Keenan. Muscovite Political Folkways

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Muscovite Political Folkways

Author(s): Edward L. Keenan
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Source: Russian Review, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Apr., 1986), pp. 115-181
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TheRussianReview,vol. 45, 1986, pp. 115-181
MuscovitePoliticalFolkways
EDWARD L. KEENAN
Author'snote:The originalversion of this essay was preparedas a part of U.S.

Department of State Contract no. 1722-420119, and issued under the title
"Russian Political Culture" by the Russian Research Center in July 1976.
Several hundred copies were circulatedby the Center, and within the Depart-
ment of State, at that time. Shortly thereafter, it was revised for inclusion,
under the title "Muscovite Political Folkways," in DomesticContextof Soviet
ForeignPolicy,then being preparedby Seweryn Bialer (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1980). For reasons beyond Professor Bialer's control, the scope of the
volume was reduced, and my essay did not appear.
Subsequently, discussions with colleagues permitted me to make some
improvements; I was encouraged to consider some form of publication, but
other occupationsintervened. Beginning in 1981, I began to provide students
in my courses with copies of successive revisions, intending eventually to
incorporatetheir comments as well in a final version, which I hoped to expand
and to provide with footnotes and a bibliography. In this fashion, another
several hundredcopies have gone into circulation;varyingcitations of the work
occasionallyappear in the works of my colleagues. Most recently, thanks to
the generous hospitalityof the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies,
I had the opportunityof going through the text with a study group composed
of senior colleagues;another "edition" went into limited circulationas a result.
Throughout this period, I have intended to give some more finished
form to "Muscovite Political Culture," if only to eliminate the numerous and
recurringtypographicalerrors that plagued the early forms of the text. In the
event, however, the attraction of different subject matter and of further
explorationshas proved stronger than the wish to undertake further revisions
of formulations that are by now both too familiar to permit any significant
likelihood of objective scrutiny and too long fixed in prose to permit recollec-
tion of the thoughts they were intended to convey.
Consequently, I offer the present version in still unfinished form, fully
aware of its inadequacies;it was from the outset meant to stimulate and pro-
voke, ratherthan to convince.
I. Introduction. Methodology
I attempt in what follows to identify and to describe what appear
to be fundamental features of Russian political culture,1 and to provide
1 "Russian," throughout, refers exclusively and specificallyto the Russian speech

116 TheRussianReview
a brief historical discussion of their origins and development. As the

phrase "political culture" indicates, I intend to deal with political
behavior as a form of culture, as the latter term is understood by the
social and behavioral sciences. Those who study a society's politics
within such a conceptual context apply the diverse (and often non-
commensurate) techniques of several adjacent disciplines (anthropol-
ogy, sociology, political science) in their attempts to discern the "deep
patterns" of political behavior, and to discover fundamental congruity
between the content of a society's processes of socialization (including
long-term historicalexperience) and its self-declared "rules" and insti-
tutions.
In order to establish the historical perspective required for the
applicationof such techniques to the Russian material, it will be neces-
sary to review in some detail the apparentorigins and development of a
cluster of politicaltraditions,and to propose some unorthodox theses as
to their meaning and functioning. These central theses will be
presented below; here we may briefly list some assumptions inherent
in our method:
1. Vernacularpolitical culture, like other aspects of human behavior,
can be construed as a "system" of perceptionsand responses that
is "learned" or "transcribed" through perceptible processes of
socializationand acculturation;being systematic, it can be seen to
possess certain symmetries, equilibria, internal tensions, and obli-
gatory symbolic forms, which together determine both its modes of
functioningand its generative morphology.
2. It being one of the system-preservingfeatures of the Russian politi-
cal culture to deprive non-participantsof crucial informationabout
the rules of the system itself, the abiding deep structures of that
culture have not found systematic expression either in legislative
or in descriptive codifications;as a result they must be extracted
from the historicalrecordby unconventionalmeans.
3. The indisputabledemographic,geographical,and politicalcontinuity
of Russian life since roughly 1600 is reflected in a similar con-
tinuity of political culture, but attempts to construct "continuity
theories," because they have been based upon unsystematicuse of
community. Other communities now found within the boundariesof the Soviet Union
have their own politicalcultures, which will not here be discussed. The extent to which,
as a result of Russian dominationof Soviet politics, "Soviet" might be substitutedfor
"Russian" in the followingdiscussionis problematic.
By the term "politicalculture" I mean to designatethat complex of beliefs, prac-
tices, and expectationsthat has, in the minds of Russians, given order and meaning to
politicallife, and has provided, or permittedits bearersto generate, both the underlying
assumptionsand patternsof their politicalbehaviorand the forms and symbols in which
it has been articulated.
MuscovitePoliticalFolkways 117
that culture's self-descriptions,have failed to discern the principal

operativefeatures of the vernacularpoliticalculture.
4. These deep structures of the political culture have, over the last
few centuries, generated articulationsthat have varied with social
and functional situations-I have called these variations "the
peasant culture," "the bureaucraticculture," and "the culture of
the court"-but these surface articulations,while they occasionally
have come into conflict, have always been essentially compatible
and, in modern times, have merged.
5. The economic and physicalexigencies of the environment-a dom-
inant motif of most "continuity theories"-have played a role in
the evolution of the vernacularpolitical culture, but that role has
varied in its effect upon the external articulationsof the several
variantsof Russian politicalculture.
6. One must, where possible, take into account deviant or "counter-
cultural" expressions of political culture, both as expressions of
aspects of the culture that are not otherwise apparentand as a test
of hypotheses about the internal symmetry of the system as a
whole.
Having declaredthese assumptions,we must state some caveats:

1. The many characterizationsof features of Russian political culture
that follow are meant to be comparative,not absolute. Unless oth-
erwise indicated, the comparative context is the experience of
Western Europe and North America; where differences are
stressed, it should be understood that these may be slight with
regardto any single feature, yet significantin combination.
2. The developments of the early modern period (ca. 1725-1850)
have been treated very schematically,both for reasons of economy
of space and because, in the terms of the present discussion, they
seem not to have had a profound effect upon the formation of
Russian politicalculture.
3. The brief final discussion of contemporarypolitics does not aspire
to be a descriptionof the Soviet system as such; rather it seeks to
point out the more salient articulationsof the underlying political
culture.
II. On the Origins and ContinuousDevelopmentof Russian Political

Culture
The introduction of the notion of continuity will stir memories,
for those familiar with the Russian historiographictradition, of such
concepts as the "Third Rome theory," "Oriental Despotism," or
perhaps of the ideas of Nikolai Berdiaev. The interpretation to be
presented here, however, shares with such treatments only an
appreciationof the fundamental continuities of Russian political cul-

ture; it derives from a radicallydifferent understandingof the origins
and essential features of that culture.
First, the culture of which I shall speak is quite characteristically
Muscovite,i.e., it arose pari passu with the Muscovite state in a single
and specific area of East Slavic territory, under conditions markedly
different from those of, say, Kievan or Novgorodiandevelopment, and
it achieved its first identifiable synthesis in the sixteenth century. To
seek evidence of influential links between modern Russian or even
Muscovite political culture and that of Kiev or Byzantium is, in my
view, futile. It cannot be demonstrated, for example, that during its
formative period (i.e., 1450-1500) Muscovite political culture was
significantlyinfluenced either by the form or by the practiceof Byzan-
tine politicalculture or ideology. Nor is there convincing evidence that
any powerful Muscovite politician or political group was conversant
with Byzantine political culture, except perhaps as the latter was
reflected in the ritual and organizationof the Orthodox Church, which
itself had little practicalpolitical importancein early Muscovy and little
formative impact upon Russian political behavior. (That Russians
derived from the Orthodox traditionsome forms of expressionof their
political notions is another matter.) Muscovites did, of course, affect a
Byzantinoid style in certain externalities-one might call it "Byzantin-
ism in one country"-particularly in the face of the powerful cultural
and political challenges posed by Catholic and Protestant neighbors.
And Russians did, in later times, think that their traditions were
"Byzantine." But these facts, in my view, represent externalities of
one form of Muscovite protective behavior, and reveal neither the ori-
gins of the Russian politicalculture nor its internalregularities.
Similarly, in embracingthe view that Muscovite (here specifically
pre-Petrine) society first articulated generative and fundamental
features of a political culture that in essential respects persists to this
day we need not accept the specific contents of other "continuity
theories," such as, for example, the view that the Russian politicalcul-
ture is inherently predisposed to autocracy, prone to embrace tyrants,
etc. In fact, as I shall attempt to demonstrate,the Muscovite, and later
Russian, systems tended to prefer oligarchicand collegial rule, to avoid
the single leader, and to function best when the nominal autocratwas
in fact politicallyweak. There were periods-they seem to be typically
associated with rapid socio-economic change and followed by political
turbulence-when the monarch did "overpower" the essentially oli-
garchicsystem, but these seem to be exceptional.
A final, negative, "continuity theory" associated with discussions
of the essence of Russian politicalculture might be called the "depriva-
tion hypothesis"; adherentsmaintainthat Russia's politicalculture, like
her culture in more general terms, was blighted by the absence of one
or another familiar stage or experience of Western cultures-the

Renaissance, the Reformation, Roman Law, and the like. Russians
did, of course, partake of these fundamentally important historical
experiences only in the remotest ways, by comparisonwith their Euro-
pean neighbors; to this fact we may, perhaps, attribute differences
between Russian development and that of, say, Poland or Holland. But
the deprivation hypothesis has little explanatoryutility with regard to
the political culture that did arise in Muscovy, nor does it address the
question of why that culture was-despite features that Westerners
might consider unattractive or "deficient"--so effective and,
apparently,so admirablysuited to Muscovy's needs.
It is, primarily,differences in method that account for the fact
that the view of Muscovite political culture to be presented here, while
based upon a profoundsense of systemic continuity in the broadesthis-
torical sense, is at the same time quite at odds with the other "con-
tinuity theories" that have been mentioned. For just as modern
descriptive linguistics attempts to describe "how people talk" (and
even how they once might have "talked"), rather than to prescribe
how "one should speak" (typically, in the West, in terms of Latin
grammar),so the method proposedattemptsto identify and systematize
the regularitiesof Muscovite and later Russian politicalbehavior, rather
than simply to interpretthe formal statements (symbolic or verbal) that
Russians made about that behavior. And least of all does it attempt to
interpret them in terms of a Western "grammar." Our method is
based, thus, upon attempts to discern, by appropriatemeans, the funda-
mental structuresand characteristicfunctions of what appearto be the
generative nuclei of Russian political culture: the court, the bureau-
cracy, and the village. "Appropriatemeans," here, will often include
something of a paradox: we shall reject widely accepted conclusions
based upon explicit statements by Muscovites themselves and by con-
temporaryobservers about the tsar, the state, the commune, and the
like, while at the same time attemptingto extractfrom such statements
our own evidence about the system's inner workings.
It is, of course, one of the difficulties of such a descriptive
approachthat, like modern descriptivelinguists, we must resort to fam-
iliar evidence that has alreadybeen used to prove other conclusions by
practitionersof a method that we reject. Further, there is almost no
explicit historical testimony that is expressed in the terms that we
intend to employ. Indeed, one of the characteristicoperative features
of this system is, whether one is dealing with the sixteenth century or
with the twentieth, the rule "Iz izbysoru ne vynesi" (literally, "Do not
carryrubbish out of the hut") remains in operation:i.e., one does not
reveal to non-participantsauthentic information concerning politics,
politicalgroupings,or points of discord. Like several other rules of this
culture, this rule of conspiratorialand mutually protective silence (in
modern official parlance "neglasnost"') is quite normally adhered to

even during the bitterest of politicalconflicts. (We shall later note that
it was extensively violated only in one exceptional period of a few
decades at the beginning of the present century, and at that primarily
by "outsiders," i.e., individuals who had rejected, or had been exiled
from, the politicalsystem.)
If participantsrarely provide authentic descriptions of how the
Muscovite political culture operates, non-participants (especially
churchmen and foreigners in the early period and Westernizedintellec-
tuals in the later) have not hesitated to speculate upon its nature. But
these observers typicallydid not themselves function within the tradi-
tional vernacularpolitical culture, nor did most of them understandit
well. Moreover, most of what they have left us consists, for the earlier
period, of what they wanted outsiders to think about Muscovite politics,
and for the later period, of what they wished Russian political culture
might become.
As these preliminaryremarks about our method have indicated,
the systematic attempt to analyze Russian politicalbehavior and to dis-
cern its systemic regularitiesis impeded by considerablelimitations in
the nature of our evidence and by the remarkablyconsistent reluctance
of its bearers to provide such evidence. It thus appears that only by
creating a depth of historical perspective that is unusual in modern
social-science analysis and by embracing a cautious methodology and
modest goals can we identify some of the principalfunctional features
of the Muscovite politicalculture. As we shall see, these features-the
distinctive and interconnected patterns of behavior that emerge from
the evidence-form an integrated system whose efficiency, given the
conditions in which it has operated, is remarkable,whose inner logic is
quite sound, and whose principal canons are compatible with other,
non-political,areas of Muscovite and Russian life.
In order to identify and to interpretthese features, we must make
an unusually large leap into the past. This device will enable us to
examine the politicalcultures of the three groups we have identified as
having played critical formative roles in the development of Russian
political culture, groups that were, in earliest times, socially, culturally
and even biologicallyseparateto an extent that is rarelyacknowledged.
In the course of this historicaldigression, we shall concentrate particu-
larly upon the basic environmental conditions of economic and social
life in the East European forest, in recognition of the fact that these
conditions were the prime determinantsof several features of peasant
political culture (the culture of the preponderantmajority-indeed, of
almost all-of the Russian population) and also, less directly,
influenced court and bureaucraticpoliticalcultures.
III. Cradlesof PoliticalCulture

When, towardthe end of the first millennium of the Christianera,
the last great pre-modernmigrationson the Eurasiancontinent ended,
the East Slavs, like the last non-loser in a game of "Musical Chairs,"
found themselves with the last choice-with land in the northeastern
margins of Europe that, to put it rather plainly, no one else seems to
have wanted.
It is crucial to the understandingof later developments to stress
this fact: the home of Russians throughout the formative period
(before ca. 1700) of the political culture that shaped their only viable
modern state was not the fabled Black Soil Region or the steppes, into
which they moved only very late in their history, but a much more
northern, poorer, less hospitable land, almost all of which lay in lati-
tudes more northernthan the southern tip of Hudson's Bay.
The great primeval forests that, until the eighteenth century,
covered most of this land-forests that probably seemed to the first
Slavic settlers, particularlyin summer, to promise abundantsources of
life and rich harvests-in fact concealed poor, acid soil and a swampy
terrain. Winters here were long, dark, and bitterly cold, springs
dramaticand destructive with their sudden thaws, floods, and ubiqui-
tous mud, summers short and unpredictable,and the success of the
harvest so problematicas to seem to be in the hands of a particularly
fickle Fate. It has been calculated that over a period of roughly one
thousand years one year in seven brought a major crop failure in this
area, and in the best of times yields were very small, averagingfor the
more recent centuries (before mechanization and the introduction of
chemical fertilizers) just less than 4:1, i.e., four grains of harvest for
each grain of seed for such crops as the staple rye and barley.
When they began to penetrate this enormous forest, the tiny
groups of agriculturalistswhose descendants were to form the great
East Slavic nations were still at what one might fairly call a prehistoric
stage of development. They seem to have been untouched by all but
the most distant echoes of the great cultural and political experiences
that emanated from the Mediterraneanworld until their first contacts,
almost equally provincial late-comers to that world, the Germanic
Goths and "Norsemen," whom the Slavs served as what might now be
called migrantlabor and cannon fodder. From these groups they seem
to have acquiredtheir first notions of supra-clanpolitical organization,
along with other borrowingsfrom the Mediterranean-Europeanworld.
Perhaps as a result of their isolation and subservient condition, the
Slavs seem to have developed no indigenous social, military, or political
organizationmore extensive than that of the extended family or village
(these were often coterminous), no common religious tradition or
unified world view, and only quite simple (yet remarkablyeffective)

agriculturaland other technologies.
And yet, for reasons that remain obscure, the East Slavs pros-
pered in this marginal and forbidding environment-indeed, their
experience provides a stunning example of demographicdynamismand
viability. Somehow the culture that they developed in this new home
generated a combination of agricultural,social, and political adaptive
techniques, based upon a cautious, non-innovative, but tenacious sub-
sistence agriculture,the principalincremental product of which seems
to have been more Slavs. They spread out through the forest, moving
first to the Arctic Circle and later spilling into the steppe and into
Siberia. They swallowed-usually without recorded significant
resistance-the aboriginal population of Balts and Finns, whose own
adaptive response to local conditions had been based not upon agricul-
ture, but upon hunting and gatheringand the restrictionof population
growth. And the Slavic agriculturalistsdeveloped and elaborated a
remarkablydurable and adaptive culture whose forms and practices
derived from and nurtured those traits-caution, calculation, resolute-
ness, stoicism, endurance-that have inspired, frightenedand infuriated
both Russian and Europeanintellectualsthroughoutmodern times.
It is importantto later understandingsto stress here that the vigor
of this culture, and the demographicvitality that it assured, depended
not only upon the refinement of such psychologicalsurvival techniques,
and not only upon the forms of agrariancommunalismembodied in the
much-studied mir, but also upon a remarkably congruent and tenacious
set of practicesand attitudes that may, with reference to the definition
offered above, be called Russian political culture. Indeed, I would
argue that, in historical perspective, the creation of a distinctive and
strikingly effective political culture in the hostile and threatening
environment that was the womb of Russian culture was that nation's
most extraordinaryachievement.
In order to understand this achievement, and to obtain insight
into the attitudes and socio-political traditions on which it was based,
we must briefly review some recent findings of rural sociologists and
specialists in the new field of "peasant studies." Paradoxicalas it may
seem in view of the attention that has been lavished upon the Russian
agriculturalcommune, scholars until quite recently have operated with
a rather distorted perception of certain essential features of peasant
politicalculture, and that poor understandinghas in large measure been
responsible for the fact that every policy designed to influence the
behavior of the Russian peasantryfailed in that objective until, in the
1930s, the village culture was destroyedby armed force.
The political culture of Muscovy, of course, was shaped not only
by the limited experience of the Russian village. In particular,we must
consider at some length what we shall call the culture of the court, the
culture of that small number of related families who, under conditions

fully as daunting as those that faced the agriculturalist,found the
means of effective political control of social and economic life on a
larger scale. Indeed, since the culture of a single regional court-that
of the grand princes of Moscow-proved itself more able than any of
the other non-peasantpoliticalcultures in the East Slavic sphere to deal
with the formidabletasks of managinga vast politico-militaryorganiza-
tion, we shall be obliged to examine the distinctive features and
dynamicprinciplesof the Muscovite court in some detail.
Finally, we shall explore the genesis and operatingprinciplesof a
third culture-that of the d'iachestvo,or bureaucrats-whose growth is
most intimately connected with the evolution of the Muscovite, and
later Russian, state. As we shall see, it was the sui generischaracteris-
tics of that bureaucracy,and its place within the larger patterns of
Russian political culture, that determined in significant measure the
external forms of politicallife in that country.
IV. ThePoliticalCultureof the Russian Village

The scholarly literature devoted to Russian peasant life is
immense, and will not be recapitulatedhere. Our purpose is rather to
focus upon certain realities and regularitiesof peasant life-social life,
primarily-in the village, with the hope of isolating certain customs,
sanctions, and restraints that seem to have determined important
aspects of political culture in the village, and to have shaped the
villager's perception of man, of himself, and of his social being. Our
method will be to describe several dynamic principlesof village life and
to attempt to point out their implicationsfor politicalculture.
For subsistence agriculturalists,especially those who are, as Rus-
sians were, isolated from internationaltrade and from the stabilizing
influences of near-by but independently fluctuating markets, the line
that separatesprosperityfrom disaster, for the group as for the house-
hold unit, is a particularlythin and shifting one. One family's field is
flooded, another's is not; one family's cow goes dry, another's does
not; one couple has four healthy sons, another is barren. All cultures
develop characteristicinstitutionalizedmeans of dealing with the fragil-
ity and predictabilityof such a life; in the case of Russian agricultural-
ists, these means of self-preservation can, in a simple narrative, be
describedas follows:
Let us take two households, Ivan's and Fedor's, both composed
of four healthy individuals (two adults in each case, two sons in Ivan's
house, a son and a daughter in Fedor's), possessing equal amounts of
equally good land, and one horse. As we shall see in a moment, it is,
under Russian conditions, essential not only for the survival of these
units but for the survival of the village that all of these resources-the
labor, the draughtpower and animal fertilizer, the land-be utilized to

the greatest possible extent, in the most productive combinations.
Thus, in our example, as Ivan's sons grow to maturity, his household
will be allotted or will acquire additional land and draught power to
"match" the increasedlabor inputs, etc. Ivan's household will prosper.
As they move up on the economic scale, however, the village will begin
to exert downwardforces upon them. They will be asked to take in the
widow or orphan of a neighbor, or the village cripple. They will be
expected to bear a largershare of the expenses of a village feast, of the
support of the local priest. Ivan may be made "elder," and thus
acquirethe risks and responsibilitiesof dealing with outside authorityin
the person of the landlordor tax-collector. In such ways Ivan and his
sons will find that the village places limits upon their individualor fam-
ily socio-economic mobility and self-improvement, keeping them, as it
were, within the orbit of particles that revolve around the village
nucleus.
Fedor's fate is different. His son dies of smallpox; he and his wife
and daughter are unable to cultivate their allotment of land, and that
allotment is correspondinglyreduced. His mare foals, but then his
house burns and Fedor is killed. Disaster threatens his wife and
daughter. In this case the village steps in, not only to care for the
widow and orphan, but in order to re-employ the arable land, draught
power, and human labor that might otherwise be underutilized.
Fedor's widow, if still of child-bearingage, is marriedoff, together with
one horse and some of the land, to an able-bodied but land-shy or
horseless husband, and the daughter,with her share of the land and her
horse, will find a similar match. Thus in Fedor's case the village
imposes a kind of "floor," not permitting valuable human and other
resources to be destroyed or to fall below necessaryproductivecapacity,
or to be detached from the productive nexus of the common survival
patternof the village.
Such arrangementsare, of course, common in subsistence com-
munities, and quite rational. The question does arise, of course, (par-
ticularlyin Western minds!) of the personal wishes and motivations of
the individualsand family units concerned: what, for example, if Ivan
doesn't want to take in waifs and widows, or if Fedor's wife and
daughter don't wantto marrythe profferedhired hand? Villages have
at their disposal extreme sanctions, of course, including group violence
and property destruction, but these are rarely resorted to, apparently
because this resilient web of reciprocatingmechanisms is deeply imbed-
ded in village culture, and its virtues and sanctions are understood by
every member of the culture. The very fragilityof existence that calls
forth these adaptationsin the first place, and the fluctuationof fortune
that is inevitable in the life of such agriculturalistswill have convinced
most adult members of the necessity for such sanctions. They will
have experiencedthe benefits of such reciprocatingmechanisms in their

own lifetimes, perhaps in their own family but certainly in their own
village, and they will not only acquiesce, but probablyjoin in applying
sanctions to others to do so.
Thus the overpoweringly dominant objective of peasant village
organization-an objective developed over centuries of unchangingsub-
sistence agriculture, an objective whose imperatives created a tight
nucleus bound together by immense forces of cohesion, despite the
existence of significant forces of fission-was simple survival:
economic, biological, and social survival. Not "justice," as the Slavo-
philes and many city-bredethnographershave thought, not "progress"
or the accumulationof wealth, not the "preservationof a way of life,"
but the preservationof life itself-human life, the life of vital livestock,
the life of life-giving field cultures. And the most significantautono-
mous actor in peasant life was not the individual (who could not sur-
vive alone in this environment), and not even the nuclear family
(which, in extended form, was marginallyviable, but still too vulner-
able to disease and sudden calamity), but the village, to whose interests
all others were in the end subordinated.
Further, the overpowering interest of social decision-making in
such a collective unit was the minimizationof risk, of the dangerof the
interruption of life through any of the misfortunes that could come
upon a tiny, isolated, technologically primitive, necessarily self-
sufficient and, by consequence, vulnerable community. If innovation
offered short-termimprovementsin the standardof living at the cost of
an increasedrisk of possible disaster, it was rejected. If the interests of
an individual reduced the potential viability of the group, they were
denied. When faced with danger, the village would hunker down-or
pick up and move on-rather than change time-tested ways.
But to observe that, when judged by the cumulative sum of its
responses to challenge and danger, the village culture was conservative
and "risk-averse" is only a beginning. Of the many remainingaspects
of group and individual behavior and psychology that should also be
considered, I should like to deal primarily with two that are most
closely connected with certain largeraspects of Russian politicalculture.
The first of these is what one might call the Muscovite view of
man. Lest the introductionof such an exalted abstractionappeareither
inapposite or injudicious, let me hasten to make the appropriate
justificationsand disclaimers. First, it should be remembered that the
method we have chosen for the study of political culture has by
definition included observationsabout individualand group psychology.
Second, it should be apparentthat the patterns of group behavior that
we have sketched, and the entire complex of traditional behavior
developed within the Russian peasant community, represent manifesta-
tions of "group wisdom" based upon shared experience and
expectations concerning human behavior, and, ultimately, upon a

shared view of man, both self and other. Third, while the evidence for
our judgments must, in the absence of systematic analytical articula-
tions of Russian peasants' views by peasantsthemselves, be based upon
inferences from obliquely relevant sources, it would appear that in a
comparativeand contingent sense one can make some helpful observa-
tions that are congruentwith other evidence.
Thus, consideration of our admittedly inadequate evidence does
permit-and our method does require-some comments upon Russians'
view of the nature of man. Like other cultures, the Russian-in partic-
ular here the Russian peasant-confronted the commingling of Good
and Evil in the human character, and elaborated, over centuries, a
characteristicformulation of that relationship. It is instructive to com-
pare that formulation, as it appearsfrom the totality of the evidence,
with those of other societies. If, in order to do so, we establish a
number of scales that together express Russians' view of the place of
man's nature on the continuum between Good and Evil, we can say
that-always by comparison with other cultures and especially with
those that hold the Mediterraneanview of man that underlies Western
liberal humanism-the Russian peasant had a "low" opinion of man,
was "fearful," rather than "hopeful" about man's potential weakness,
destructiveness, and danger to the vital interests of the social group,
and, as a consequence, treatedothers, and himself, in a manner that we
might term "authoritarian."
The etiology of this cluster of attitudes is not obvious, but one
should surely connect it with the experience of centuries of life under
the conditions we have described. It must be assumed that socialization
and custom reinforced the sense, experientiallyacquiredby most adult
members in the society, that the isolated individual was weak and
vulnerable, unreliable when left to his own devices, and even poten-
tially dangerousto his community. Vulnerable, because of the hostility
of the environment (how does a lone man survive in that forest?);
unreliable, because the periods of intense exertion and discipline
requiredfor survival in that environment seem, quite naturally,to have
alternated with episodes of "letting go"-of drunkenness, lethargy
("sleeping on the stove"), ostentatious and improvidentconsumption,
and other forms of manic gratification. Dangerous, finally, both
because such labile behaviorwas a threat to the common economic via-
bility and because even-and particularly-in a self-disciplined indivi-
dual, self-interest could, if not curbed, upset the tenuous continuity of
village life (e.g., in the example above, if Ivan, having become wealthy,
refused to help his comrades, or bought them out and evicted them).
Cultures that, under conditions similar to those that influenced
Russian culture, develop a similarlypessimisticview of man may devise
various general patterns of control designed to save the community-
and the individual-fromman'sallegedlydangerousinnateproclivities.

It can, as was the case in muchof Northern-laterProtestant-Europe,
developcontrolsthat throughsocializationand cultural"transcription"
are internalizedas the featuresof a frugal,disciplined,guilt-dominated,
death-fearing, personalitytype. In such instances,the necessarysocial
controlis achievedthroughinternalization in the individualand rein-
forced by non-violentpsychologicalmeans, typicallyassociatedwith
religioussanctions.Congruently,the formsof communityand political
life in such societiescan providefor the relativelyfree playof certain
types of individualinterestsand initiatives,since society's protection
againstthe potentialdangershas, in a sense, been "builtin" through
individualsocialization.
Alternatively,given similarexternalconditionsand a comparably
dismalview of the natureof man, a societycan developattitudesand
forms of organizationthat express greatertolerance(or resignation)
concerningindividualbehavior,less intensiveinternalization of socially
useful repression,and, conversely,a greaterrelianceupon external
formsof institutionalized of the individualto the group.
subordination
While judgmentin such mattersis necessarilyspeculativeand
relative,it can be said that the Russianvillageculturethat eventually
becamedominant,namelythat of the "central"landsthat formedthe
nucleusof the Principality of Moscow,tendedto adhereto the second
pattern. It shouldnot be thought,however,that Russianresponsesin
this regardwere entirely homogeneous;one can observe significant
regionaldifferences. In particular,the first patterndescribedabove,
that which relies upon greaterindividualinternalizationof socially
desired constraints,seems more typical of certain areas (generally
knownas the Novgorodianlands)whereconditionsof life were in fact
harshest,but where the importanceof tradeand extractiveindustries
made the patternsof life less dependentupon agriculture,upon com-
munal labor and organization,and upon the vagariesof climate. It
wouldappearthat it was as a resultof these differencesin subsistence
patternsthat the individual(and the individualhousehold)developed
greaterindependence-andstrongertraditionsof internalrepression,as
one mayjudgefrom the culturalhistoryof the region,whichproduced
Russia'smost famousascetics,its best-knownschismatics,and its first
indigenousmerchantculture. This regionalso produceda characteristic
politicalculture, sometimes symbolizedby the Novgorodianveche,
which, while assuredlynot "democratic"by modernstandards,gave
freerexpressionto conflictinginterests,withinthe contextwe are now
considering,thanthe Muscovite.One contributionof this regionalcul-
ture to the nationalpoliticalculture,and its interactionwith the dom-
inantMuscoviteculture,will be discussedin a latersection.
Returningto the dominant politicalculture, we should make some

final observations concerning its mechanisms and means of decision-
making. For it is characteristicgenerally of this culture that group
decisions, while they stressed the interests of the group over those of
individuals, tended in a congruent and compensatoryfashion to attach
importanceto corporateor collegial forms of decision-making,in which
all full-fledged members of the community (e.g., heads of households)
were both encouragedto express their own interests and opinions can-
didly and obliged, once a decision had been arrived at, to join the
majority in unanimous public adherence to the view of the majority.
Councils of this type were traditional in composition and unencum-
bered by formalized rules of procedure or membership. "Divisions,"
in the parliamentaryas well as the general sense, were not allowed, and
participantswere constrained by unwritten rules neither to continue
partisanshiponce a decision had been reached nor to appealoutside the
membershipfor supportof their position.
We may now conclude our brief descriptionof the politicalculture
of the Russian village by summarizing some of its fundamental
features: a strong tendency to maintain stability and a kind of closed
equilibrium;risk-avoidance;suppression of individualinitiatives; infor-
mality of political power; the considerable freedom of action and
expression "within the group"; the striving for unanimous final resolu-
tion of potentiallydivisive issues.
I have dwelt on these matters, most of which are familiarto stu-
dents of peasant life in Russia and elsewhere, for several reasons:
because this political culture has, in its essential features, existed for
centuries; because as late as the beginning of the present century the
great majorityof Russians lived in communities governed by this cul-
ture; and, finally, because, as we shall see, an understandingof the
Russian village culture is indispensableto the following analysisof Rus-
sian politicalculture in general.
V. ThePoliticalCultureof the MuscoviteCourt

It is much more difficult, within the present methodologicalcon-
text, to discern the dominant features of the political culture of the
Muscovite court than it is to describe that of the peasantry. The first
reason for this unexpected difficulty results from the fact that, unlike
the peasant political culture, that of the court has undergone, in the
course of the roughly four centuries of its identifiably continuous
existence, very significantformal, and less significantessential, changes.
Consequently, while its later, more familiar forms can in certain
respects be understood in terms of its previous development, it is
difficult to reconstruct more obscure stages of its evolution from the
evidence of later periods.
A second difficulty is created by the fact that from a very early

stage the court culture has been characterizednot only by extreme
forms of the ceremonial camouflage and secrecy employed by all such
closed systems, but also by an extraordinaryhermetic silence and denial
to outsiders of even general or trivial informationthat might have polit-
ical significance. This silence was assured, in part, by the assiduous
production of "noise:" the realities of an informal, "corporate," and
oligarchic political system were masked by a facade of complex proto-
col, hierarchic nomenclature, and ecclesiastical trappings elaborated
with great inventiveness and false circumstance.
Finally, in attemptingto analyze the court culture, one must con-
stantly deal with a seeming contradiction:on the one hand, the bearers
of the court culture-the family of the grand prince and the members
of the princely and "boyar" clans-were clearly set apart from the
mass of the Russian population (its members had little permanentcon-
nection with the land, a different family structure, and little intermar-
riage with other groups); on the other hand, the politicalculture of the
court reveals not only congruence, but even several features of striking
similaritywith that of the Russian village.
In order to overcome these difficultiesof perception,and better to
understandthe specific features of the politicalculture of the court, we
must, as in the case of the village, undertakea brief review of the his-
toricaldevelopment of the court culture, and of the conditions in which
it arose.
Much of what has been said about the difficultyof the conditions
in which the village political culture evolved, and about the magnitude
of its achievement in evolving at all, may be applied, mutatismutandis,
to the culture of the court-or of the "state," as the two were for some
time practicallycoterminous.
As it emerged from a prolonged, bitter, and destructive civil war
in the middle of the fifteenth century, the tiny principalityof Moscow,
its grand princes and related princely and boyar families, faced a social
and political environment that was as hostile to the establishment of
regular and effective organization of political life as was the natural
environment to the goals of the agriculturalist.How, indeed, given the
low level of communications,the enormous expanses of impassableter-
rain, the sparseness of settlement, the absence of major urban centers
and the attendantlinks among them, could one achieve politicalcontrol
and militarysecurity in the space that became the Muscovite state?
The "deficiencies" of Muscovite development in these regards
have often been pointed out by historians who see them as the cir-
cumstances hindering the emergence of urban culture, a middle class,
concepts of personal and corporateliberties, and other features of pre-
modern European evolution, and hence as the indirect causes of the
emergence of a despotic and absolutist political system. Like the
"deprivation hypothesis" mentioned above, however, such constructs

have limited explanatory power, because they are preoccupied with
what did not happen, particularlyby comparisonwith the highly unusual
experience of Western Europe.
About the facts, of course, there should be little dispute-most of
these familiarand essential features of Western politicalculture did not
find parallelsin Russia-but for our purposesit is necessary to turn the
equation around, and to attempt to find an explanation for what did
happen: how did so successful and durable a political system-
embodied in an enormous and vigorous state-emerge at all under such
seemingly adverse conditions? And how, in particular,did a single tiny
group-the Muscovite dynastyand its boyarrelatives-maintain military
control in a territoryso vast, where fortificationswere minimal, major
troop concentrationsunusual and crushinglyexpensive, and all but the
most fortunatetowns vulnerableto siege by a few hundredmen? How,
under such circumstances,did this system contrive to control and to tax
a populationso scatteredand remote, a populationwhose basic organi-
zational unit was, as we have seen, so independent, self-controlling,
and hermetic?
Indeed when one considers the tasks and conditions that faced the
early Muscovite political system, he must wonder that any effective
state was organized on this territory at all, least of all a great empire
that even by the time of Peter the Great could startle Europe by the
effectiveness with which it marshalled its human and material
resources. Such an accomplishment,it appears,was made possible by a
form of adaptionto circumstancesthat, while in certainways antagonis-
tic to the peasantcommune, had certain significantfeatures in common
with it.
Like the village organization,the Muscovite state focused its ener-
gies on strictly limited objectives. If the objective of the village com-
mune was survival through the curbing, harnessing, and avoidance of
those spontaneous forces of the human and natural elements that
threateneddeath, then that of the state (in which were, as we shall see,
embodied the court and bureaucraticpolitical cultures) was the preser-
vation of militaryand political order-or, more precisely, the avoidance
of political chaos. This goal it accomplishedprimarilyby curbing, har-
nessing, and avoiding strife among its own elites. To this primary
object was linked another-the simple control of subject populations-
which in early times seems to have meant little more than irregulartax-
ation for the purpose of supportingthe militaryelites. Like the village,
the court avoided risk and innovation, and relied heavily upon direct
sanctions and mechanisms of control. These mechanisms were brutal,
sometimes destructive, but marvelously effective-perhaps even ideally
suited to the environment, in which the breakdownof political control
and public order, like crop failure or fire for the peasant, were a
constant preoccupationand possibility. In order to avert such disasters,

the state concentratedits limited resources on the very weaknesses of
its situation, and developed a tendency to "overkill" in order to avoid
situations in which it might have to deal with uncontrollableoutcomes.
Thus, for example, in its effort to assure fundamental political
security and military control in its vast, sparsely settled, and poorly
integrated territory, the Muscovite court, from the earliest times,
adopted an unwavering principle of extreme centralization. Almost
everything that was politicallyimportantwas decided in Moscow, by the
same small coterie of politicians, and all political power flowed from
and to Moscow. (In the later sixteenth century, when the round trip to
the capital could occupy the better part of a year, even simple real
estate transactionsconducted in tiny villages on the Arctic Circle were
registeredand approvedin Moscow.) And as new towns and territories
were added to the Muscovite state-no matter how distant, no matter
what the cost, no matter what the logistical complications-the local
ruling elites were evacuated to Moscow and integratedinto Muscovite
court life, while in the localities an imported Muscovite administration
was established, one of whose functions was to keep the center apprised
of what seem to be even the tiniest details of local politics.
One might well ask why the Muscovite court was willing to pay
the price of such a seemingly illogical and costly policy. The answer, in
the context we have tried to establish, comes readily:because of a fear
(a fear that was not, after all, necessarily pathological) that, precisely
because these territories were so remote and potentially intractable,
regional separatismor foreign meddling could produce a situation that
was uncontrollable,in which the fundamentalgoals of securityand con-
trol might be threatened. Muscovite leaders seem to have been willing
to pay almost any price to avoid such dangers.
A similar preoccupationand hypertrophycan be observed in the
evolution of the central institution of the state-the formal person of
the grand prince. As might be expected, in the formative period of the
Muscovite court culture the grand prince seems to have had extremely
limited real power, and to have been quite vulnerable. His power was
limited not only by the simple logistical problems alreadydiscussed, but
as well by the fact that he was not, by comparisonwith other monarchs,
terribly rich, had no regular paid army of his own, and relied instead
upon a levy raised through-and to a significantextent from among-
his courtiers. And he was vulnerable, in the most basic sense of the
word, because he himself was of that warriorclass, had to travel and to
campaignconstantly, and had always to consider the possibility that his
cousins, the "appanage" princes, might, in one or another political
combination,mount a militaryforce that could overwhelm his own reti-
nue and destroy him. Such a danger nearly became a reality during the
great civil war of the fifteenth century (ca. 1425-1453); that this danger
was ultimatelyreduced is due in significantmeasure to the fact that the

Muscovite oligarchs-Vasilii II's courtiers and their descendants-
developed safeguardsagainst such political strife, to whose description
we shall devote a few pages below.
The simple and extreme responses developed by the Muscovite
political culture to the unquestionablydifficult conditions in which it
was attempting to maintain a viable political organizationproduced, as
the Muscovite state grew in power and effectiveness, a political culture
that was by its own declarationmonarchicand autocratic. In fact, as we
shall argue, that system was oligarchicand bureaucratic,but let us note
here that it is of the nature of political culture that a considerationof
the mythic "screens" erected by a politicalculture can be as important
to our understandingof how it operatedas is an awarenessof objective
realities.
Unfortunately, most historians have taken the Muscovite court at
its official word, rather than examine its underlying structure and
dynamics, and, having acceptedthe notion that this state was monarchic
and autocratic, they have had difficulty explaining the nature of its
origins and development. Much has been made, for example, of the
possibility that certain traits of the Muscovite political culture were
"borrowed"from the politicalculture of the Golden Horde, and in par-
ticular that Muscovite "absolutism" derived somehow from Mongol
dynastic theory and "oriental despotism." While it is probable,though
not beyond doubt, that the Muscovite court culture acquired several
crucial techniques (communications, military organization, taxation)
from the Tatars, and perhaps even dallied with certain oriental tradi-
tions of regal style, there is no evidence that the Muscovite political
culture acquiredanythingin the realm of politicalabstractionsor funda-
mental socio-political dynamics from their former masters. Indeed,
such a notion is incompatiblewith modern understandingsof the Tatar
political culture itself, with the nature of culturalborrowing,and as we
shall see, with the fundamentalessentials of Muscovite politicalculture.
The key to Muscovy's achievement, and the secret of the success
of the Muscovite princes (or of those who chose to rule in their name)
was in the development of a stable political system in which these
princes became the focal point--and the hostages-- (herein the true
secret) of an oligarchy of boyar clans (Russian: poabI). For it was
these clans, closely organized extended families of tradition-bound
cavalrymen, that provided the crucial nucleus of the militaryforces of
the Muscovite princes, it was these clans that effected, and benefited
from, the mobilizationof the availableresources of the Russian village,
and it was these clans, or rathercertain superclans,that controlled, and
were the principal players in, the game of politics at the Muscovite
court.
Muscovite Political Folkways 133
The emergenceand continuedvitality of a limited numberof

politicallypowerfulprincelyclans in the Muscoviteperiod was the
resultof theirselectiveelaborationof a politicalculturethat, as in the
case of the villagecommunity,embodiedeffectivemeans of attaining
specificand limited objectivesin the face of the challengesof the
environment,naturalandsocio-political.Thesegreatclanswerefor the
most partdescendedfrom two charismaticrulingdynastiesof Eastern
Europe,those of Riurikand Gedyminas.Since the politicalcultureof
both of these houseswasoriginallybaseduponthe collateraldescentof
sovereignty,the centuriesthat intervenedbetweentheirfoundingand
the rise of Muscovybrought,as the result of the simple biological
growthof the families,a severefractionalization both of economicsub-
stanceand of politicalpower. Indeed,by the end of the fifteenthcen-
tury, many descendants-there were thousands-of these proud
lineageswerelivingat almostthe level of peasantson tiny remnantsof
their original patrimonies. A limited number of clans, however,
retainedsignificanteconomicand politicalpower-in part, no doubt,
throughbiologicalgood fortune, but also to a considerabledegree
becausethey had developeda distinctpoliticalculturethat guaranteed
viabilityin spite of the threateningcircumstancesunder which they
operated.
The most importantchallengeswith whichthe princelyclans had
to contendwere,in additionto the difficulteconomicandnaturalcondi-
tions of the area,the constantdispersalof theirpersonneland property
(the naturalresult of their traditionalsystem of inheritance)and the
challengeof the politicalpowerof the state. The objectiveof clanpolit-
ical culturewas, as for the peasantcommunity,survival;but in this
case, such survivalentailed much more than simple biologicalcon-
tinuity. Survival,to membersof this sub-culture,meant survivalas
membersof a distinctandeffective,"charismatic," clan, a politicaland
economic unit able to maintainits warriorstatus and to sustain a
princelystyle. Familieswithinthis culturecouldnot affordto adoptthe
"balancing"survivaltechniquesof the peasantcommunities,since to
do so wouldinevitablylead to the loss of theirmaterialpatrimonyand
of their abilityto supportquintessentialactivities. Moreover,although
one must assumethat membersof elites, in that very unsanitaryage,
facedroughlythe same mortalityratesas did peasants,the membersof
the militaryclanshada culturallydeterminedneed to preservenot only
life itself, but the continuityof certainlineages,since their claim to
specialstatuswas basedupon genealogy. Finally,these clans were at
painsto preservea veryspecificculturaltradition:thatof a warriorclass
specificallydissociatedfrom agricultureand from every other produc-
tive enterprise.
For these reasons, even the threat of pauperizationas a conse-

quence of the inexorablearithmeticof propertydivision among all male
heirs could not be met by the abandonmentof that system; the very
tradition that underlay their status required that all males be endowed
with princelystatus.
Under these challengingconditions, "successful" clans developed
a combination of adaptationsof their own tradition, later adopted by
non-Riurikid and non-Gedyminid families who joined the Muscovite
court: namely, what one might call the "incorporation"of the tradi-
tional clan. The essence of the political clans' survival techniques was
similar to that of the peasant community, but it was different in being
applied only within the confines of a single lineage, much more highly
articulated,and endowed with far more powerfulsanctions.
The problem of the contradictionbetween the biostatisticalneed
to maximize the number of adult males in the clan, on the one hand,
and the need to avoid pauperizingparcellizationof propertythat could
be the result of equal treatmentof all males, on the other, was resolved
through a number of interestingand rathersophisticateddevices. First,
at some point that cannot be determined, Muscovite clans-those at the
court-introduced a seniority system whereby, while all males contin-
ued to bear the inherited charisma of their common ancestor, some
were deemed, by virtue of their order of birth, to be senior to others.
A complex system of accountingfor this seniority was devised, whereby
a given individual's fourth son and the first son of his first son had
equal seniority, the effect of which was, in a sense, to "fold in" outly-
ing branches of the clan. This gave political compactness to clans and
permitted them to operate at court without the worst handicapsof the
fissiparous tendencies that were built into the original system, and it
also encouraged the formation of new units-new political clans
founded, typically, by junior members of older ones, or by individuals
who had, by virtue of their own accomplishment or good fortune,
acquireddefacto status incompatiblewith their clan seniority.
Concomitantly (again, the origins of the practiceare obscure) the
clans developed practices of "recirculation" of property, such as
"manipulative" wills (by which propertywas allocated in a relatively
balancedway among a broad range of clan members), intermarriageof
poorer and richer cousins, or between rich but junior and poor but
senior members of a single lineage, the practiceof rodovoivykup,2etc.
The cumulative effect of these and other practices was to lessen the
danger of parcellizationby creating means of keeping property"in the
2 A practice-enforced by Muscovite law-that allowed members of a clan or rodto

repurchaseat the originalprice propertythat had been sold by a clan member in time of
necessity;i.e., a kind of interest-freemortgage.
family," and by assuring that some acknowledged leader of the clan

would maintain the clan's position at court, the ultimate source of all
wealth and prestige. Such devices, of course, like the "levelling"
mechanisms of the village, lessened the ability of any individual to
become rich and powerful in his own right, but they dramatically
increased the viability of the clan as a whole, and they tended to make
available to all male members the economic base necessary for the
maintenance of their quintessentialfunction and raison d'tre--military
and "public" service.
It is apparentthat such modificationsof clan structure, successful
as they seem to have been for the maintenanceof the long-term viabil-
ity of the clans, created tensions not only among members of clans but
in particularamong the increasinglyextensive and powerfulclans them-
selves; since the mechanism of increasing a clan's power was not
economic (they engaged in no significanteconomic activities) but mili-
tary and political, their growth broughtthem into competitionboth with
other individual clans and with the princely establishments or the
several emerging "states" in Russia, includingthat of Moscow.
It appears that it was the civil war of the fifteenth century, of
which we have spoken above, that provided the catastrophicstimulus
for the collective response of the Muscovite princely clans to these
problems. This great regional and dynastic struggle, which continued
for some two generations, seems to have produced among the clans
that emerged as allies of the victorious Muscovite dynasty the aware-
ness that, under the conditions in which they found themselves, war-
ring factions of clans could raise only limited forces without joining in
large coalitions, and that if such coalitions were to be unstable, inces-
sant and mutuallydestructiveconflict would be the result. The solution
seems to have been quite simple: there must be only one coalition-
that formed around the "divinely anointed" grand prince of Moscow-
and such a coalition must serve both to protect clans from internecine
militarycompetition and to guaranteethe economic and political status
through grants of land and income made nominally in the name of the
grand prince and for loyal service, but in fact as a system of corporate
resource-sharingcontrolledby the clans themselves.
Such, in essence and sum, if not in detail, was the process that
brought into being the alliance of the grand-princelyestablishment and
the boyar oligarchy;such, as they appearto me, were the considerations
that determined the political culture of the clans throughout the pre-
Petrine period and even beyond.
We shall discuss in greater detail the workings of the system of
politics that was created in this way; let us now only note some princi-
pal features of the politicalculture of the clan system itself.
Like the village political culture, the political culture of the clans
was conservative, risk-averse,and designed to assure the politicalstabil-
ity that was, for the political clans, the analog of the agrarianbalance
sought by the village culture. Under environmental conditions that
precluded the acquisition of a permanent economic base, and within a
political system that would tolerate no securely independent political
units, and, finally, in accordance with an indispensable tradition of
princely inheritance, the purpose of this political system-and its
achievement-was to preserve the viability of a small but growing
hereditarymilitaryelite. Like the village culture, it developed mechan-
isms that submerged individual interests and forestalled the worst
consequences of economic and biological chance; like that culture, it
had a corporate and unanimity-producingprocedure for decision-
making in the unchallengedauthorityof the elder of the clan, who nor-
mally representedthe clan in councils of state.
Unlike the village culture, however, the political culture of the
clans interactedwith, and to an extent determined, the high-level poli-
tics of the Muscovite state, through the workings of an elaborate sys-
tem that incorporatedmany of the features of clan politicalculture. We
shall turn to an examination of this system after a brief examination of
the third component of Russian politicalculture, the politicalculture of
the bureaucracy.
VI. ThePoliticalCultureof the MuscoviteBureaucracy

We noted above that, within the Muscovite state system,
economic and political power flowed from the grand-princelysystem
itself, and we have seen that the political culture of the princely clans
was shaped in a struggle that was in part an attempt to respond to that
establishmentand to control it. We must next examine how, under the
challenging circumstanceswe have already described, this state power
was accumulated and distributed. It is here that one encounters the
most characteristic and remarkable Muscovite institutional
innovation-the creation, in a barelydeveloped region with no previous
"imperial" tradition, of an effective and politicallydocile bureaucracy.
Indeed, it can be argued that the growth of the Muscovite bureaucracy
was not only the key to the growth and effectiveness of the Muscovite
state, but that the vigor and effectiveness of that bureaucracydeter-
mined, through its inhibition of other institutional growth, several
other crucialfeatures of Muscovite politicalculture.
It would appearthat, as in the case of militaryorganization,some
aspects of the earliest Muscovite bureaucraticand administrativeculture
were derived from the experience of the Pax Mongolica. Like the
khans, the grand princes of Muscovy learned from an early date to
derive major incomes from trade: they seem to have been the greatest
merchants, on their own account, in the realm; they effectively taxed

the trade of others; they retained crucialmonopolies. The resources so
derived were used in part to "feed"--literally and figuratively-the mil-
itary elites. It was the court bureaucracythat originallyorganized and
delivered these imposts, and it was the increased effectiveness of the
bureaucracythat eventually made possible those increasinglysignificant
levies upon the agriculturalpopulation upon which a growing military
establishmentcame to depend in later times. Like the Horde, the court
of Muscovy gave birth to a socially distinct, indispensablebut politically
powerless, bureaucraticsub-class. In the nomadic Horde, these clerks
had been urbanites,relativelyhighly Islamized, often of Iranianculture,
who were not participants in the political system of the Turkic,
nomadic, largely animist, military clans. Similarly, in Muscovy the
bureaucracy,although it formed, alongside the boyar clans and the
peasant village, one of the shaping milieux of the larger Muscovite
political culture, was typicallydistinct, non-noble, non-military-and as
a consequence, non-political.
It would appear that, while its origins can be traced to earlier
times, the hereditaryprofessionalbureaucracyof Muscovy emerged as a
distinct group in the time of Ivan III, in part as a response to the mas-
sive new administrativetasks imposed upon the previously amorphous
grand-princelyorganization by the extensive conquests of that reign,
particularlythe inclusion of the vast Novgorodian territories. There
apparentlyhaving existed no social tradition assigning such status and
functions to any specific group (e.g., no "Mandarin"tradition, nor the
much later associationwith the "gentry"), the court met its new needs
by the ad hoc recruitment of literate trained individuals from among
foreigners (Italianized Greeks and converted Tatars), priests' sons,
merchants,and others.
This bureaucracyexpanded to accommodate the needs and com-
plexity of the state, and it soon began to display a tendency to become
a closed hereditary sub-stratum in a society that assigned status and
function primarily-indeed almost exclusively-on the basis of heredity.
By the middle of the sixteenth century, leading clerks, called d'iaki,
were commonly second- and even third-generation professional
administrators;they were intermarryingwithin their profession, and
were passing on to their sons and in-laws' sons the skills of their chan-
ceries. The rewardsfor their services-both in salaryand in "gifts"-
were generous, and their influence, both in the sphere of bureaucratic
routine and in higher councils of government, was considerable. But
this influence was contingent upon the performance of their official
duties; a d'iak's position, property,and social status depended entirely
upon the "mercy" of the grand prince or his emanation, one's bureau-
cratic superior. Powerful bureaucratsdid not, as individuals or as a
group, represent politicalinterests (except as they might be clients of
the powerful clans), nor could an individual's influence survive his

removal from his post; even great incomes and properties were lost
when a d'iak left his employment. That these importantclerks had no
institutionalized and effective political power was, of course, not
unusual-but we should note that, in Muscovy, this fact was associated
with their social separation from the only class that did have such
power, the princely clans. Politics in Muscovy was a politics of status,
not of function, and was consequentlya game played exclusively by the
great clans that formed the court of the grandprince.
VII. The Gameof Politicsat the MuscoviteCourt
We have thus far reviewed several general observations concern-
ing the origins and most salient features of three distinct sectors of
Muscovite vernacular political culture. At several points we have
remarked in passing that, while any identifiable sub-culture within
Muscovite society might be said, in the current sense of the term, to
have had a politicalculture, only one group-the politicalclans, includ-
ing that of the grand prince-actually participatedin what, in the nar-
rower and traditional sense, might be called politics-the organized
competition for political power, for control of the coercive and remun-
erative functions of the state.
In Muscovite society, to an extent greater than that observed in
most European societies of the time, this game of princes was concen-
trated in the court, and around the family and the very person of the
monarch. There were no other significantloci of political power, secu-
lar or clerical, corporateor informal. Indeed, there was no specifically
politicalpower-including that of the clans-that did not derive in some
fundamental respect from the nominal authority of the grand prince.
The state itself, to the extent that it was perceived in the abstract,was
but the extension and implement of his authority, not its source. As a
consequence, control of the state-that is, of the authorityof the grand
prince-was the prize of politicalactivity, and not its context.
But while the game of power politics was perhaps more concen-
trated than in other systems, and limited to a relatively small number
of players, its rules expressed two simple objectives common to all such
systems: to determine the allocation of power to the competing partici-
pants; and to preserve the system itself. And it is a strikingpeculiarity
of this system, generally ignored by historians preoccupiedwith narra-
tive accounts of periods of factional strife, that its participantsplaced
heavy priority upon the second objective. Indeed, when we consider
that all participantsin politics were members of a warriorclass in a con-
stant state of semi-mobilization-and were, typically, armed with
daggers and swords, the very absence of violence is striking. Such a
stress was determined by underlying assumptions, already described,
concerning the frailty of man and of his creations;it was reinforcedby

an awarenessof the fragilityof the politicalstructureitself. There may
have been other reasons as well; in any case, Muscovite politicians
seem to have been willing to pay an unusuallyhigh price for the preser-
vation of the viabilityand integrityof their "cosa nostra."
Recourse to such specificallyevocative modern terminology may
seem inappropriate;the behavior of the boyarsmight in another system
be termed "statesmanlike." But there should be no doubt that political
actors in the Muscovite system both foreswore short-term particular
advantagefor what appearto have been system-preservingreasons and
that they coalesced to destroy or emasculate those who threatened
through intolerablysuccessful competition to destroy that system's cru-
cial balanceof interests.
Thus the game of politics, even this rather rough-and-tumble
Muscovite game, had rules-rules that not only governed the behavior
of individual players, but also controlled the resolution of systematic
problems of legitimacy and continuity, including the crucial matter of
politicalsuccession. Further, these rules were elaboratedin such a way
as to form an internallyconsistent system, compatiblefunctionally and
symbolicallywith other, non-politicalpatternsof culture (e.g., religion,
family structure) and congruent with other patternsof Russian political
culture.
Let us briefly examine first the structure, and then the internal
dynamics, of the court politicalsystem.
The "power structure"of the Muscovite court can best be visual-
ized not in the familiarWestern shape of a rectilinearpyramidalchart,
but rather as students were once taught to visualize the atom, with a
fixed nucleus encircled by a number of concentric rings, each of which
is composed of particles that may move from ring to ring, from lower
to higher energy levels, while maintainingthe basicallystable structure
of the atom itself.
At the center of this system, alone and immobile, stood the grand
prince (later tsar, emperor, etc.). Around him in the innermost ring, at
changing but in the aggregate stable levels of power, were the most
important clan leaders, the boyars, typically his maternal uncles,
cousins, or in-laws. Such individualsoften bore titles such as equerry,
major domo, chamberlain, and the like, titles that have seemed pri-
marily ceremonial to modern analysts, who are accustomed to rational-
ized power structures. It should be stressed again, however, that in the
Muscovite system political power and administrativeposition were not
necessarily associated with one another, and indeed for centuries they
were specificallydistinct. (Note also that, although the court was, in
essence, an army, it had no specificallymilitaryranks-and no need for
them-until the introduction of Western-style organization in the
seventeenth century. One's place in the order of march, as at court,
was determined by seniority.) Thus these court ranks, while not linked
hierarchicallyto militaryor other structures,signified a politicallymuch
more importantrelationship-proximity to the grand prince. And such
proximity-physical access guaranteed by blood or marriage relation-
ships, in most cases-was both the warrantand the objective of political
activity.
Individualsin this inner ring served as links to the outer rings of
the political system per se, which included in early times a tiny propor-
tion of the society, and through them to the society at large, which was
outside politics. Successive outer rings were composed of client groups
and/or other constituencies of the members of inner rings. In pre-
Petrine times, these groups were primarily clan and family groups;
later, they were socio-economic groupings; eventually, in modern
times, they were to become bureaucraticand other interest groups.
Like the atom that we have imagined, this system maintained a
dynamic equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces. The grand
prince, whose position was by definition unaffected by power politics,
kept those individuals who occupied the innermost ring constantly in
movement, toward or away from his "luminous presence" (cseTjibie
oxm). Similarly, they tended to impel one another away from that
center, while their clan/client groups thrust them towards it. There
were limits: oligarchscould not hope to enter the center of the system
and become grand prince; the slightest indication of such ambitions
would lead to their destructionby the grandprince or, more commonly,
by their peers. Nor could they be pushed too far towardthe periphery;
if they were, they would lose "face" (ecTb) and their status as leader
of their clan or client faction.
Now how did this system function in a dynamic sense-how did it
operate so as to assign, regulate, and effectuate the power of those who
comprised it? And how did it act to resolve the conflicts generated by
their strivings to increase their own power?
We may begin our examination of the dynamic features of the
Muscovite political system at this center. That one became grand
prince only through the accident of birth, and surrenderedthat status
only at death's door, is an apparentlytrivial fact whose functional and
symbolic meaning to the Muscovite political culture was of transcen-
dent importance. From this central convention there flowed a number
of conceptualand behavioralrules whose results are familiarfrom stan-
dard histories, but whose underlyingdynamic has not been adequately
described.
The establishment of this practice, which we may call "political
primogeniture," in the Muscovite dynasty was a significant departure
from both previous practiceand from the general custom of the native
political elites, and at the same time marked a crucial stage in the for-
mation of the court politicalculture. The Riurikidfamily traditionhad
been collateral:i.e., younger brothers, or even cousins, might inherit

sovereignty from elder brothers, cousins, or uncles. Although it seems
to have functioned as well as most succession systems in Kievan times,
by the time some fifteen generations had been produced in a territory
that was rapidlybeing colonized, the Riurikid system was unworkable
for a number of reasons. Among the grand-princelyfamilies (i.e., des-
cendants of those princes of the Riurikid line who had themselves
ruled) calculations of seniority became impossibly complex and, with
the absorption of several formerly independent principalitiesby Mos-
cow, meaningless. After the great civil war of the first half of the
fifteenth century, begun by a dynastic dispute, in which all the
weaknesses of the former system were revealed, the winning coalition
(Vasilii II and his allies) confirmed forever a new dynastic principle,
whereby only the eldest son of only one family-that of Vasilii-was
clearlydesignatedas successor, his brothersand uncles being effectively
excluded from political life, typically by means of imprisonment or
exile in the so-called "appanage" centers. By this change the grand-
princelyfamily established an unprecedentedform of internal organiza-
tion for itself, and set itself apartboth from other princelyclans, which
continued to practice a modified collateraland collective seniority sys-
tem, and from the peasant mass, where inherited property was con-
stantly the object of communal redistribution.
It would appear both from the events of the latter part of the
fifteenth century and from later developments that this isolation and
strengthening of the ruling dynasty ultimately served the interests of
the oligarchicclan leaders who were allies of the throne. Two genera-
tions of political chaos seem to have convinced the leaders of the mili-
tary clans that politicalstabilityin their homeland could be assured only
by their acceptanceof a single and undisputeddynastywhose legitimacy
was unchallengedand whose members were in an ultimate sense above
factional strife. The inviolate preservationof the person of a divinely
anointed grand prince-later tsar-who might in fact be infirm, incom-
petent, or not of age became, for the oligarchs, the sine qua non of the
stabilitywhose frail contingency they sensed and whose alternativethey
wisely feared.
This being the case, it mattered little, in most generations, who
was at the center of this system, but it was crucially important that
someonebe, and that the common allegiance to him be at least nomi-
nally unconditional. Of course, having committed themselves to the
principle of an all-powerful and divinely anointed king, the elite
immediately encountered two logical necessities: 1) the elaboration of
mechanisms for the dealing with the realities of the biological con-
tinuity of a single (and, as it developed, genetically unsuitable) lineage;
and 2) the regulationof political competition in areas not forbidden by
the dynastic "taboo." The first of these needs was ultimately satisfied
through a series of astute fictions, for while the system could operate
under weak or incompetent grand princes-and even under mad
ones-it could not tolerate "tsarlessness" (6ecuapcTBue),nor could it
tolerate the factional struggles that would attend the decision to replace
an ailing or incompetentgrandprince.
Least of all could this system tolerate struggle over the throne
itself. There is abundant evidence that a kind of "taboo" was
developed in this regard, since Fate sorely tested the system many
times, "anointing" in both the progeny of Vasilii II and later in the
Romanov house a large number of unfit individuals. But in spite of
this almost constant problem, and notwithstandingthe perpetual in-
trigues among factions at court, and, finally, despite the relatively easy
access of the members of the court elite to the person of the tsar, no
"lethal compacts" were formed from within the ruling circle against a
legitimate tsar, however helpless in mind and body, however "tyranni-
cal." His untouchabilityand "groza" (roughly "clout") were clearly
too importantto the preservationof the stability of a system of which
the boyarelite was the beneficiaryand controllingstockholder.
And, when Fate played the cruelest trick of all, the extinction of
the royal line with the death of the mentally incompetent Fedor Ivano-
vich in 1598, this system filled the vacuum at the center, first by the
"election" of Boris Godunov, then with "miraculous return" of first
one False Dmitrii, then a Second, and finally with a sixteen-year-old
nonentity. In each case the boyar oligarchs, in changing and turbulent
coalitions but ultimately unanimously, were willing to confer upon
these replacements not only mythical "royal lineage," but all the
powers and hereditaryprivileges that had belonged to previous, "real"
tsars. Further, both in this period and generally, it was the oligarchs
themselves, contraryto what might be considered in Western terms as
their own political and constitutional interest, who fostered the con-
tinuation of myths about divine ordination, about the absolute power
and despotism of the tsar, and about their own "slavish" submission to
his will.
For it was the idea of a strong tsar that was essential both to the
princely clans and to the non-princely bureaucratsas the warrant of
their own power and of the legitimacyof their position-and as protec-
tion against one another. And it was their own need for a strong tsar
that led them to deceive others-particularly foreigners-about the true
extent of the power of the grand prince, whom we know often to have
been a minor, or sickly, or uninterestedin rule, but who is describedas
"the most powerfulprince in the universe," etc. Most of these ambas-
sadors, of course, were carefully secluded by means of the peculiar de
luxe house arrest traditionally imposed upon official visitors in
Muscovy, but they did, on occasion, have moments of personalcontact
with leading boyars. From them, however, the visitors learned next to
nothing of how Muscovite politics was really played. Almost without

exception, they comment on the unlimited power of the monarch, and
on the quaint practiceof even the most powerfulboyarsin the realm of
addressingthe tsar in the abjectstyle of a humble petitioner. (One oth-
erwise discerning foreigner, Jacques Margeret, was even convinced by
his Muscovite sources that the First False Dmitrii was indeed the long-
concealed son of Ivan the Terrible, despite the fact that his informants
certainlyknew him to be an impostor.)
A second necessity for the great clan leaders, given the general
acceptanceof the notion of "unlimited" autocracy,was for conventions
that might regulate their natural competition in areas adjacent to, but
not at the center of, politicalpower. It became the function not only of
the tsar himself, but of those close to him but not "eligible" for politi-
cal power, i.e., the d'iaki or clerks, to regulate many aspects of this
competition in a system-maintainingmanner. Thus, for example, while
the tsar had the power to influence the materialand politicalposition of
the great families through grants of pelf and position, the relativelimits
of such grantswere controlledby the system of mestnichestvo, or senior-
ity, of which we have spoken. There is much that is still unclear about
the origins and rules of this system, but it is apparentthat the keepers
of the rulebook, the non-participantreferees, were the d'iaki.
But if the great clans were constrainedto ascribe unlimited power
to the tsar, and limited by regulations in their internecine struggle for
power and treasure, how, at the center of the system, were their real
power conflicts resolved? How did one acquire,or maintain, power and
status?
As we have noted, the primarysource of political and economic
power for the great clans was the court-the emanationof the person of
the grand prince himself. Just as all politicalpower was concentratedin
the center, so too did all clan propertyand incomes derive ultimately,
in the form of grants of land and immunities, from the favor of the
grand prince, or from the complex sharing agreements among those
who ruled in his name.
Since it was the court-the Kremlin-from which power flowed,
and in the absence of institutions or relationshipsthat might indepen-
dently of that court protect or guaranteestatus or power once obtained,
it was necessary for representatives of all active political interests to
maintain a constant presence at the court. Jacques Margeretnoted in
his "Description" of the Muscovite state that the nobility must reside
in Moscow, and that they spend all of their time, from sunrise until two
or three hours after sunset, with the exception of a long midday break
for dinner and a siesta, in the Kremlin.
It was here, in the obligatoryall-day sessions of the inner circle,
that matters of state were decided and where political decisions, intri-
gues, and open struggles took place. But if the tsar was nominally all-
144 1The
RussianReview
powerful, and in any case himself beyond the play of politics in the
most basic sense, and if many matters of rank and position were to an
extent determined by the system of mestnichestvo,in what did the
dynamics of this political competition consist? Again, Margeret pro-
vides just a clue: "The principalnobles ... are the dukes, then those of
the council who are called dumnye dvoriane .... There is in the council
no fixed number, for it is up to the emperor to appoint as many as he
deems proper .... The privy council is customarily made up of those
most closely related to the emperor ...."
The way to power, to membershipin the inner circle was, then, to
be related to the "emperor." But, as we have mentioned, those related
by birth to the grand prince-his uncles and brothers-were systemati-
cally exiled or incarcerated. Those related to him by marriage,
however-his wife's male relatives-were the "principal nobles" of
whom Margeret speaks. That such was the case made the Muscovite
system, for all its genealogical conservatism, dynamic and flexible:
those able to manage affairs so as to become "related" to the grand
prince were, presumably,among the most astute and effective members
of the larger court circle. As a consequence, it was in this area-in
marriagepolitics, the politics of kinship-that the play of politicalforces
took place, until the time of Peter ... and beyond.
We cannot go into a description of this matter in detail, but I
believe it can be shown that for roughly two centuries-during the for-
mative period of the Muscovite political culture (1500-1700)-the poli-
tics of betrothalsand marriageswas in fact the politics of power in the
Kremlin. It was during the process of betrothal of an heir or royal
daughterthat one heard the thud of limp bodies in the Kremlin; it was
the brothers, uncles, and fathers of the lucky brides who formed the
innermost circle of power.
There are many kinds of evidence, in addition to the facts of
poisoned brides, broken betrothals, and the well-known but commonly
disregardedrole of in-laws, that confirm this view. The protocols of
marriagesin the royal family were, for example, among the most ela-
borate and carefully preserved of all grand-princelyrecords. Principal
members of great clans were permitted to marryonly with the permis-
sion of the grand prince and indeed could be prohibitedentirely from
marrying. And the grand prince himself was not at liberty to marry
whom he pleased. (The myth of an extensive "search for a bride,"
allegedly involving thousands of the most beautiful girls in the realm,
was but a part of the self-protective deception practicedby the court.)
Attempts by a reigning prince to "break out" of the system by marry-
ing foreigners, or betrothing a child to one, repeatedlycaused political
turmoil. The practice-in the "political" classes only-of seclusion of
women was a part of this system that guaranteedthat the primary-i.e.,
political-reasons for marriage, and not personal choices, would
determine relationshipsamong great families and with the court.

The importanceof marriageis, of course, entirely compatiblewith
both the dynastic principle and with that of the relations among the
clans-that of kinship-for marriagewas the most important dynamic
aspect of a stable, kinship-basedsystem of politics.
Thus in the first two hundred years or so of its existence the
Muscovite state developed a rather simple, effective, and even har-
monious structure:at the center was a small and compact kernel of rul-
ing clans, or rather one ruling dynasty and its relatives, whose
relationships-the only truly political relationshipsin the realm-were
symbolicallyexpressed in a kind of self-imposed fictional subservience
to an autocratictsar, and ensured by the awarenessthat the fiction was
the central element of a conspiracy against the political chaos that
would ensue if clan were to be set against clan. Alongside this crucial
political institution, and as a practicaland institutionalizedprojectionof
it, there evolved an increasinglyimportantand effective, but politically
unimportant "grand-princely" military establishment, and a highly
skilled but equally powerless "royal" bureaucracy.
VIII.Politicsand Ideologyin Muscovy

A reader familiar with the standardtreatment of Muscovite poli-
tics will have noticed by now the absence of any discussion of what
might be termed the "ideology" of the system under consideration. To
an extent such an omission has been justified by the stress on the cul-
tural and "vernacular"aspects of our problem, but the notion of the
general congruity of features of a political culture requires us now to
consider how, if at all, the "rules" of the system found expression in
explicit or symbolic codifications, theoretical statements, or other
forms.
The search for such expressions of principles is encumbered, of
course, by a feature of the Muscovite political culture that we have
already mentioned: its commitment to a practice of hermetic silence
later known as neglasnost'. It should not, therefore, be surprisingthat
until the very threshold of modern times there seems to have been no
attempt-nor, presumably,any felt need-to articulateor to codify the
operative principlesand "rules" that governed political relations; as in
other traditionalsystems, those who needed to know such rules knew
them, and those who had no need to know were kept in ignorance.
Further, to the extent that political statements for the consumption of
outsiders were made at all, such were intended to serve the purposesof
the system, that is, to decorate and to conceal the system's essential
features.
The methodologies that have combined in providing the concept

of political culture-particularly social psychology and cultural
anthropology-have long recognized patternsof concealment to be sys-
tematically revelatory. And so it is with the statements-primarily
ceremonial, artistic, and literary-made by, or more commonly for, the
Muscovite court culture.
It is difficult to establish the extent to which these "ideological"
statements influenced politics or politiciansin Muscovy, if indeed they
did at all. Certainly it is not possible to demonstrate that any active
politician (let us limit ourselves to grand princes and boyars) read any
of the texts that are commonly adduced in discussions of Muscovite
"political ideology." The texts themselves, moreover, are still
unidentified as concerns authorship and date, and they are written in
the languageand forms of the ecclesiasticalculture, in which politicians
of the time had little training.
But leaving aside for a time such considerations,we can consider
briefly whether the sermons, epistles, and coronation ceremonies that
are familiar to the reader of footnotes in histories of Muscovy can tell
us something authentic about what we may call the "political thought"
of that society. The best-known authorities take such sources at their
word, and conclude from them that Muscovy's political culture, as
expressed in its "official ideology," was "autocratic," "absolutist,"
"caesaro-papist,"and the like.
It is true that, while these texts are by no means analytical
treatises or generalized statements of political principle, they do set
forth certain interesting descriptive and admonitory ideas about the
monarch's powers and about his relationshipto his subjects. The tsar is
usually depicted as divinely anointed, all-powerful,autocratic,etc., and
he is admonished to be pious, wise, clement, and brave. His subjects
are instructed to serve and to obey him without stint or internal reser-
vation.
Our interpretationof such sources within our chosen methodologi-
cal context can begin with a restatement of some aspects of Muscovite
reality: we know that in fact for much of the period in question tsars
were in fact not only not all-powerful(what king is?) but more severely
limited in their power than other heads of state, not only by the con-
straining realities of governance in Muscovy, but specifically by the
political power of the boyar oligarchy. Indeed, some of the most auto-
cratic declarationscoincide with the periods of the least effectual and
least powerful monarchs (e.g., the coronation ceremonies of the late
sixteenth century). We must assume that the actual weakness of the
tsar was known not only to the oligarchs who presumably were the
sponsors of these literarystatements, but also to the authors, most of
whom were probablykept clerics.
We may conclude, then, that much, if not all, of the literaturetra-

ditionally considered to have voiced "official autocraticideology" was
in fact but another expression, in high style, of the same useful myths
that the oligarchs purveyed to outsiders in the vernacular:we are but
the quiveringslaves of an almightytyrant.
It is of some interest that the same notion eventually developed a
third, plain-style or bureaucraticexpression in the form of the famous
"tsar's word and deed" legislation. Under this rubrichistoriansgroup a
variegatedcollection of "political" and punitive procedures,conducted
within the normal bureaucraticapparatus,against Muscovites, primarily
of low status, who were misfortunate enough to come under suspicion
(usually as the consequence of denunciations by their fellow citizens)
for having done, said, or even sung, something that allegedly
threatened or demeaned the person-real or mythical-of the tsar.
That the great bulk of such accusationsappearseven from the meticu-
lous records of the government itself to have been devoid of serious
foundation or political significance did not prevent them from being
dealt with with hair-raisingearnestness and brutality,at the very top of
the system, typicallyin the BoyarDuma.
Here, too, one should note the apparentcontradictionbetween the
symbolism of an all-powerfultsar conveyed by such bizarre repression
and the extent to which the tsar or his putative interests were
threatenedby the drunken ditties of provincialne'er-do-wells. Study of
these singularlyinteresting cases leads one to conclude that the goal of
these prosecutions was to protect not the real safety or dignity of the
tsar, but the myth of his all-embracingand all-knowing power. In so
doing, the bureaucraticprosecutorswere in fact protectingthe source of
their own legitimacy, the mythical autocratwhose slightest whim they
were obliged to carry out. Such a view is confirmed by the fact that
"word and deed" cases became common in a period of weak tsars
(Mikhail Romanov and the young Aleksei Mikhailovich) and declined
during periods (e.g., the later reign of Aleksei) when in fact the tsar
was more powerful. (Peter the Great outlawed the practice-with only
limited success.)
But if the central myth of the political system-that of the all-
powerful and divinely empowered tsar-found its most extensive ela-
boration in both theoretical Slavonic texts and in the more mundane
workings of the "word and deed" procedure, certain other myths and
principleswe have identified are also reflected in more indirect ways in
the written record. We have alreadymentioned the carefully preserved
marriagemusters; one should add the even more painstakingly(if not
always scrupulously!)kept genealogical books and the military muster-
rolls. But we note that these records were internal, and not for
outsiders-and even these are only the sparest of records-lists of
names of male clan members.
Indeed, one could argue that, this political system, the vernacular
politics of the Muscovite court, had no ideology, in the more modern
sense of the term. And it is the very absence of public statements
about itself that reveals its essential features: its seeming formless-
ness,3 its "corporateness," its conspiratorialnature. Historians have
sought in vain to find written recordsfrom this period that might expli-
citly identify factions or individuals with political positions taken in
some critical debate, reveal the course of the debate and the range of
opinions, the proceduresof decision, and the precise nature of the final
compromise. No such record will be found, because to keep it would
have been totally alien to the nature of Muscovite politics. It is, of
course, beyond question that factions did exist, that ultimate decisions
were collective and unanimous, and that they were made in the circle
of oligarchs disguised in the literatureas the "Boyar Duma." But the
very nature of this corporationand its modusoperandiconceal its actual
operations from historians, as they concealed them from outsiders in
Muscovite times. No one, least of all some vulnerable clerk, carried
"rubbish" out of thathut.
It should not be surprisingthat Muscovy, preeminent practitioner
of pragmaticpolitics, remarkableinventor of administrativesystems in
an environment unsuited to the growth of a centralized and far-flung
state system, elaboratedno functionally significantor coherent secular
political ideology or theory of government. It was not until late in the
seventeenth century that any attempt at a statement of explicit political
principlesappearedin Muscovy, in the form of the "Correspondence"
attributed to Ivan the Terrible and Prince Kurbskii (especially Ivan's
First Letter) and the "History" attributed to Kurbskii. And it was a
foreigner, JurajKrilanic, who wrote the first explicit treatise on "poli-
tics" in Russia, a work that seems to have had few readers in that
country, partlybecause it was written in a kind of Slavic Esperantode-
vised by its Croatian author. Later, other foreigners made more
influential contributions of a theoretical nature-one thinks of the
Ukrainian Feofan Prokopovich or his Greek ghost-writer in Peter's
time, Montesquieu in Catherine's, and others, notably Karl Marx,
much later on. Russians paid varying degrees of lip-service to these
theoretical statements, but seem never to have accorded them much
influence in the practical and pragmatic politics in which, like their
Muscovite forebears,they had become so adept.
3 Not
"informality"in the usual sense, of course: the documentaryrecord provides
abundantevidence that, as in other "shame-and-honor"societies, honor (IecTb), disho-
nor (6ececTHe), disgrace (onana), and status (BepcTa)were acknowledgedand articu-
lated in meticulouslyobserved traditionalforms.
in Muscovy:The Traditionof Dissent

IX. "Anti-Politics"
Our discussion of the Muscovite politicalculture has thus far dealt
primarily with the features of what one might call its "dominant
modes;" we have not considered the attitudes or forms of behavior of
those groups that were, for one or another reason, outside or opposed
to the systems we take to be typical. The modern definition of "politi-
cal culture" that we have adopted, however, constrains us to consider
the political culture as a whole, and to investigate deviance, "wrong
ideas," the symbols adopted by "taboo-breakers,"and other apparently
aberrantbehavior as a complement and corrective to our observations
about the dominantculture. The usefulness of such additionalobserva-
tions is considerable;if the "wrong ideas" can be seen to have formed
a systematic negation of the "right" ones, or as "negatively
congruent" with the dominant patterns, their study can provide a
means of confirmation of our conclusions about the culture's funda-
mental features.
In dealing with pre-modern cultures it is of course methodologi-
cally most difficult to conduct such a test: "deviants" are given short
shrift in most traditionalsocieties, and they are poorly represented in
our documentation. One can only speculate, for example, about the
political culture of the Muscovite peasant who refused to bow to the
dominant culture of his village; group violence or flight probably
"deleted" him from the pattern of village life. Much the same is
apparentlytrue of the bureaucraticand court cultures; within the politi-
cal system narrowly defined-i.e., the court-the only familiar and
well-documentedcases of significantchallenge to the system (by which
I mean attempts to "change the rules") seem to have involved those
tsars-particularly Ivan IV and Peter the Great-who, by arranging
"taboo" marriages or by tampering with the system of kinship,
attemptedto change essential features of the politicalsystem.
Beginning, however, late in the sixteenth century, one can discern
what might be termed a tradition of dissent within the system. The
notion may seem anachronistic;it is not. For if the Muscovite way was
indeed a well-established and viable system-the functioning political
culture of a stable society-one may expect to find some equally well-
established, if constantly changing, elements of political resistance or
dissent in its overall pattern.
In this regard,as in several others, it is helpful to begin by setting
aside certain received notions of the origins of the "revolutionary
movement" in Russia, the familiar "genealogy" that begins most com-
monly with the Decembrists and proceeds "Slavophiles-
Westernizers-Populists-Marxists." Some of these movements, to be
sure, were to some extent linked to the Muscovite traditionof dissent,
but for the most part-increasingly toward the turn of the twentieth
century-their ideas of dissent and reform were based upon notions

that had evolved within the political culture of the major Western
nation-statesas these emerged in their modern forms in the nineteenth
century.
The vernacular tradition of dissent, by contrast, had evolved
together with the dominant Muscovite politicalculture, and it contained
in the inverted and hyperbolic forms that are common to "counter-
cultures" many elements of the system it rejected. Thus the dissenting
tradition, whose continuous development can be traced from at least
the beginning of the seventeenth century, was based upon the same
despairing and conservative view of the nature of political man, the
same sense of the appropriatenessof "corporatedemocracy," and the
same conspiratorialspirit, that we find in the dominant culture. It did
not reject the essential forms and notions of Muscovite politics, nor did
it propose alternatives. Rather, since that system depended so much
upon the behavior of individualswhose status and responsibilitieswere
determined by birth and tradition, and not by merit or by the vagaries
of fortune, dissident politicalthought concerned itself with personaland
moral perfection, which it usually expressed in a traditionalreligious
lexicon.
Critics of the system did challenge, and even deny, the legitimacy
of the state-of the bureaucracyin particular-but since, as we have
seen, the bureaucracydid not possess political power of its own, and
always maintained that it was but a powerless servant of the autocrat,
such criticism should be seen primarilyas criticismof the autocrathim-
self, as a moralactor,rather than as criticismof one or another system
of governance. In later times (beginning with the end of the seven-
teenth century) criticismof the bureaucratcan also be seen as a conser-
vative reaction against the rapid growth of the state apparatus, and
against the increasing de facto power of the bureaucrats, who were
"base-born," and presumed to be less capable of achieving the moral
perfection called for by dissenters. The dissenting tradition,until it fell
under the strong influence of European ideas, was in fact little
interested in systems of government, but rather preoccupiedwith the
problem of good and bad rulers. Indeed, it can be arguedthat Western
observers have missed an importantfeature of the Russian traditionof
dissent, one that is entirely congruent with a basic characteristicof the
dominant tradition: bearers of this tradition consider dictatorship-
one-man rule without, and in defiance of, mediating conciliar bodies-
dangerous and wrong, not because such government tends to trample
upon the rights of individuals in the society, but because, believing as
they do in the moral frailty and impurityof the individual, they despair
of entrustingdictatorialpowers to any single person.
Thus the dissenting tradition developed, as an antipode of the

official political culture's glorification of the all-powerful and God-
anointed tsar, its own ideal-a tsar whose political and "legal" powers
and attributeswere in fact those of the dominant political culture, but
who was enjoined to strive for moral/religious purity and perfection.
And in particular,as is so clear, for example, from the "Kurbskii"
materialsmentioned above, this tsar was "bad" when he failed to heed
the advice of his oligarchs,and "good" when he took their counsel.
The basic elements of the dissenting tradition-a concern with
personal morality;the rejection of the "state" as the projectionof the
will of a single individual; and a nostalgic view of a once-happy Rus',
formerly ruled by tsars who heeded the advice of wise elders, but now
tormented by a political system imposed by "flatterers" and alien
conspirators-are present from its beginnings in the sixteenth century
and are at first connected with rather specific conditions of the emer-
gence of the dominantculture to which it was a response.
It would appear that an event that had profound effects on the
articulation of the dominant culture-the absorption of the old
Novgorodian (and to a lesser extent, the Tverian and Pskovian)
lands-also elicited the first systematic expressions of what might be
called political dissent within the Muscovite culture. "Novgorod," in
the imaginationof the dissenters and in fact, had been more than the
"Merchant Republic" on the Volkhov; the Novgorodian hinterland
(the area north of Moscow and "across the Volga" as far as the Urals
and the White Sea), settled by Novgorodians, under Novgorodianpolit-
ical and-what is more important-ecclesiastical jurisdiction, had been
the home of a very distinctive regional culture. Novgorod was "con-
quered" not once, but at least three times, first in the 1470s by Ivan
III; again in 1570 by Ivan IV; and finally in the latter part of the seven-
teenth century when, during the regional civil war that is usually associ-
ated with the so-called Raskol, effective Muscovite politicaland cultural
control was extended to the whole of the Novgorodian cultural sphere.
What was destroyedas a result of these repeatedand prolongedassaults
was not only the well-known "liberties" of the former "republic" (in
fact an oligarchyof another type) but a complex of vigorous and dis-
tinct socio-economic, political, and ecclesiastical traditions. For the
basic socio-economic pattern of life in the Novgorodian North was
different from that spread by the Muscovite state: whereas the latter
rested upon the supportof a military-administrative system through the
granting of inhabited lands to servitors of the grand prince in return for
military service, and consequently was built upon the exploitation of
villages of subsistence agriculturalistsof the type we have described,
the former had as its basic unit the independent peasant household, in
which subsistence agriculture and various market-oriented home-
industryand extractionactivities were combined with extensive peasant
landowning and individual economic autonomy. In a struggle that,

despite its opposite outcome, can be compared with that of Yankee
industrialismand Southern plantation paternalism,the Muscovite way
destroyed the Novgorodian, and set out to make a dependent serf of
the Novgorodian farmer. In addition, the relatively autonomous
NovgorodianChurch establishment, with its many monastic colonies in
the North, was subjected to the control of a Muscovite hierarchy that
had for centuries been the handmaidenof the secular power and was in
most respects culturally less advanced than its older and more
"Western" sister.
It is not surprisingthat the first manifestationsof what became the
characteristicelements of the political culture of dissent should have
appearedwithin the religio-culturalsphere, in Slavonic writings associ-
ated with non-Muscovite centers. After the conquest of Novgorod, the
lands of the Novgorodian Church and its monastic communities-great
landlords as well as islands of culture in the northern wilderness-had
been almost totally expropriatedby the Muscovite grand prince in an
act of secularization almost without parallel in Christendom. In the
earliest writings, called forth by this first "conquest," one alreadyfinds
two of the features that are to become centralthemes in the traditionof
dissent: the criticism of excessive secular and state power; and the call
for inner, other-worldlypurity and perfection in the forms of the her-
mitage, the rejection of worldly possessions and the (somewhat
rationalizing)notion that the monasteries should not in fact own pro-
perty.
In the century or so after the first conquest of Novgorod, such
ideas were expressed in writings associated with those monasteries of
the old non-Muscovite territoriesthat were still effectively independent,
if only by virtue of the fact that they were so distant from Moscow.
The so-called Novgorodian chronicles, in particular, many of which
were written long after the conquest, tended to be quietly but firmly
anti-Muscoviteand anti-"state."
The independence and prosperity of some of these monasteries
and of other former Novgorodian colonies continued, and even grew,
in the latter part of the sixteenth century, largely as the result of the
trading boom created in the region by the new Muscovy and Persia
trade organized by English and Dutch companies, but also because of
the diminution of control from Moscow as the central government
became preoccupiedand weakened by the disruptiveLivonian wars, the
Oprichnina, and the Time of Troubles.
It appearsto have been the political struggles of the time of Boris
Godunov that produced the first identifiable group of secular, upper-
class, politicaldissidents, who eventually became the spiritualancestors
of the classic Russian dissident intellectual. The first generations of
this archetypical formation were produced by an unprecedented
combination of cultural and political circumstances. Until roughly the

turn of the seventeenth century, there had existed in Muscovite society
a rather distinct and significantdemarcationbetween what I have called
elsewhere the "two cultures" of Muscovy. The first of these was the
ecclesiasticalculture, whose bearersand creatorswere the tiny number
of educated clergy who preserved and transmitted the patristic and
other literature of the common East Slavic religious tradition, and a
small amount of annalistic historical literature. This culture was pri-
marily monastic; its texts were written in a difficult, learned language,
Church Slavonic, which almost until the time of Peter the Great was
not used for original secular literature. The other culture, the secular
Muscovite culture, was the culture of the court, which, although it had
its own written language-the legal language of the bureaucracy-was
essentially a non-literate culture. The politically dominant adepts of
this culture-the nobility of the court and family of the grand prince-
had no group traditionof literacy or of formal education and, by con-
trast with other European Christian elites, partook little of the
ecclesiastical, formal culture-the culture in which, as I have men-
tioned, the first dissident streams of thought, largely Novgorodian,
were emerging.
In the latter years of Ivan IV's reign and during the Time of Trou-
bles, however, a rather important convergence of these cultures-and
particularlyof the Novgorodian dissenting traditionwith the Muscovite
secular culture-took place. Political infighting at court, particularly
during the heyday of Boris Godunov, led to the exile of significant
numbers of powerful elite families. And since the political unit of the
Muscovite court was, as we have seen, the clan, whole groups of
rivals-Ivan's rivals, Godunov's rivals, rivals of Shuiskii and the early
Romanovs-were deportedin family groups, includingwomen and chil-
dren, to the most remote northern monasteries. Now while it would
appear that the senior members of such groups of exiles spent their
time in grumbling,plotting revenge, or drinkingmonasteryhome-brew,
their sons-particularly those who were of the age of monastic novices,
warmed the scholars' bench together with the candidatesfor the cowl,
and acquired a proper churchly, i.e., Slavonic, education-the first of
their class to do so in any significantnumbers.
In this way they acquired not only a churchly education, but
specifically a Novgorodian and Northern education, for (before the
opening of Siberia) it was in the old NovgorodianNorth that the most
secure places of exile were to be found, in the great monastic outposts
of Slavic colonization. Thus, together with the intricacies of Slavonic
and the intellectual traditionsof the Church, these youngsters imbibed
the anti-Muscovite and anti-statist traditions of the ecclesiastical,
regional dissent of which I have spoken. The full effect of this training
upon the sentiments of adolescent sons of broken fathers can easily be
imagined. Some of them, as might be expected, became monks, but

others were eventually returned to Moscow-even to the Kremlin
itself-with their fathers and uncles and elder brothers, changed in a
way that made many of them forever unsuited for the soldiering and
court life that had been the only roles assigned to males of their fami-
lies by the dominantpoliticalculture.
Although the process I have described was often repeated during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was this first generation-
young nobles born roughly between 1570 and 1590-that built the first
intellectual bridges between the Muscovite secular elites and the
ecclesiastical dissident tradition. Their particularreceptiveness to that
tradition was the result of certain characteristicsof their group biogra-
phy. Like the Novgorodian clergy, these exiled nobles had been des-
troyed and defeated by the new Muscovite state, deprived of a position
in that society that they considered theirs by birth, tradition, moral
authority, or nobility of intellect. Like their teachers, they tended to
cast their criticism in religious terms, to hope for the advent or moral
revival of a righteous Orthodoxtsar, to call for individualmorality, and
to use Biblicalimagery (they seem to have been the first laymen to call
the Muscovite state "Babylon" and the tsar "Pharaoh"). Unlike the
monks, who seem to have been excluded from the play of "real" poli-
tics in and around the court, these young exiles eventually returned to
that secular culture, bringing their new ideas, their old resentments,
and new weapons-including the writing of dissident literature-into
the mainstream. They wrote histories of recent events unflatteringto
individuals-or clans-that were still powerful, they wrote ditties and
letters and allegories. Such activities, of course, were clearly out of
bounds in a society one of whose basic principleswas neglasnost'and
where innocent peasants could be beaten to death for a drunken song
about the parentageof the tsar. And these activities led, not surpris-
ingly, to new troubles and repeated exiles. The lives of this first gen-
eration of dissidents were often tragicand broken, and they are neither
well represented in the documentation nor adequately studied. But
what we know is enough to permit us to identify them as the first
representativesof the dissident traditionthat has survived into modern
times.
Like other components of political culture, and of culture in the
largersense, this new dissident pattern began to be "transcribed"from
generation to generation, and reinforced by conditions like those that
gave it birth. Works written by these first dissidents passed into the
Russian manuscripttradition, acquiringthe potential for reconstitution
or reevokation at almost any time or place. And the dissident culture
became symbiotic with the dominant tradition, so many of whose
features it mirrored. Like the kinship-based political system within
which it was struggling, the dissident culture became traditionalin a
limited number of clans and families. Like the political culture it

rejected, it was an elite tradition, conveyed through pre-existing social
channels. It did not recruit or proselytize. The antipode of a political
culture that tolerated only "insiders" in decision-making, this was a
culture of "exiles," those deprived of their ancient political birthright,
a culture of the Old Way. And, in a highly centralizedpolitical system
whose only political center was Moscow itself, this culture became a
culture of anti-Moscow, of the "places not so far away," the places of
rustication,of a false "Real Russia."
Important strains of the dissident tradition created in the early
seventeenth century merged with the culture of the Old Belief, which
was, in its early stages, a movement that found very significantsupport
among the upper-class,"political" families of Moscow. For a time, the
Old-Believertraditionbecame a medium throughwhich certain portions
of the older dissenting tradition were preserved and spread. But the
Old Belief, however it expressed aspects of the politicalcounter-culture,
was never coterminous with it, and ultimately the dissident tradition
diverged from that of the Old Believers, who were, in some critical
respects, reassimilatedby the dominant culture.
But there were always potential spheres of contiguitylinking these
traditions. They shared the experience of increasinglyeffective repres-
sion by the agents (including ecclesiastical agents) of the dominant
political culture. They shared places of exile and flight in increasingly
remote parts of the growing state. They developed paralleland linked,
but differing, traditionsof rejection of this world, of the quest for spiri-
tual self-realization and for moral perfection, both within Orthodoxy
and in new, frequently Western, forms, such as Masonry or the "new
morality" of the atheist. They shared the tendency to become, in a
political system based not upon written law but upon personal relation-
ships and contact "within the walls," bearers of a culture of texts-
letters and sermons, especially-exile in the North, later in Siberia or
abroad, or in one's estate, or, finally in the inner exile of the so-called
"superfluous man" and in the world of books read with passion but
without rigor; a culture of intense but rambling discussion, of strong
but unsystematicbeliefs.
Indeed, it is one of the most characteristictraits of this counter-
culture and one that most surprisinglylinks it to the dominant culture
that, like its antipode, it developed little real interest in systematic
political theory, in juridical or constitutional structures, or in what
might be called the protective rigor of abstractionsabout justice and
legitimacy. Because some spokesmen for this tradition railed against
ignoranceand vice, and spoke in languageslearned in their exiles, they
have often been called "Westernizers," even in the seventeenth cen-
tury. But, although they could on occasion espouse a constitution or
institutional reform, such were not the central forms or concerns of
their politicalculture. They were interested not in the forms and limits
of power but in its just and moral use; not in institutions but in the
relationshipsthey expressed; not in the rights of the individual, but in
his perfection (of which they despaired).
Such was-and is-the dissident tradition within the Muscovite
politicalculture. That it was-and is-an integralpart of that largercul-
ture seems to be indicated by the fact that its dominant features are
identifiableas extensions or negations of the system within which it has
evolved.
Let us summarize our observations about political culture in the
Muscovite state as that culture took its final pre-modern form, just
before the time of Peter the Great:
There were, as we have pointed out, three rather distinct political
cultures: that of the court, that of the bureaucracy,and that of the vil-
lage.
The cultureof the courtrevolved around the person of the tsar,
who was a kind of non-combatant and dominant referee in power
politics. Participationin this culture was determined by heredity and
organized accordingto kinship; status by birth order within a clan and
proximity to the tsar. Marriagewas a mechanism of change in indivi-
dual and clan political status and, in the case of grand-princelymar-
riages, a means of gaining politicallycrucialproximityto the tsar.
Government (in its political, not functional sense) was conspira-
torial: clans conspired against one another to expand their power; they
conspired with other clans to preserve the political system against the
potentially destabilizing consequences of their competition; they con-
spired against elemental natural and human forces to preserve their
control over territoryand people. Their mode of decision-makingwas
informal: few clear divisions of responsibilityor institutional preroga-
tives were recognized. It was collective or collegial: one strove for a
workableconsensus among members of an inner circle whose dynamics
were controlled by tradition, a balance of interests, and the "regulat-
ing" fiction of the tsar's unlimited power. Those who refused to
adhere to a decision of the group were forced out of it, and usually out
of the system as a whole. Personal or individualinterests, including, a
fortiori, those of the tsar, were subordinatedto those of the clan, the
inner circle, or the need to preserve the system as a whole.
The bureaucraticpolitical culture, rapidly developing by Peter's
time, was in many respects similar to the court culture, but did differ
from it in some significantfeatures. While the bearer of this culture,
the clerk class, had become in large measure hereditary (indeed, by a
law of 1640, it had become an estate closed to the low-born), its inter-
nal organization permitted far more individual mobility than did the
mestnichestvosystem that regulated the seniority of the warriorclans.
While family connections were, as elsewhere in Muscovite society,
important,the clerks developed no clan organizationcomparableto that

of the princely cavalry, and here "upstarts" could soar above their
peers through individualtalent or good fortune, particularlywhen aided
by a powerful patron in the political elite. Excluded from the main
arena of power politics by their inability to marry either into the
dynasty or (for the most part) into the great clans, their "politics" was
bureaucratic:the stakes were defined by movement within the clerical
hierarchy;the means were "non-political" (i.e., non-nuptial) intrigue
and administrativeability.
In the bureaucraticculture decision-makingwas "vertical:" that
is, it was hierarchicaland individual, rather than collective and "hor-
izontal," as in the culture of the court; decisions were passed up and
down an institutionalized chain of command and not "shared."
(Except, perhaps, at the top-and, increasingly, in the last part of the
seventeenth century. Peter's institution of the Colleges codified this
trend and is an example of the "merging" of the two cultures that we
shall discuss below.) Because of their monopoly on the skills that were
becoming increasinglyvital to the preservationand growth of the sys-
tem as a whole, the clerks wielded considerable de facto power, but as
all chains of commandended in the court, from whose politics in a fun-
damental sense the clerks were excluded, their power was not, strictly,
political.
The village,as we have seen, was essentially a closed and different
system. Here, while the household was the basic unit, and the elder or
head of a household an autocrat, the power of both was traditionally
constrained by the larger interests of the village unit. Decisions were
collective and imposed consensus was a necessity, the accepted objec-
tive of group action being stability and the continued viability of the
village unit.
Although the peasant culture seems not, before modern times, to
have had significantpolitical interaction with the cultures of the court
and the bureaucracy,it is, in important respects, coeval and cognate
with them, and in general these three can be seen to have possessed a
number of congruent features that we may take as common denomina-
tors of the Russian politicalculture:
1. All three were "informal" or "traditional"in the sense that politi-
cal status and social function were determinednot by the rules of a
specifically political institutional structure (as distinct from social
and kinship structures), but by a combination of birth, personal
affiliation,and the ad hoc balance of the interests of other players.
(It should be noted here that court politics in Muscovy seems to
have been strikinglyautochthonic;although in a strict sense two of
its fundamentalrules-the Riurikidseniority system and the Chris-
tian canon law as that affected marriage-can be said to have been
borrowedfrom other great political syntheses, the great bulk of its

operatingprinciplesseem to originatefrom Muscovite experience.)
2. In these closed and informal systems, "membership," while it con-
ferred significant rewards and an assured role in collective
decision-making,was confidential,because it requiredacquiescence
in the consensual governing mechanism of each unit. As a result,
the status of an individual could not be assured independently of
such mechanisms, and excessively aggressive attempts to increase
individual power or status, since they were seen as potentially
system-threatening,ran the risk of severe group sanctions.
3. The general tendency of policy in all three cultures was to strive for
stability and risk-avoidance,rather than change, including "prog-
ress." In the village this tendency arose from the nature of
subsistence agriculture;in the bureaucracy,from the political vul-
nerability(in fact, impotence) of the clerk class, from its hierarchi-
cal organization, and from the logistical magnitude of its tasks;
among the politicalelite, from a traditiondeeply rooted in the fear
of uncontrollablefactional strife. A characteristicmanifestationof
this risk-aversion has to do with attitudes toward the nature of
man: the system avoided what it saw as the potentiallydangerous
tendencies of the individual by constraints imposed by small and
cohesive groups, including that most important extended family,
the court, which restrainedthe tsar himself.
4. By comparisonwith other political systems of comparablecomplex-
ity, antiquity, and comprehensiveness, the component sub-variants
of Muscovite politicalculture were notablyreluctantto promulgate,
for the use or admirationof non-participants,"laws," i.e., general-
ized principlesof their own operation, or "ideology." Although all
members of any of these systems knew "how it worked," how to
behave so as to maximize one's opportunitiesfor power and wealth
within the obligatoryforms and taboos, none seems ever to have
been moved to codify this behavior, or to have indulged in
justificatoryor other generalized abstractionsabout it. Indeed, for
the whole pre-Petrineperiod, no systematicattempt seems to have
been made by an insidereither to describe or to analyze Muscovite
politics at any level. (The telling exception is the reportcomposed
by a seventeenth-century defector, Grigorii Kotoshikhin, for his
new Swedish patrons-a text that still awaitsmodern evaluation.)
XII. TheMuscovitePoliticalCulturein the EarlyModernPeriod

The reader has been warned above that our analysis, which deals
primarilywith the origins and earliest metamorphoses of the Musco-
vite/Russian political culture, will traverse the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries at the quick march. Leaving aside practical
considerations-including the greater general familiaritywith Russia's
modern history-one might cite as the primaryjustificationfor such a
leap the apparentfact that few essential new elements were introduced
into Russian vernacularpoliticalculture during this period.
Several importantchanges in the relationshipamong the variants
of the politicalculture did take place during this period, however, and it
will serve our later purposesto review them.
We may begin with the general observation that the village politi-
cal culture changed little in most essential respects during these centu-
ries. It is true, of course, that the village commune was over time
forced to adapt its externalities-and even some of its regularmechan-
isms of counterpoise-to deal with the challenges posed by an increas-
ingly aggressive and long-armed government, and by ambitious
landlords, but it seems to have preserved its "deep" structures, as is
clear from the nineteenth-century descriptive accounts and from the
modern scholarly literature. That is, the political culture of the vast
majorityof Russians (perhaps5/6 of the total) as they entered this cen-
tury was not significantlychanged by the experience of the preceding
two centuries; put in another way, the rate of culturalchange was rela-
tively low.
With regard to the two other cultures we have examined, the
record of these centuries is somewhat more complex: on the one hand,
several of the most importantfeatures of these cultures were preserved,
mutatis mutandis, through the period; on the other hand, certain
significant changes in the general political structure, changes that
affected the court and the bureaucraticcultures, did occur.
These changes, as one might anticipate,were the results of socio-
economic and demographicgrowth of the society as it evolved toward
what we might call a modern configuration. But for our purposes it is
important to view these changes not from the modern vantage point,
but in terms of the categories and conceptual continuities established
earlier. As seen in this light, the most importantprocesses of the pre-
modern period appearto have been the following:
1. The social and cultural merger and integrationof the two cultures
that might be called "cultures of the ruling elites," i.e., the court
and the bureaucracy. The resultant political culture took on many
features of the two components where these were compatible, and
discardedthose that generatedinternalcontradictions.
The underlyingdynamic of this merger was provided primarily
by the growth of the state itself, and the change in the nature of its
political, administrative,and particularlymilitary activities. As its
capacityand appetite for increasinglychallenging tasks of adminis-
tration and mobilization grew, it became increasingly dependent
upon the bureaucracy,whose growth mechanisms of recruitment
(ratherthan, or in addition to, biological reproduction)and simple
replicationof units permittedit to grow to keep pace with the new
needs of the state, a feat that the court elite, limited by its rules of
heredity, could not accomplish. At the same time, the bureau-

cracy's functional flexibility (i.e., its "task-oriented" tradition)
endowed it with greater adaptive responsiveness to new conditions
than was the case with the tradition-boundand functionallylimited
hereditarycavalry. In particular,as the state shifted from reliance
upon the old gentry-based cavalry to more modern military
arrangements,it was the skills of the bureaucrat,ratherthan those
of the saber-wieldingnoble cavalier, whose value to the state grew
most strikingly.
2. From a very early stage-the middle of the seventeenth century-
the princely clans seem to have sensed the growing significanceof
bureaucratic,i.e., non-military, employment. They began, for the
first time, to demand for themselves, as the spoils of their political
struggles, posts within the growingadministrativeapparatus,and to
enroll their sons in what had been exclusively non-noble lower
"career tracks" for the purpose of acquiringthe requisite chancery
skills. This growingtendency was reinforcedby several steps taken
in the eighteenth century, particularlyby Peter, who attempted to
break the power of the old oligarchyand to establish a "regular"
(and bureaucratic)state.
3. As a part of his struggle against the old oligarchy, Peter--inter
alia-destroyed the central institution of the old court culture, the
dynastic succession and the associated royal marriage, by his
declaration that henceforth the heir to the throne would be
appointed by the reigning monarch. While the principleof inheri-
tance was later restored, the separation of the ruling house from
the great families was assured throughoutthis period and up to the
revolution by the practiceof makingforeign (chiefly German) mar-
riages within the line of succession. (In the pre-Petrine period,
such marriageshad been "taboo," and attempts to contract them
invariablycaused politicalstrife.)
4. Similarly,Peter's "Table of Ranks" codified the merger of princely
and bureaucraticelites, and, while allowing for the transfer of
status by inheritance, strengthened the hierarchical and
client/patron dynamic at the expense of the principles of kinship
and "royal marriage." (As a symbol of his attack on these princi-
ples, Peter conducted several gross travesties of the marriage
ceremony that was so central to the older politicalsystem-he had
his court dwarfs married, conducted a marriagein a palace of ice,
etc.)
5. Peter carriedout a number of other serious politicalreforms whose
significance has been obscured by historians who see them pri-
marily as Westernizing "cultural" reforms. Chief among these,
after the change in the rule of succession, was the ending of the
isolation of women in the terem. This innovation cut at the root of
the kinship-based political system, and was of course aimed

exclusively at the "political clans," whose carefully orchestrated
betrothals depended upon the isolation of potential brides and
upon the "hidden matriarchy"of the bride's quarters. That Peter
was most interested in the political, rather than the socio-political
implicationsof this act should be obvious; his sense of politics had
been formed in a vicious struggle among his mother, his half-
sister, and the relatives of his father's first wife.
Many of Peter's other steps-the new dress codes for boyars and
the shaving of their beards, for example, calculated to undermine the
visible signs of their "dignity" (IecTb), should also be seen as pri-
marily political. The result of these and other innovations of the
Petrine period was the "modernization"of politics through the separa-
tion of the fortunes of a family or clan, or the status of an individual
within a family or clan, from chin, or officialrank.
In spite of these considerablechanges, however, the political cul-
ture that emerged from the union of the old court and bureaucratic
cultures-a culture we may call the "imperial political culture"-
retained many features of each of the previously separatecomponents,
in slightly changedor attenuatedform.
Thus, for example, while as we have seen the "royal marriage"
syndrome that had been the crucial and exclusive feature of clan poli-
tics at the highest level was discardedas the focal event and nexus of
relations between the tsar and the oligarchs, the calculated political
marriagewas generalized, and for the first time broadlyextended to the
non-aristocraticbureaucraticclass. That is, the cultural rule that, for
participantsin politics, marriagewas a crucial network-buildingdevice,
did not change (as Peter may have wished) but was ratherextended to
large circles of new participants.
Similarly,while the role of the clan as a discrete and closed politi-
cal and economic unit declined, aspects of the conciliar or corporate
behavior of the clans were abstracted from the traditional clan and
ruler-oligarchyrelationships,and retained in a "denatured" form. Oli-
garchic decision-making in an inner circle around the tsar continued
(e.g., in the various "Secret Councils," etc.) and retained the features
of informality, secrecy, and consensus described above; but access to
this inner circle, and relationshipswithin it, were now determined not
by traditionalrelations among clans, but by the play of pragmaticand
even ad hoc interests. In a sense, one might say that the clan principle
of the elite culture and the hierarchical system of the bureaucracy
found their common denominatorin the new client/patronrelationships
that linked members of the inner circle to larger groups at the peri-
phery. (In later times these crucialclient/patronchains would be called
khvosty.)
At the same time, certainfeatures of the two merged features that

had been congruent survived the Petrine revolution in reinforcedform.
In the new "imperial political culture," for example, there emerged
what might be called the "imperialview of man," which representedan
amalgam of the traditional view of the need to restrain man's
dangerous innate tendencies toward profligacyand individualism with
the bureaucraticview of "social man," or rather"subject man," whose
generalized civic intractabilityhad been the despair of generations of
clerks. Events, especially the lower-class disorders of the eighteenth
century and the generallyincreasinggap between the modernizinggoals
of the ruling groups and the logistical resources of the system, tended
to reinforce this dismal and negative view of the potential extent to
which the populationwould live up to even the pessimistic expectations
of their rulers.
Similarly, the erstwhile conspiratorialnature of old clan politics
and the occupationalsecrecy of the bureaucracycombined graduallyto
produce a generalized and systematized fear of revealing to outsiders
the content of either political or practicaldiscussions within the ruling
class.
Both this tendency and the traditionalpattern of both clan elites
and bureaucrats to rely on the fiction of the "all-powerful" tsar'-
gosudar'as the source and justification of their own arbitrarypower
were strengthened during the nineteenth century by the processes of
merger of the noble and non-noble elements in a single bureaucratic
class, and by the simple growth of the size, complexity, and purview of
the state apparatus.
It remains to mention a few of the changes that took place during
the early modern period in the political "counter-culture"that we have
called the "traditionof dissent." As in the earlier period this deviant
area of the political culture reflected events and characteristicsof the
dominant culture, but took forms that were incompatiblewith it. As in
the case of the dominant culture, moreover, the deviant traditionboth
continued traditionallines of development and found new forms under
changed conditions.
Thus, for example, the dissenters continued to be, for the most
part, members of the same families and groups that produced the
leaders of the dominant political culture, although Petrine and post-
Petrine changes did introduce several modificationsin the make-up of
this group -and, as a result, in its ideas. On the one hand, Peter's
assault on the great families meant, particularlyafter 1730, that the
anti-state resentment that had been associated with certain "defeated"
groups (the Novgorodian tradition; certain specific clans) acquired a
small but permanently specific class base within the gentry. Second,
Peter's policies with regard to the Church split the dissident tradition;
whereas previously it had, as we have seen, been associated with the
anti-Muscovite, essentially Novgorodian traditionand with the content

and style of (primarilymonastic) anti-secularism,these aspects of the
tradition became partially dissociated from the political opposition of
the upper elites, and were more firmly embraced by the regional and
lower-classopposition of the Old Belief. At the same time the political
counter-cultureof the upper classes became for the most part secular-
ized, along with the dominant culture. While traces of the previous
tradition of dissent were never entirely lost (e.g., in some aspects of
Slavophilismand in the desire for a greaterrole for the gentry in public
life), the politicalcounter-cultureincreasinglydrew its ideas, as did the
dominant culture, from Western sources (in particularfrom the ideas
of the Enlightenment, German Romanticism, and socialism.) More-
over, as non-noble and so-called raznochinetsgroups became involved
in the political counter-culture,they drew their conceptual inspirations
largely from such alien sources, even when-as in the idealization of
the narod,or people-these notions were clothed in Russian forms.
In addition, as we shall note further, Western concepts began to
penetrate the dominant political culture itself, both through the rise of
a distinct group of "liberal" bureaucratsand as a result of the fact that
contact and collaborationbetween the political elites and professional
and educatedcircles in industrialand commercialactivites-and even in
publishing-brought individuals with Western ideas into the inner cir-
cles of government and bureaucracy.
But in noting these trends, one should not fall into the teleological
trap of assuming that such developments indicate the presence of
"revolutionary situations," or the inevitability of 1917. Russian
imperial society and her political culture in, say, 1880, were in fact
quite vigorous and stable.
Russia was, at that time, despite the beginnings of processes that
would later become traumaticallydisruptive, still structurallyand cultur-
ally not only a pre-industrialsociety, but a profoundly traditionalone.
The overwhelming mass of its population was still rural, and was for
the most part continuing the agrariantraditions of centuries, recent
reforms notwithstanding. The structures and philosophy of the state
still reflected their Muscovite origins in only slightly altered forms of
extreme centralization, bureaucratization,and authoritarianism. Min-
isterial and other political institutions had not changed essentially for
nearly a century; they had survived and shunted aside the partial
reforms of the 'sixties, and had even succeeded in mounting a
counter-reform.
The court, at the center, was socially archaic, isolated, backward-
looking, and limited in its power, primarilyby its own immobility and
the trammelsof its own bureaucracy.The bureaucracyitself was bound
up by the rigidity of a closed rank system of seventeenth-century ori-
gins, was strikinglygerontic at the top levels, and seemingly impervious
to innovation. The institutionalChurch, in many significantrespects an

extension of that bureaucracy,was itself static, corrupt, and intellectu-
ally barren. The juridicalestate system restrainedeconomic and demo-
graphic change through limits on social and geographical mobility,
particularlythat of the great bulk of the population,the peasants. Pol-
ice and censorship systems similarly constrained the diffusion of new
ideas and the formationof groupingsthat might foster change.
As in the past, the play of majorpoliticalpower relationshipscon-
tinued within this rigid structure-and because of it-to be informal,
interpersonal,and conspiratorial. Notwithstandingthe increasingcom-
plexity of the mechanisms of government, the official institutions and
offices of the state did not in fact determine or regulate the game of
politics, but were, rather, its prizes. The tsar remained in principleall-
powerful-that is, power nominally his was shared with and among an
inner circle (usually, but not exclusively, his ministers) whose positions
reflected their relationshipsto client/patron networks and other groups,
but depended ultimately upon the "confidence," i.e., personal choice,
of the tsar.
Now this traditionalsystem was notoriously corrupt, inefficient,
and cumbersome, but it was neither a sham nor a house of cards. It
worked;it maintainedsocial and politicalorder in an enormous and still
relatively little-developed territory,and it was even able to marshalthe
resources of that territory,and of a primarily"under-developed"popu-
lation, sufficiently well to permit rather respectable competition, in
several spheres, with the much more highly developed imperial powers
of the age. And its political culture-that informal and "corrupt" cul-
ture that lived in the interstices of the formal state structure-was, if
measured by the terms of modern social science, a clearly delineated,
internally consistent, functionally adequate and generally accepted and
self-preservingsystem.
All in all, then, as Russia edged towardthe rapidslide into forced
industrializationand rapid institutional change that one associates with
the last decades of the rule of the Romanovs, it may be seen as a rather
stable, confident, and viable political culture-no favorite of outside
observers or of the tiny minorities of Westernized intellectuals, but a
system that worked, and one that, through its traditionalpolitical cul-
ture, "provided, or permitted its bearers to generate, the underlying
assumptionsand ideas that governed politicalbehaviorin the system."
and the Destabilizationof PoliticalCulture
XIII. Industrialization
It is of course quite obvious in retrospectthat the tranquiltableau
of political and social stabilityjust described alreadyincluded elements
and processes that were, in a dizzyingly short time, to destroy Russia's
social and political system and to "unravel" her political culture.
Moreover, the most important of these processes-those associated

with the strains of forced-draftindustrialization-were taking place not
only within the political system, but as the direct result of the system's
own more or less conscious choices.
The most rapid and destructive bursts of industrialization,
together with the associatedurbanizationand other forms of "moderni-
zation," took place in Russia in the 1890s and 1930s. Each of these
periods was followed by a period of declining growth rates and increas-
ing stability;in both periods this tapering-offprocess was interruptedby
a great war. In the first case, as the stabilityof the politicalculture was
underminedby rapid change, it collapsed. In the second, it was stable
enough to survive a great trauma. Why?
The fact that the political system of the Empire collapsed entirely
at roughly the mid-point of this four-decade period of accelerated
economic and social change has tended to obscure two essential long-
range trends that at first appearto be contradictory:the general underly-
ing continuity of Russian culture, including political culture; and the
persistence of the revolutionary effect of industrializationthroughout
the period from roughly 1890 until just before the Second World War.
With regardto political culture, the interactionof these opposed trends
produced an odd combination of effects: the unprecedented rates of
social and economic change so altered what we might call the rate of
change of culture in general, and of political culture in particular,that
the "transcribing" processes of socialization and acculturation were
overpowered, and for a time could not maintain a stable political cul-
ture. Paradoxically,it was the political culture of precisely the groups
and classes that had previouslybeen better able to accommodatechange
that ultimately became the most disastrouslyunravelled, while the fun-
damental web of lower-class political culture, less involved in the tur-
bulence, less influenced by new ideas, and changing at a more
"natural"rate, survived, in its essential features.
The most familiar evidence of the abnormallyrapid changes that
affected Russian culture in general at the beginning of this period is
found in the areas of literature and the arts, where in medium after
medium-in literature (especially poetry), in music, the graphicarts-
the process of change in establishedcanons and conventions accelerated
through "decadence" to "modernism" to "futurism" and beyond,
until it seemingly spun out of the spiral of continuous development.
The ideas and new conventions that appearedin this heady period of
hyper-innovationultimatelywere not embracedby Russians as a whole,
even in the adaptedforms in which the non-creative groups in indus-
trial societies absorb new vogues. When these new ideas were carried
by 6migr6s to somewhat more stable industrialsocieties, they provided
many of what we now recognize as characteristicfeatures of early
twentieth-centurymodernism.
Russia's-political culture shared, as one must expect, in the gen-

eral dynamism of Russian culture in the early part of the century. It,
too, passed through a period of strikingly innovative and ultimately
unsuccessful mutation. It, too, began to change so rapidlythat in the
end it simply could not maintain the levels of "transcription"through
socializationand acculturationthat such a system requires to maintain
itself as the operativecode of a politicalcommunity.
The underlying causes of this excessive rate of change in the
political culture are numerous, but two can be singled out here: not
only were the tiny ruling elites that were the leading bearers of the
dominant "state" political culture forced, by the social and economic
changes which they themselves had spurred, to change their ideas and
institutions to meet new needs, but new groups that had not been fully
acculturatedin the old political culture-an urban proletariat,a non-
aristocraticintelligentsia, a partiallyWesternized bourgeoisie-began to
demand a share in the determinationof the rules of the new political
culture. As a result, the Russian political culture began to behave-
even before the crisis of wars and revolutions-in a way that may be
termed "aberrant"and not simply "evolutionary" within the context
of the existing culture.
Thus, for example, this political culture that had been so central-
ized now underwent, tolerated, even fostered first the creation of local
zemstvoorganizations,then of greater municipalself-government, then
powerfulregional war-time productioncommittees, then the collapse of
the Empire into numerous and occasionally overlapping independent
states, and finally, after a kind of politicalcontrol had been established,
the division into nominally autonomous republics,regions, and national
areas. This state and political culture, in which political power had
always flowed downwardand outwardthrough politicallycastratedmili-
tary and civil bureaucracies,suddenly gave birth to, and tried to accom-
modate, new corporateformations that had, or claimed, a share of real
politicalpower:parties, assemblies, committees of industrialists,dumas,
city soviets, soviets of workers and peasants, trade unions, and innu-
merable leagues, societies, and associations. This state, which had not,
unlike some of its Westernized intellectuals, recently demonstrated
much post-Enlightenment ideological elan, acquired a passion first
(under Witte and Stolypin) for the transformationof the economic life
of the town and countryside, then (in the Duma period) for the
transformationof the political system, and finally (with the revolution)
for the transformationof society and of man himself. This state, in
which the role of law had been relativelyinsignificant,and in which the
basic laws had not changed since Speranskii'stime, went on what can
only be called a law-writingbinge, in which not only government com-
missions, but private groups and individuals earnestly drew up draft
laws, legislative programs,and whole constitutions. Surely, the political
and institutional changes promulgatedor promised in a single year-

1905-represented greater tasks of understanding, adjustment, and
integration for the political culture than did, for example, the new
notions of cubism for the aesthetic culture of a cultured person accus-
tomed to the canvases of Repin. And finally, this state and political
culture abandoned, in foreign policy, one of its central behavioral
features-caution and the avoidance of potentially uncontrollable
situations-first in the Russo-Japanese war, then in a risky pre-war
(particularlyBalkan) diplomacy, in the peace negotiations and the
foreign adventures of the early 'twenties, and finally in the gambles of
the great-powerdiplomacyof the late 'thirties.
There will be those who will wish to dispute some of these charac-
terizations, and particularlyto challenge my allocation of cause-and-
effect relationships, but it does seem incontestable that to the extent
one finds useful the concept of a deep and abiding pattern of political
culture, that notion requires the delineation of an extended episode of
behavior aberrant for Russian political culture, an episode that
embraces the long interval I have marked out and extends well before
and after 1917. And from the same vantage point, it is apparentthat
once the aberranteffort to change so rapidlyhad destroyed the forms
that expressed and contained the old elite "imperial" political culture,
it was a combination of bearers of the most traditional political
culture-informal, corporate, conspiratorial,risk-avoiding,guided by a
pessimistic view of man and a sense of the nearness of chaos-that was
able to restore order and a viable, if prosaic, politicalsystem.
and the Reintegrationof MuscovitePoliticalCulture

XIV. Restabilization
It is a corollaryof the unorthodox periodizationsuggested above
that as the spectacularlydisruptiveprocesses of the period of industrial
and social revolution played themselves out, the phase of "aberrant"
politicalculture should have come to an end, to be succeeded by a time
of greaterstabilityand "normalcy"of politicalculture.
Such indeed seems to have been the case in Soviet Russia; more-
over, as a result of several features of the social process in the period
of disruption, the political culture that emerged and became stabilized
by roughly the end of the 1930s was markedby so many features of the
previously traditional political culture-in a new synthesis-that the
new may be seen, in long historicalperspective, as the continuation of
the old.
That the late 1930s should be chosen as the beginning of a period
of social stability extending into the present requires some comment,
particularlyin view of the traumaand disruptioncaused by the Second
World War. But the very fact that this devastatingwar, more costly for
Russia in human and economic terms even than the first, producedso
few significant changes in the structure or political culture of Soviet

society is, in my view, the most eloquent evidence that the society had
become restabilized,and its political culture "re-knit," before the out-
break of the war. Evidence of long-term economic and social processes
bears this out: the fundamental and dramatic processes of social
change-industrialization, urbanization, the creation of new elites-
although they had not entirely run their course, were slowing by the
beginning of the 'forties, and had alreadyestablished the basic patterns
and relationships that were to be reconstituted and redefined in the
post-war period. In particular,the processes that sociologists now see
as indicators of a sharp trend of the 'fifties-a reduction of social
mobility, an increase in stratificationand in the heritabilityof status-
have their beginnings before 1941. The conservatism of such trends
was of course reinforcedby the nature and mentality of post-warrecon-
struction, but it should be noted that the society that was being recon-
structed was in its essential features that which alreadyhad taken shape
by the end of the 'thirties.
That the turbulence of the revolutionaryperiod was alreadybeing
replacedby stabilizingtrends-and even by the emergence of traditional
relationshipsin altered forms-is apparentin the area of political cul-
ture as well as in sociologicalmeasures. A new politicalelite had firmly
established itself; extreme centralizationhad been, at great cost, rees-
tablished; the military, bureaucratic,and even partyapparatus-outside
the innermost circles-had been strippedof the effective autonomy that
had developed in the period of change; ideological revolutionism had
been replacedby the traditionalcombinationof pragmatismand distrust
of innovation; the old patterns of caution and risk-avoidanceasserted
themselves. (These latter elements appear,for example, in the conduct
of foreign policy between 1939 and 1941.)
That the restabilizationof Soviet society should have produced a
reassertion of traditional forms of political behavior is not in itself
surprising, but the elements that contributed to this reversion require
some discussion.
There seem to have been at least three factors that strengthened
the role of traditional elements in the new political culture, to the
exclusion of other (primarilyWestern) notions that played so visible a
part in the previous period of runawaychange. First, among the organ-
izations and trends that had competed for hegemony in the revolution-
ary period, it was the Bolshevik Party, whose creed of centralism,
elitism, and conspiratorialrule was most compatible with traditional
patterns, that became the principalagent and beneficiaryof the reestab-
lishment of political stability. It is particularlyof interest that, as a
consequence of official repression, long periods of exile, and a prefer-
ence for conspiratorialoperation, the leadershipof this partyhad shared
relatively little in the cultural and practical experience of the first
decades of the new century.
Second, the processes of social revolution and intrapartystrife had

selectively eliminated from political life almost all representatives of
those classes and groups that had in the revolutionaryperiod become
most profoundlycommitted to a non-traditionalpoliticalculture.
Third and most importantwas the fact that, in a process that mir-
rored changes in the society at large, the new political elite that
emerged by the end of the 'thirties was dominated by individuals of
proletarianor peasant background,whose political culture was formed
on the base of what we have called above the village political culture,
and strongly reinforcedby the experience of the chaotic and risk-laden
environment in which they had risen to power.
Thus as Soviet society was restabilized and its political culture
reintegrated,the groups who at the beginning of the century and until
the 'thirties had exerted destabilizing or anti-traditionalinfluences on
political culture-the troublesome so-called "aristocracy"of the trade-
union movement, the quarrelsomeintellectualsof gentry or raznochinets
background,the rebellious and Westernized sons of courtiers, factory
owners, and bureaucrats-were in one way or another removed from
the equation of political culture. And to a large extent their places in
society were taken by peasants or by the sons of peasants. This was
true in politics, in art, in literature, in science. And while these new-
comers learned the skills required to fill these new roles, they did not
cast aside the attitudes-the view of the world and of man-that they
brought with them to their new positions. Indeed, they prospered in
politics precisely because they practiced the traditionalhabits of risk-
avoidance and the subjection of the individual will and impulse-
including one's own-to the interests of the group. They took control
of an increasinglystable state and society whose traditionalpatterns of
centralization,bureaucratization,and pragmatism,whose objectives of
security and control, all based upon a fear of uncontrollablesituations,
were newly reinforced by the experiences of the preceding decades of
insecurityand chaos.
It is these features that determine Soviet politicalculture today, as
they have determinedRussian politicalculture for centuries.
As a result of this process of reintegration,all three of the origi-
nally distinct components of what we have called traditionalMuscovite
political culture were fused-the village culture having joined the
alreadymerged court and bureaucraticcultures. The resultant political
culture combined, as in the case of the earlier merger, congruent
features shared by all three, and this combination,reinforcedby similar
changes in the society at large, proved to be a most durable matrix for
the development of Soviet politicalculture in subsequentdecades.
It may be concluded that among the most importantreasons for
the durabilityof the present political culture has been the fact that, in
fusing the various traditions of Russian political culture, it preserved
and in a sense purifiedthe "deep structures"that underlaythe various

subcultures of the past in a new, socially integrated, "demotic"-and
hence quite "modern"-combination.
Thus the traditionalcentral core of "nominal ruler + oligarchs"
was reestablished(Stalin's brief disturbanceof that balancemay be con-
sidered a vestige of the period of turbulence) in the form of "a leader
+ collegial rule." While the role of the oligarchs in the Politburo is
not publiclydefined or discussed, it is acknowledged,particularlyin the
symbolism of ceremonial occasions. The obligatorygroup appearances
that seem so meaningless to us-and perhaps even to the partici-
pants-signal to the populationthat both the representativefunction of
the village skhodand the role of wise advisors found in the old ideal of
the boyar council are being filled. There can, of course, be no explicit,
"inside" information about the members or about their views; the
ancient rule of neglasnost'has been reinstatedmost firmly.
What is modern and demotic in this modern metamorphosis is
that, whereas in previous periods of stability the "autocrat" was por-
trayedas a remote and singular (saintly, God-anointed) creature,unlike
all other humans by virtue of his royal birth, modern sensibilities-and
the fusion of the cultures-now require that the "leader" be seen as a
man of the people, neither distinct from the "average" nor publicly
associated by kinship with any group or clan-including, accordingto a
new taboo, his own wife and children (see below).
The traditional feature of informality-i.e., the notion that an
individual's real power need not necessarilybe embodied in an institu-
tional position or function-remains, tempered by the exigencies of
modern bureaucratism.Thus, for example, while the individualwho is,
let us say, Minister of Defense must obviously represent the special
interests of that enormous establishment, he does not necessarily rise
within that system, or appearas its "candidate," but depends primarily
upon informal relationships with the other oligarchs for his appoint-
ment. The system presents examples both of powerfuloligarchswhose
power is independent of the "constitutional" role of their nominal
position (e.g., Suslov) and those whose importantofficialposition is not
necessarily associated with great power in the political inner circle (e.g.,
Gromyko until the later Brezhnev years).
It is interesting that in the modern form the principle of
informality-the lack of necessary connection between real political
power and formal status or function-has been expressed primarily
through the mechanisms of the Party, whose constitutional (!) but
poorly defined role as "leading organization" provides the needed
mechanisms for the exercise of informal power at all levels of govern-
ment. It is primarily-but not exclusively-within the context of the
Party that the channels of informal power and influence, those that tra-
ditionally linked members of a clan or client/patron group, operate. It
should be noted, however, that in the recent period of stability, while

family (particularlyin-law) relationshipsof a more traditionaltype have
re-acquired some significance at the fringes of the ruling elite, they
have not been allowed to do so within the Partyapparatusas such.
A third principalelement of the traditionalpolitical culture, the
combination of features we have called "conspiratorial," remains a
salient feature of the modern political culture. One of its components,
the one we have called its "corporateness," seems, after having been
eclipsed to some extent in the Stalin period, to have been revived: in
the form of the "collegial principle" in the Politburo, and throughout
the system in lesser groups, the notion persists that one may speak with
surprising openness and propose divergent policies, on condition that
final decisions be ultimately "unanimous" and that the struggle not be
taken to a largerforum. Soviet politicianswrite carefullyselective rem-
iniscences, not politicalmemoirs.
It would appearfrom the above, then, that Soviet political culture
has, after decades of turmoil and rapidchange, reestablisheda number
of underlying features of traditionalpolitical culture that have charac-
terized Russian political culture for centuries. Lest such a conclusion
appeartoo facile or too familiar,let us return to our originalproposition
and definition of political culture, which determined our purpose as
non-judgmental,descriptive, and analytical:does the system we have
described give "order and meaning to the political process" for
members of Soviet society? Does it provide the "underlying assump-
tions and ideas that govern behavior in the politicalsystem?"
It would appearthat the answers to both of these questions must
be cast primarilyin the affirmative. It would appearthat, aside from a
very tiny group of dissidents-Westernized and thus partially"not of
the culture"-both the leadershipand the masses seek and find order
and meaning in such a system. After a long period of social and politi-
cal chaos, the great bulk of the Russian population shares with its
leaders a conviction that only a powerfully centralized and oligarchic
government can provide the order which they all crave. Having had lit-
tle contact or experience with the notions of democraticelectoral con-
stitutionalism, they share the view that one can rely more confidently
upon informal and personal relationships than upon those defined by
the legalistic niceties so admired elsewhere. Having had decades of
"6wrong"government whose claims to legitimacy were generally con-
sidered within the political culture to be meaningless, they are more
concerned that a government be "right" than that it be legitimate.
(Even Alexander Solzhenitsyn would settle for "morally right," as his
"Letter to the Soviet Leaders" revealed.) Having had an experience
with political man that has confirmed the traditionallysomber view of
man's spontaneous urges and his ability to manage his affairs, they
share the view of the leadership that any responsible political system
must, in order to avoid chaos, conspire against society's tendency to

disintegrate into such chaos. Having had no meaningful experience
with intermediate alternatives, and possessed of a pervasive, if impre-
cise and inarticulatesense of their society's problemsand tensions, they
see plainly that their choice is between the present system, which alone
in their lifetime has provided stabilityand order, and fearsome alterna-
tives. They subscribe-as, indeed, do most dissidents-to Pushkin's
despairing cry: "May God forfend a Russian revolt, senseless and
without mercy."
XV. RussianPoliticalCulturein Prospect

We are forced, it would appear, to conclude that in the increas-
ingly stable Soviet society of recent decades, a political culture based
upon traditionalassumptions and a deep commitment to stability and
order has consolidateditself, both within the leadershipand in Russian
society at large. But no society, however stable, is without dynamic
elements, and no politicalculture, however devoted to the preservation
of its own stability, can be unaffected by social change. If the concep-
tualization that we have associated with the term "political culture"
correspondsin some way to reality, and if the recent history of Soviet
society is as we have drawnit, we should be able to project our obser-
vations tentatively into the future and to hazard some speculations
about coming developments in the evolution of political culture in the
USSR.
As is our custom, we shall preparefor our vault into the future
with a brief methodologicallimbering-upand a short run into the very
recent past.
In visiting the USSR today, in reading the so-called dissident and
other exported writings, even in the breathlessprose and slogans of the
Partyjournals, a social scientist is struck by the poverty of thought, by
staleness, by the lack of definitional rigor and dynamism both of the
official ideology and of "dissident" thought. In a society that relatively
recently was one of history's most interesting laboratoriesfor the test-
ing and generation of new ideas in the social sciences, one finds pre-
cisely these sciences not only stultified by the restrictionsimposed by
incompetent supernumeraries, but in disarray-unaware of modern
social-science thinking, floundering in conceptual chaos, methodologi-
cally helpless. It is not only that Soviet intellectuals-establishment
and anti-establishment-have not shared fully in the theoretical
developments that followed upon the work of Weber, Freud, Durk-
heim, and Marx, but that they have not understood the importanceof
empiricalobservationand measurementin the behavioraland social sci-
ences as checks on the development of theories about the social,
psychological, and economic behavior of individuals and groups. The
historical causes of this barrennessare not difficult to discern: repres-

sion of "schools" and their ideas for extrinsic reasons; the interruption
of naturalprocesses of institutionaland intellectual development in the
social sciences through purges and changes in "line"; the need to
conceal-even from the privileged-not only "alien" ideas, but also
fundamental and necessary data about social and spiritual realities of
life in the USSR itself.
The consequences of the blight in the social sciences on the politi-
cal culture are subtle, but quite importantto any considerationof the
future. In most other developed societies, the work of social scientists
and social thinkers, imperfect as it often seems, serves, through a sub-
tle process of filtration and popularization,as both a needed form of
self-observation (at both personal and social levels) and as a general
matrix within which members of the society can construct a considered
image of self and society, an image that is crucial to socialization and
plays a role not unlike that of cult, myth, and traditionin pre-modern
society. Since it tends to suppress below what one might call healthy
levels the natural generation both of new self-observations and of
integrating generalizations, the Soviet political culture fosters a per-
vasive cynicism that arises from the contradictionsbetween the limited
evidence of individualpersonalexperience and the necessarilyritualized
content of officialinstrumentsof socialization.
This almost universal cynicism, itself a naturaland perhaps "nor-
mal" response to the conditions just described, has two consequences:
first, and most commonly, it breeds disregardfor the broadsocial objec-
tives and ideological tenets voiced by the leadership, encouraging pre-
cisely the forms of anti-social and "spontaneous" behavior (pilferage,
bribery, malingering, alcoholism, low-level violence, etc.) the fear of
which stimulates the traditional pessimism about human nature;
second, cynicism in this regardleads "normal" members of the society
to fall back upon the "deep structures"of the Russian politicalculture:
the low estimation of the nature of man, the reliance upon informal
and personal, ratherthan generalizedand institutionalizedrelationships;
the fear of chaos and change; risk-avoidance,and the like, and upon
that simple group of protective alliances-family, friends, in some cases
religious or ethnic group-that seem to provide safety and adequate
protectionagainstthe social elements.
That these fears appear even more prominently in the works of
outspoken dissidents than in "official" statements is a function, pri-
marily, of the ironic fact that the members of the ruling elite and even
"loyal" rank-and-filecitizens are less at liberty to express themselves
than are "deviants"; were they able to speak out frankly, the underly-
ing identity of their perceptions of man and society with those of the
dissidents would in all probabilitybe more striking than the points of
divergence.
But if the statements of participantsgive little basis for confident

judgments about the future of the Soviet political culture, is there any
vantage point that will permit us to discern coming changes?
We noted above that the interconnected socio-economic and
demographicprocesses associated with the first phases of the Industrial
Revolution wrought changes in Russian life so rapidand extensive that
they may be said to have overwhelmed the adaptationand "transcrib-
ing" mechanisms of the old elite political culture, and eventually to
have destroyed what had seemed a stable and strong system, once the
latter was stunned by war. We further pointed out that many indicators
of socio-economic and demographicprocess lead one to the conclusion
that roughly by the beginning of the Second World War Soviet society
was becoming once again a rather stable, stratified, resilient society
whose reconstituted political culture, although it displayed some new
forms, represented in several major respects a reintegrationof tradi-
tional elements. The question naturally arises whether the present
political culture, which has proven a viable one for some four decades
of social reconstructionand stability, is sufficientlyadaptive to provide
"order and meaning" to the political and social processes that one can
anticipatein coming decades.
Here, as in the earlier argument, it is helpful to consider the
experience of other industrialsocieties in the post-IndustrialRevolution
phase. Elsewhere the IndustrialRevolution triggereda series of revolu-
tions and social "aftershocks" that is still running its course. Just as
the Industrial Revolution, in its classic form, destroyed old relation-
ships of power, property, and demography,the continuing and secon-
dary revolutions-"trade-union" revolutions, consumer revolutions,
technological revolutions, changes in demographicpatterns-have con-
tinued to change post-industrialsocieties. Indeed, with regardto politi-
cal culture, these later stages have in some industrialsocieties been of
greatersignificance,for just as one cannot industrializewithout disrupt-
ing the relationshipsand political cultures that grew out of late feudal
manorial agriculture, for example, so (as the evidence of several
societies would indicate) one cannot do so without creating a mass
market, mass politics, mass communications, and a new mass political
culture. To give but a single example, it was not so much the machine
itself, so feared and hated by Luddites and Tory Radicals,nor the ideas
of the French Revolution, so feared by Edmund Burke, that finally
transformed English society in modern times as it was those of the
Chartists, of lower-class religious and political culture, or trade-union
and LaborPartysocialism. And the needs, expectations, and ideals of a
new mass politicalculture found powerful politicalexpression not when
workers were uprooted, poor, and hungry, herded into the satanic mills
and slums of Liverpool and Birmingham, but some generations later,
when they had achieved an adequate, if unenviable, standardof life as
a hereditaryurbanworkingclass, and had woven a new politicalculture

from old and new strands. Moreover, like the elements we discussed
above, the new focus operated to a large extent withinthe political cul-
ture they were changing, i.e., within the British legal system, parlia-
mentaryand partypolitics, etc.
Is there any evidence that such a second, lower but broader,wave
of post-industrializationeffects will pass through the Soviet system and
its Russian politicalculture? If so, what turbulenceand/or erosion will
it cause as it strikes against fixed points in the system? With what
speed and force will it hit? What changes will it cause in the political
culture itself?
There is evidence, amply discussed in the specialistliterature,that
from roughly the early 'sixties important mass consumer pressures of
the type usually associated with post-industrial politics were making
themselves felt within the Soviet Union. These were uncomplicated
and prosaicpressures, in which was expressed a long-repressedyearning
for a better material existence and a less trying life. Such tendencies
were strengthenedby the widespreadrealizationthat great materialpro-
gress had been made, that the sacrifices of the past were no longer
needed, that the Second World War, the insistence of official pro-
pagandato the contrarynotwithstanding,was at last over, and that the
populationdeserved to enjoy some of the fruits of its past struggles. It
is clear that the special circumstancesof the late 'fifties and the early
'sixties created conditions in which these feelings were strengthened
and given theretofore unprecedentedforms of expression; Khrushchev
himself both stimulated such expressions and attempted for his own
tacticalpurposesto take advantageof the forces they represented.
Whether Khrushchev's policies were in fact "hare-brained"for
their time and place, as was claimed by his erstwhile colleagues at his
removal, is a matterthat must await the consideredjudgment of histori-
ans better able to study the record. But it is not too early to comment
upon some aspects of his policies in the context of the socio-economic
processes and political traditions we have been discussing. For in a
stable and secure Soviet society, economicallyvigorous but increasingly
stratified and obviously inequitable in its distribution of the fruits of
economic growth, Khrushchev's programs, while neither ideologically
original nor institutionally innovative, seem to have had a rather
interesting political content as understood by the masses-they were
"anti-elitist," and they spoke to some spontaneous mass wishes not
only for a better life but for a more generous share of the improvedlife
they alreadysaw aroundthem.
It is easy in retrospectto deride Khrushchev'sboasts about "over-
taking America in the productionof meat and milk," or his ill-advised
corn-planting programs; but it would be a mistake to overlook the
significance of the slogans of Khrushchev's time: for the first time in
Soviet history, the politicalleadershipundertooksuch programsnot out

of desperate economic need or a sense of its own priorities,and not as
a cruel or necessary hoax, but as a reflection of the priorities of the
mass of the population. Later events should not obscure the fact that
"meat and milk" were powerfully evocative and popular images that
spoke to the needs not of the leadership (whose supply of such items
was more than ample) but of the consumer at large.
Another equally ill-fated and similarlyneglected reform, the new
Khrushchevianeducational reform, had a similar significance. In the
now stable and increasingly stratified Soviet society where access to
education, the key to eventual social status, was becoming increasingly
an inherited privilege, Khrushchev's new policy must be seen as
another anti-elitist and perhaps even "democratic" initiative. Other
Khrushchevianreforms, particularlyin the area of Party organization,
can be seen in the same light.
Of course these reforms were ultimately rejected not only by the
Party leadership, but, it appears, by the body politic; the elites closed
ranks and, with the aid of the weather, foreign actors and fortuitous cir-
cumstances, confounded both the reforms and Khrushchev's personal
political plans. Leaving aside the factors of political conjuncture that
produced this result, we may isolate several aspects of this reforming
episode that should be noted in the context of politicalculture.
First, while attempting to carry out programsthat he apparently
believed would be both broadly popular and politically acceptable,
Khrushchev permitted-even encouraged-forms of public discussion
that violated the principle of "internal discussion." (To some extent
this tactic was used with regardto political de-Stalinizationas well, but
it should be remembered that the Secret Speech and similar matters
always remained formally "internal.") In a political culture one of
whose features is the principle that those who participatein decision-
making must be brought to consensus and, as a result, has relatively
few clear institutional or conceptual means of distinguishingdiscussion
from decision-making,this innovation was dangerousand "aberrant."
Another complicating aspect of the same matter can best be
understood by reverting again to the comparative frame, and to the
experience of other societies in post-industrialpolitical modernization.
In other societies that have passed through industrialization,the subse-
quent struggle of the industrialworking classes for a greater share of
the wealth created in part by their labor has involved a complex combi-
nation of political action and labor action conditioned by the cir-
cumstance that, while political and economic elites were in varying
degrees interlocking,the governments in question were typicallyneither
the nominal possessors of the wealth that was to be shared nor the
immediate employers of the workers. In the Soviet case, of course, the
government is both of these. Moreover, the fact that the responsibility
assigned by the politicalculture to those in power at almost every level

is purposefullyundifferentiatedand ill-defined makes it almost impossi-
ble to separatethe modes and foci of discussion of "bread-and-butter"
issues from those of other mattersof policy.
The "dissonances" createdby Khrushchev'stactics were amplified
by two aspects of the situation whose consequences he seems not to
have appreciated: because he employed his tactic of "officiallyinspired
liberalizationof discussion" not only with regardto what he saw as safe
and popularconsumer-orientedmatters, but also for "de-Stalinization"
and other political goals, his tactic created considerable confusion
throughout the system as to what might be discussed, how, and by
whom. (Indeed, as we now know, many intellectuals who were con-
victed of politicalcrimes during this period were pardoned"in connec-
tion with the confusion (3aMemIaTeJMncTo)of the time." Because
many of the agents (journalists, writers, artists) whom Khrushchev
employed in furtherance of this policy were representatives (however
marginal or compromised) of cultural elites who lived "not by bread
alone," they drew from his ambiguous message the conclusion that
they, too, might begin to press for their "consumer interests."
Attempts to do so inevitably tested the limits of neglasnost',and they
gave rise to anxieties that grew as it began to appearthat the process of
"thaw" might become uncontrollable and risk-laden. These trends
came to be viewed as dangerousby the governing elites and undesirable
by the vast majority of Russians who did, indeed, live by bread
alone-or at least first-and had little appetite for the exhilaration of
rapidinstitutionalor social change.
The second area in which the Khrushchevian programs
challenged-unsuccessfully, as it turned out-the political culture had
to do with decentralization. As we have seen, extreme centralizationis
one of the most fundamentalcharacteristicsof the Russian politicalcul-
ture. Khrushchev's attempts to decentralize and "split" government
and administrationwere rejected, it appears,not only because they chal-
lenged the vested interests of the central elites and raised widely shared
fears that local initiative would eventually become indistinguishable
from regional and national conflict; broadsections of the populacewere
not only "culturally" opposed to Khrushchev's initiative in this area,
and not only uncomfortableabout its possible consequences for them
personally,but convinced that it simply would not work.
(One might add as an aside that Khrushchev was "counter-
cultural" even after he was removed: he apparentlywanted, somehow,
to "carry rubbish out of the hut." Although the texts that ultimately
appearedin the West as "KhrushchevRemembers'raise certain doubts
as to their transmission and original form, they do appearto originate
in an authentic attempt to write candid memoirs, a most
uncharacteristic-indeed, unprecedented-act for a major Soviet states-
man.)
It may be of little significance,in the longer historicalperspective,

that Khrushchev's innovations "failed." What deserves our attention
here is the confrontation that they represent between the deeply
ingrained structure of the political culture and the forces for change
created by the socio-economic situation of the society. Paradoxically,
the masses who are pressing for changes that might provide the
material basis for a better life do not, for the most part, conceptualize
their desideratain terms of politicalchange. They are for the most part
"loyal," and hopeful of gaining their objectives within the present sys-
tem, in "apolitical" ways. Indeed, as a result of complicated
differences in socialization the masses in their own way may paradoxi-
cally have more confidence and faith in the present system than do its
leaders.
But the leaders, still adheringto a differentculture and more cyni-
cal about the ideological bases of the present system, see the demands
of the populace for a better life in the perspective of their calculus of
power and politics. And since in a state of their type it is the state
itself, and the leadership, rather than, say, the "forces of the market,"
the rapaciouscapitalist,or the fickle and insatiableconsumer that must
answer for economic difficulties,their calculus is a reasonableone. The
leaders know, for example, that (leaving aside certain nationalistic
demonstrations) the only serious recent cases of public disturbance-
serious enough to require the summoning of troops-have been caused
by food shortagesand workingconditions. Unfortunately,however, the
political culture of the leadership makes it necessary for them to
assume that what is at stake in the reshapingof economic relationships
and politics is political power; the consumers probablyview the matter
chiefly in economic terms.
The conflicts that might attend this paradoxicaldifference of per-
ception have for the most part been avoided as a result of the
leadership's willingness to do anything possible to avoid the loss of
power by increasing the supply of goods, and thereby forestalling dis-
cussion of the equity of their distribution. But the leadership has in
recent years been faced with indisputableevidence that the growth rate,
the rate of technological growth, and certain other crucial indicators
portend increasinglimitationson their ability to make the "pie" larger,
and that they will soon have to begin discussing the geometry of the
slices-and the question of who is to decide that geometry, and who is
to decide who is to decide, etc. It is clear that much of the early sup-
port for detentewithin the leadership came from those who, while not
representing consumer interests directly, represented the felt need to
accommodatethem throughboth improvedtechnology and trade on the
one hand, and a relative reduction of military expenditures on the
other.
But even had detenteprovided more rapid and significant gains,

the leadership would only have had postponed confrontation with the
problem that is, from the point of view of political culture, the crucial
one: does the present political culture contain the capacity for
change-the "transcriptionspeed" to permit rapidadaptation,with sta-
bility, to the vast and radical socio-economic changes that have
occurredduring forty years of stability and economic growth, or will it
be "overloaded" by tasks of social and political change whose satisfac-
tory accomplishmentwill require instrumentalitiesit has not developed,
and attitudesit has not permittedto evolve?
The evidence of recent decades is that the political culture is
poorly suited to manage such change. As we have seen, the leadership,
by comparisonwith even the pre-revolutionaryelites, seems to perceive
political and social life in rather traditional,risk-avoidingand system-
preserving, terms. The leadershipis stable and aging-at every level.4
It has a strong, perhaps now almost crippling, memory of very tur-
bulent and chaotic earlier times. It has within recent memory defeated
plans for significant aggiornamentoboth within the Party and in the
economy. It retains the conviction that decentralization and other
forms of modernizationare either dangerous or unworkable, or both.
It remains deeply committed to the informal type of politics so tellingly
(and unwittingly) described in Khrushchev's memoirs. It not only
abides in the conviction, presumablylatent in every ruling group, that
the independentforce of law and the public scrutinyof decision-making
are noisome impediments, but adheres to the traditional Muscovite
view that they are downrightdangerous.
Moreover, the demographic processes of recent years-the
increase in general stability, decline in rates of urbanization, growing
stratification,changes in ethnic relationships-have, in the absence of
structural change, increased the importance of the patron/client and
familial relationship: indeed, for the first time since 1917, one can
expect within a few years the accession of a ruling group a striking
number of whose members will have grown up within a small
privileged class, attended the same schools, shopped at the same
limited-access stores, patronized the same doctors and orthodontists,
and known each other socially since childhood. Although these indivi-
duals are manifestly better educated than their parents, and in general
"sophisticated," there is little indication that they perceive, or would
undertaketo satisfy, the needs of their system for political, as opposed
to economic, modernization. Their socialization, in the terms of the
4 This passagewas written in 1976, and requiredno alterationfor nearly a decade.

Whetherthe changesof the Gorbachevera will requiremodificationof the general thrust
of this section remainsto be seen.
text-book definition, has been exceedingly congruent with the stable

system of which they have been the first generation of hereditary
beneficiaries.
In spite of the privileges that they have enjoyed with regard to
education, and notwithstanding the considerable practical political
sophistication that the mature individual in the Soviet elite acquires
from normal experience, these individuals have less factual knowledge
of the outside world-and of their own society-and less understanding
of modern techniques of social and politicalanalysis, than any compar-
able elite. Many of those whose temperamentand fortunes have made
them the most successful, as one of them told me some years ago, are
'"monarchists";the majorityis cynical and not given to speculate about
political change; a few have "dropped out." One searches in vain for
the influences, in the formation of this generation, that would prepare
them intellectuallyor experientiallyto carryout the delicate but funda-
mental changes in the politicalsystem or in its politicalculture that will
be required. It would appear, therefore, that the replacement genera-
tion within the establishmentwill not foster-and perhapseven will not
tolerate-real change.
The skeptical reader will perhaps question the value of modern
social sciences both as an aid to analysis and as an operative element in
the political culture of the industrializeddemocracies;the attentive one
will remember that in the interpretation here presented it was the
excessively change-orientedvogues of imported social-science theories
that were in part responsible for the "failure" of the politicalculture in
Russia at the beginning of this century. The fact remains, however,
that the development of Western social and behavioral sciences has
provided helpful observations and conceptualizationsof complex social
processes, and that these notions, in one or another degree of vulgari-
zation, affect the perceptions of almost all mature individuals in
positions of responsibility. As a result, these leaders-including, for
example, labor-union leaders-display a relatively sophisticated recep-
tiveness to new social-science data and theories, and a consequent
responsiveness to needs for change. In the Soviet Union, by contrast,
the relatively primitive sterility of official social-science theory, and the
pervasive cynicism and apathy with which educated individuals view
such matters, tend to make the political leadershipindifferent or even
antagonisticto new social-science data and ideas, with exception of the
most pragmaticand manipulativeaspects of economic planning.
But what of the "dissidents," the crypto-dissidents, quasi-
dissidents, and other "liberals within"? Although a sociologist might
group them, by social origin and education, together with the members
of the establishment elite of their own generation-a few are the
"drop-outs" mentioned above, many grew up at the fringes of the
elite-most "anti-establishment"types do continue the older dissident
tradition. Many of them are in fact children or grandchildrenof the

"old intelligentsia" or of the "dedicatedcommunists" of the period of
revolution; at least one well-known family of this type can boast that
members of four generations in direct succession have spent time in
political exile. With a few remarkable exceptions, these individuals
remain within the traditional political culture, i.e., their dissent, like
that of their predecessorsand forebears, is personal, principled, philo-
sophical, and ineffective. They reject the state as it is, but offer no
workable modern alternative. They decry the lack of liberty, but have
grave doubts about democraticinstitutions, doubts that flow from their
low estimate of man and from their pessimistic expectations about the
working classes, from whom they feel quite fundamentally alienated.
There is little evidence that this group might provide, either as leaders
or as gadflies, the analyticaltools and policy devices that could permit
the present political culture successfully to "transcribe" itself, in a
non-destabilizingway, to meet the political needs of a modern mass
society.

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The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian Review

Muscovite Political Folkways

Author'snote:The originalversion of this essay was preparedas a part of U.S.

1 "Russian," throughout, refers exclusively and specificallyto the Russian speech

a brief historical discussion of their origins and development. As the

that culture's self-descriptions,have failed to discern the principal

Having declaredthese assumptions,we must state some caveats:

II. On the Origins and ContinuousDevelopmentof Russian Political

appreciationof the fundamental continuities of Russian political cul-

or another familiar stage or experience of Western cultures-the

modern official parlance "neglasnost"') is quite normally adhered to

III. Cradlesof PoliticalCulture

unified world view, and only quite simple (yet remarkablyeffective)

culture of that small number of related families who, under conditions

IV. ThePoliticalCultureof the Russian Village

labor, the draughtpower and animal fertilizer, the land-be utilized to

have experiencedthe benefits of such reciprocatingmechanisms in their

expectations concerning human behavior, and, ultimately, upon a

and the individual-fromman'sallegedlydangerousinnateproclivities.

Returningto the dominant politicalculture, we should make some

V. ThePoliticalCultureof the MuscoviteCourt

A second difficulty is created by the fact that from a very early

"deprivation hypothesis" mentioned above, however, such constructs

constant preoccupationand possibility. In order to avert such disasters,

was ultimatelyreduced is due in significantmeasure to the fact that the

The emergenceand continuedvitality of a limited numberof

For these reasons, even the threat of pauperizationas a conse-

2 A practice-enforced by Muscovite law-that allowed members of a clan or rodto

family," and by assuring that some acknowledged leader of the clan

VI. ThePoliticalCultureof the MuscoviteBureaucracy

merchants, on their own account, in the realm; they effectively taxed

the powerful clans), nor could an individual's influence survive his

concerning the frailty of man and of his creations;it was reinforcedby

been collateral:i.e., younger brothers, or even cousins, might inherit

nothing of how Muscovite politics was really played. Almost without

determine relationshipsamong great families and with the court.

VIII.Politicsand Ideologyin Muscovy

The methodologies that have combined in providing the concept

We may conclude, then, that much, if not all, of the literaturetra-

in Muscovy:The Traditionof Dissent

century-their ideas of dissent and reform were based upon notions

Thus the dissenting tradition developed, as an antipode of the

landowning and individual economic autonomy. In a struggle that,

combination of cultural and political circumstances. Until roughly the

imagined. Some of them, as might be expected, became monks, but

limited number of clans and families. Like the political culture it

important,the clerks developed no clan organizationcomparableto that

borrowedfrom other great political syntheses, the great bulk of its

XII. TheMuscovitePoliticalCulturein the EarlyModernPeriod

heredity, could not accomplish. At the same time, the bureau-

the kinship-based political system, and was of course aimed

At the same time, certainfeatures of the two merged features that

anti-Muscovite, essentially Novgorodian traditionand with the content

to innovation. The institutionalChurch, in many significantrespects an

Moreover, the most important of these processes-those associated

Russia's-political culture shared, as one must expect, in the gen-

and institutional changes promulgatedor promised in a single year-

and the Reintegrationof MuscovitePoliticalCulture

few significant changes in the structure or political culture of Soviet

Second, the processes of social revolution and intrapartystrife had

and in a sense purifiedthe "deep structures"that underlaythe various

should be noted, however, that in the recent period of stability, while

must, in order to avoid chaos, conspire against society's tendency to