ABSTRACT
Much of past and contemporary Russian political philosophy has been preoccupied with the deep divergences between the Western ideal of liberal statehood and the existing Russian political order (for excellent overviews see Ignatov 1996; Novikova and Zizemskaia 1994/1995 and 2000; Zizemskaia 1999; and, of course, Walicki 1992). The chasm between these two traditions and the possibility of bridging this gap has been a major, if not the most prominent, theme in Russian state theory, past and present. Historically, the question of this divergence between Western norms and Russian reality was posed as the problem of how to bring about a limitation of political power in Russia without having enjoyed any lengthy tradition of intermediary institutions that would have contained, or completely prevented, the unhampered exercise of absolute powers concentrated in the hands of the Emperor. Or, in other words, political power in Russia never reached the stage of feudalisation and therefore was never able to utilise the mitigating effects of gradually institutionalised contractual relationships (Sashalmi 2002). It never experienced or comprised the elements of mutual assistance or benefit that could make inroads into the indivisible justificatory centre of power. This might be misleading if it is taken as evidence for not only absolutist but also strong pervasive power. In fact Russia experienced throughout its history a persistent weakness precisely because the failure to develop feudal contractual arrangements required its rulers to exercise power in a much more immediate personal fashion than did their Western counterparts. Il’in et al., summarising the pre-Petrine state-society relations, write:
The absence of legal codes of authority . . . the lack of regulation of the hierarchy of governing institutions (the legislative non-specification of the authoritative structure in the pyramid of power) engendered a non-legal [nepravovoi] type of government of the country on the basis of a tax-class system. The foundation of social interaction was constituted by obligation, which was emasculated in any civic and legal sense.
