernization).
Liquidation of latent limitations on power.
The establishment of terror as a method of administration: liquidation of the political opposition, and abolition of the category of "political death."
Explosive modernization: industrialization, and transformation of the economic and political structure of the country.
Reduction of the social structure, and formation of a "new class."
Abolition of the peasants' right of free movement ("St. George's Day"), resulting in cessation of the horizontal mobility of the governed (with the exception of movement controlled by the state).
Chaotic intensification of the vertical mobility of the governing class, connected with the liquidation of the category of "political death" (permanent "purge" of the elite).
Suppression of the boyar aristocracy.
Extirpation of the intellectual potential of the country, connected with the total ideological monopoly of the state.
10. Divergence of goals, amounting to complete autonomy of the administration from the system.
Reduction of the social structure, and formation of a "new class."
Collectivization of the peasantry; workers and clerical personnel prohibited by law from changing jobs, resulting in cessation of the horizontal mobility of the governed (with the exception of movement controlled by the state).
Chaotic intensification of the vertical mobility of the governing class, connected with the liquidation of the category of "political death" (permanent "purge" of the elite).
Halting of the aristocratization of the elite.
Extirpation of the intellectual potential of the country, connected with the total ideological monopoly of the state.
10. Divergence of goals, amounting to complete autonomy of the administration from the system.
In this first phase of the cycle, the Russian political structure, both of the sixteenth century and of the twentieth, approaches that of despotism (or, in modern parlance, becomes "totalitarian") to a maximum degree. But it still cannot become identical with despotism, for two reasons:
First, the "rigidification" of the regime is connected not with a lack of institutional modernization (and a stagnating economy) but, on the contrary, with explosive modernization. The system is rapidly transformed, attempting in one feverish spurt, by mobilizing all of its resources, to outdistance the nations surrounding it.
Secondly, we encounter here one more regularity of the Russian political structure, paradoxical at first glance: namely the fact that, in contrast to despotism as we see it in ancient Egypt or China, or in Byzantium, not one Russian tyrant has been able to continue the "rigid" phase of the cycle beyond his own lifetime. His death has always meant the end of the phase. After Ivan the Terrible there was no other Ivan the Terrible; after Peter the Great there was no other Peter the Great; after Paul there was no other Paul. Nor after Stalin was there any other Stalin. It is obvious that the Russian political structure cannot sustain permanent tyranny (and, in this sense, does not fit the Aristotelian description of despotism). For this reason, I call the starting phase of the cycle the phase of pseudodespotism.
But why can it not sustain permanent tyranny? It seems to me that the most probable explanation consists in the fact that, as distinct from the stagnating system of despotism, we are faced in Russia with a system which is fundamentally dynamic, and which is being destabilized by the rigidity and terror of the starting phase of the cycle.