ABSTRACT
Resentments, pressures, discontent, longing for a less oppressive regime and an easier lot, exist under despotisms, autocracies, total-power states and totalist states, even as in other social orders. The problem of "statecraft" in despotism is that of preventing the discontent and longing from assuming independent and organized form. In the Soviet Union even loyalty to the underlying principles on which the state itself was founded has been declared a degrading crime and punished with incredible cruelty. The tsar early managed to subvert the independent boyars and substituted for them state-service nobility. The crown possessed enormous crown lands and state serfs. Industrialization, too, came with state initiative and an enormous preponderance of state ownership and management. From Ivan the Terrible on, for a period of four centuries, "the state had been stronger than society" and had been ruled from a single power center as a military, bureaucratic, managerial state.
