The Power of the Monarch, the Indivisibility of the State, and the Common Good in Russian Political Thought (Late 16th – Mid‐18th Centuries)

This article examines the ideas about the nature of state power and the relationship between the ruler and the state in Russia between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In the field of historiography, a thesis has been proposed regarding the patrimonial nature of the rulers’ power in the Muscovite Tsardom. This thesis posits that the realm was regarded as the ruler’s personal property. Russia’s position was distinct from that of Europe, where by the sixteenth century, lawyers had established the principle that “property and rights of the state are public and cannot be the private patrimony of any individual”. The author demonstrates that in pre-Petrine Russia, there existed an idea of the indivisibility of the tsardom as a necessary condition for preserving the common good. However, this concept was articulated not through legal terminology, as was the case in Europe but through theological concepts and images, among which the Gospel metaphor of a “kingdom divided against itself” played an important role. The concept of a patrimonial monarchy, in which the ruler had the right to divide the state among their children, emerged in Russian political thought during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. This development was influenced by exposure to European legal ideas. This is reflected in Feofan Prokopovich’s The Justice of the Monarch’s Will (1722). However, as the example of V. N. Tatishchev demonstrates, this concept did not gain support in Russian political thought. Drawing on both natural law and the metaphor of the “kingdom divided against itself”, Tatishchev postulated the thesis that “the realm is an indivisible property”. Thus, the transfer of Western ideas did not bring about the discovery of the concept of the state’s indivisibility. On the contrary, it introduced the innovation of its potential division. This, however, failed to supplant the deeply rooted Russian notion of the tsardom, indestructible for the common good. This perception would later manifest itself during the reign of Alexander I, when rumours circulated about the emperor’s desire to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Common good · Economic Justice · Metaphor · Politics · Realm · Rule of law · Ruler · Central European and Russian historical studies · Historical Legal Studies and Society · Soviet and Russian History