The Origins of Autocracy

First of all, he describes not a model for the development of man­kind, but a model for the development of Russian state structure. This begins with a "clan" phase, in which the country belongs to a sin­gle princely clan, which provides it with political unity, but shuns the "element of the personality." It then passes into the "familial" (or "pa­trimonial") phase, destined to "destroy the political unity of Russia,"[161]though still, however, without—as distinct from the phase of "civil so­ciety" in Europe—liberating the individual from the bonds of the family. And, finally, this is replaced by the "state" phase, destined both to recreate the political unity of the country and to "create the personality."

Ravelin's theory aimed both at confirming the uniqueness of Rus­sia and

refuting the Slavophile validation of this uniqueness. On the one hand, he attaches all of the negative elements in Russian history (including the disintegration of the state and the denial of the "ele­ment of the personality") to the "familial" phase, dear to the heart of the Slavophiles. On the other hand, the Hegelian phase of "civil so­ciety," which showed that in the West the personality existed before the state, is omitted from Russian development. Hence, in Russia, the personality was created by the state. The Western peoples "were des­tined to develop a historical personality which they had brought with them into a human personality; we were destined to create a person­ality. For us and for them, the question is posed so dissimilarly that comparison is impossible."[162] I understand how murky such language may seem to a contemporary reader, but this was how they talked at the time.

Both "over there" and "among us," however, it is precisely the state which is the crown of history, its magnificent finale. Neither Hegel nor Ravelin even touches on the question of the political nature of this finale. The state as such, in the abstract—with no political specifi­cations whatever—is for them both the goal of history and its demi­urge. Everything which furthers its growth is progressive, all the sac­rifices offered it are redeemed; all the crimes committed in its name are justified. The needs of the state (which coincide in some myste­rious and inexplicable way with the "element of the personality") be­come the password which resolves all mysteries, all moral doubts, all contradiction.

And if there were still some holes and inconsistencies in Ravelin's theory, such first-class intellectuals and experts as S. M. Solov'ev, B. N. Chicherin, A. D. Gradovskii, N. P. Pavlov-Sil'vanskii, P. N. Mi­liukov, and G. V. Plekhanov came to the rescue. They thought up ex­planations for things which the Russian Hegel was unable to explain, resolved contradictions which he was unable to resolve. To non- specialists—and to specialists as well—their arguments seemed irre­sistibly convincing. "Stone," Solov'ev would say,

—for so mountains were called among us in the old days—stone split up Western Europe into many states. ... In stone the western men built their nests, and from stone they held possession of the peasants; stone gave them independence, but soon the peasants also began to sur­round themselves with stone and to gain freedom and independence; everything firm, everything definite is thanks to stone. . . . On the gi­gantic eastern plain there is no stone . . . and therefore, there is one state of unheard-of extent. Here men have no place to build themselves stone nests. . . . The cities consist of wooden cottages; one spark, and in their place—a pile of ashes. . . . Hence the ease with which the ancient Russian abandoned his house. . . . and hence the striving of the gov­ernment to catch and settle down and attach the people [to the land].[163]

"It is enough to look at its [Russia's] geographical position, at the huge areas over which the scanty population is scattered," Chicherin would say,