7.4.1 Tsarism

As previously stated, Russia quickly proclaimed itself an empire shortly after becoming unified. The Tsar’s control over the empire’s political and economic power then became the most notable feature of the Tsarist system. Overall, society lacked a system of checks and balances.

Just as Qin Shi Huang “united” China, Ivan III created a united Russia by conquering smaller states through military means. This empire stretched across Europe and Asia, with a territory six times larger than Moscovy. Ivan III began dispossessing the nobility on the one hand, and institutionalizing serfdom, which had been practiced since the mid-fourteenth century on the other (Vernadsky, Reference Vernadsky1939, p. 315).

Ivan III’s ability to deprive the nobility of power was due to the long-standing weakness of the nobles, an institutional gene inherited since the Rus’ era. The boyars of Rus’ had traditionally held land, power, and military might and the grand princes needed support from boyar nobility, which may seem similar to the feudal system of Western Europe. The difference, however, was that Rus’ boyars did not have a contractual relationship with their princes, unlike the nobles and monarchs of Western Europe. Hence, they were able to move and switch allegiance. In the traditional Rus’ system, the grand princes were most concerned with maximizing their land, so the boundary between sovereignty and property rights had long been ambiguous in the Rus’ principalities. The empire’s expansion was essentially a process of squeezing the aristocracy (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a).

In the early stages of Russian expansion, when the Boyar nobility still held significant military power, Ivan III took measures to secure their approval and support for major decisions, such as his marriage to a Byzantine princess. However, once all the principalities were conquered, steps were taken to curb the hereditary powers of the nobility. On the one hand, the Boyar Duma was downsized; on the other hand, access to the Boyar Duma became increasingly dependent on merit and service to the grand prince (Alef, Reference Alef1967, pp. 76–123). By the end of the sixteenth century, the boyars had largely lost their power base and had become regional commissioners under the authority of the grand prince.

Striking historical similarities can occur in countries with similar systems, even when they are culturally and geographically distant. In order to establish a highly centralized imperial system, both Ivan IV (1530–1584) and Qin Shi Huang were ruthless in their efforts to weaken and eliminate the powers of the nobility through institutional and material means. Ivan IV was crowned in 1547 when China was under the reign of Emperor Shi Zong of the Ming. He completely deprived the Boyar Duma of its political rights and functions and abolished the limited autonomy originally enjoyed by the hereditary princes, turning the leaders of historical principalities into boyars in the service of the Grand Prince (Vernadsky, Reference Vernadsky1939, p. 318). He confiscated many boyars’ lands and brought the Tsarist Empire into a new phase, for which he became an idol worshipped by both Peter the Great and Stalin.

As an important part of perfecting the Tsarist imperial system, Ivan IV established the first secret police system in Russian history in the 1560s, the infamous institution of the Oprichnina (special police force). The Oprichnina enabled him to extensively quash opposition from the boyars, arresting and executing the leading figures on charges of alleged treason. This secret police system continued to develop and mature, becoming an important institutional gene of Tsarism. Ivan IV killed approximately 4,000 high-ranking nobles between 1565 and 1572, diminishing the power of the top echelon of the nobility by bolstering the power of minor nobles and citizens and capitalizing on the tension between these two groups and the high nobility. Consequently, Russia was left with a minor nobility ill-equipped to challenge the Tsar.

Following the death of Ivan IV, serfdom was fully and officially institutionalized throughout the Tsarist Empire. From 1592 to 1593, land and household registration was introduced; peasants registered under a landlord’s name were classified as serfs, and landlords were given the right to pursue runaways. The Code of Law of 1649 further cemented serfdom, making landlords fully responsible for their serfs and granting them the authority to sentence, flog, and torture serfs on their estates.

By the end of the seventeenth century, Peter the Great ascended to the throne and further centralized what was already Europe’s most centralized empire, thereby heightening Russia’s absolute monarchy. He replaced the Boyar Duma with the Governing Senate, all of whose members were appointed by him. Although the boyars had essentially functioned more as elite bureaucrats than as nobles since the reign of Ivan IV (Kliuchevskii, Reference Kliuchevskii1960), Peter’s formal dissolution of the Duma further undermined the power and status of the boyars. Historically, the Boyar Duma lacked legislative powers and plenary sessions were only irregularly convened by the Tsar. However, it had remained a loose institution where the nobility could at least converse, voice grievances, and network. With its official dissolution, the nobility was stripped of a legitimate forum for meetings and discussion. The institutional genes thus formed laid the foundation to inhibit the emergence of constitutionalism in Russia.

In contrast to Russia, the nobility and other influential social groups in Western Europe participated in parliamentary assemblies. Their roles in these assemblies and the alliances they formed constrained the power of the monarchs, paving the way for constitutional governance. Nevertheless, in a comparison between Tsarist Russia and Imperial China, the Russian aristocracy was in a significantly better position. While Tsarist monarchs sought to weaken the nobility over a few centuries, the Chinese Empire had been undermining and even eradicating its nobility for over a millennium. In fact, there was nothing in the Chinese Empire that resembled the Boyar Duma of Tsarist Russia. For most of its history, the Chinese Empire’s nobility was merely nominal. When it did exist, it was merely local power, kept firmly under control by the imperial court, which did not allow it to cooperate or even consider setting up a parliament. Even after the dissolution of the Duma by Peter the Great, the residual power of the nobility in Tsarist Russia still far exceeded that of the nominal nobility of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

In order to bolster caesaropapism, Peter the Great annulled the Patriarchate, supplanting it with the Holy Synod, which was a council of bishops functioning as an instrument of his regime and under his control. He restructured the administrative divisions of the state, nullified the hereditary order of precedence, and instituted a meritocratic system of appointment. The residual powers of the aristocracy were further diminished, transforming hereditary nobles into bureaucrats subservient to the Tsar’s rule. All officials, regardless of their familial lineage, commenced at the lowest level in the bureaucracy, with promotions contingent on merit.

Through a large-scale importation of Western technology and centralization of power, Peter significantly augmented efficiency across Russia, consolidated his power, and fortified the Tsarist institution. In 1721, after defeating Sweden, then the largest empire in Northern Europe, Peter officially renamed his country the “Russian Empire.”

Since the eighteenth century, the Tsars, relying on their monopoly of political power and economic resources, further eroded the rights of individuals and groups and monopolized public information in Russian society. This process transformed the institutions of the Russian Empire, which started with a greater concentration of power than the most extreme Western European absolute monarchies, into a type of system that this book refers to as an imperial system. The defining characteristics of Tsarism include the omnipresence and unquestionable sovereignty of the monarch and the primacy of sovereignty over property rights.

The French Enlightenment of the late eighteenth century sparked considerable interest among Russian intellectuals and the societal upper class. In the following period, Russia underwent decades of reforms. The control of the Tsarist regime over private property rights and certain political rights was somewhat relaxed. Discussions about constitutionalism became widespread among intellectuals and the upper echelons of society, even exerting societal pressure on the Tsarist autocracy. However, the Tsar and his followers staunchly believed in the Tsar’s unlimited legislative and executive powers. All laws had to originate from the Tsar. These followers included not only the elites but also a large mass of monarchists, particularly the Russian peasants who had just been “liberated” from serfdom by the Tsar by the Emancipation Reform of 1861. Lacking basic knowledge of their individual or political rights, these followers firmly believed that the Tsarist government must be strong and that the people must obey the Tsar unconditionally. For them, any restriction on government power or permission to challenge it was intolerable. On the other hand, the establishment elites argued that the development of parliamentary politics was unrealistic given the vast size and complexity of Russia and the low level of education of the populace. They contended that Russia should focus on administrative efficiency and reform (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, pp. 54–57).

Peter the Great regarded the learning of technology and management from the West as crucial for his reign. He hoped that the introduction of science, technology, and management from Western Europe would improve Russian science and technology, increase the efficiency of Russian administration and business, and serve him in strengthening centralized power. On the other hand, he feared that the inspiration of constitutional ideas gained by the young Russian nobles studying in the West would shake up his autocratic rule. Hence, Peter the Great issued a policy restricting the aristocracy’s freedom to study in the West.

It was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that American independence and the French Revolution inspired the Russian aristocracy to push for social reforms in the pursuit of their rights. The Russian nobility staged a coup d’état in 1801, leading to the accession of Alexander I to the throne. Under pressure from the nobility, Alexander restored some basic rights to nobles, including allowing them to study in the West, which was instrumental in the later Russian Enlightenment and the propagation of constitutional ideas. To augment governmental efficiency, Alexander introduced a ministerial system in 1802, with ministers appointed directly by the emperor. Ministries were highly specialized, with interministerial coordination prohibited, transforming the government into a strictly compartmentalized, vertically managed system. This development deprived ministers of independence and amplified the Tsar’s control over the empire. Simultaneously, it hindered the capacity of ministers to collaborate and formulate an organically integrated national economic policy (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a, p. 66).

The highly specialized, vertically managed ministerial system established by Alexander evolved into a Tsarist institutional gene that later was inherited directly by the Soviet central planning system and subsequent planned economies of all communist totalitarian regimes, until the demise of those regimes. In contrast, another type of institutional gene of bureaucracy, inherited in China since 200 bce, which was characterized by the maintenance of the integrity of functions of each locality, has also influenced the governance of China to this day (see discussions in Chapters 12 and 13 on regionally administered totalitarianism).

The most prominent institutional feature of the imperial system, which this book emphasizes and which distinctly separates it from an absolute monarchy, is that the imperial bureaucracy constitutes the very foundation of governance. In this respect, the characteristics of the Tsarist bureaucracy bear more resemblance to those of China than of Western Europe. Within the Chinese imperial system, the royal family and the state were synonymous. Similarly, Russia never developed a governance system based on a stable alliance between the monarch and the nobility throughout its state formation history. The sovereignty of the Rus’ princes largely depended on their property claims and their clans’ support. There was no distinction between the royal clans’ households and the principalities. With the formation of a unified empire, the roles of Ivan III’s chamberlains transformed into elements of the imperial bureaucracy (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a). Hence, the Tsar’s household was the empire itself. The imperial bureaucracy primarily served the Tsar and its senior officers were the Tsar’s servants (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, p. 61). There was no system or notion of a clear separation of the state bureaucracy from the house of the royals.

Finally, it is crucial to note that Kang Youwei, the leading proponent of the first constitutional reform in China, erroneously regarded what Peter the Great did as a model for constitutional reform in China. As the spiritual leader of the reform, his grave misunderstanding of Russia illustrated the superficial understanding of Chinese intellectual leaders regarding China’s constitutional reforms (more details in Chapter 9). When advocating for the Hundred Days’ Reform, he presented his book, Chronicle of Peter the Great’s Governmental Reforms, to the emperor as a blueprint for reform. However, Kang failed to recognize that Peter the Great’s centralization of political power necessitated the elimination of checks and balances, and the dissolution of the already weakened Duma.

7.4.2 The Institutional Genes of Russian Orthodoxy and the Russian Orthodox Church

Chapter 6 discussed the Christian origins of communist ideology. However, modern constitutionalism, which stands in opposition to communist totalitarianism, was intimately related to the foundation laid by the Reformation in Western Europe. Superficially, Orthodoxy and Catholicism are distinguished by the use of Greek and Latin scripts, respectively, and their geographical locations in the East and West. However, the Reformation occurred only in Central and Western Europe, as did modern constitutionalism, while communist totalitarianism emerged in regions associated with Russian Orthodoxy. Why did the Reformation not take place in the Eastern Orthodox regions? What was the relationship between the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Orthodoxy, along with its Church?

First, the timing and general context of the introduction of Orthodoxy in Russia had already dictated that the differences between Orthodoxy, which was set to influence Russia, and Catholicism went far beyond language and geography. By then, Orthodoxy had been the state religion of the Byzantine Empire for centuries. It had become highly bureaucratic and had long lost the inherently challenging connotations of Christianity. In stark contrast to the Catholic regions where the Reformation was taking place, Orthodoxy and its Church were teetering on the brink. On the eve of a catastrophic crisis in Constantinople, the base of Orthodoxy was forced to move from the soon-to-be Ottoman-conquered Byzantine capital to Moscow. Hecker, an expert on Russian Orthodoxy, noted, “being imposed upon the people by order of a despotic ruler … was simply grafted upon the existing paganism, much of which has survived to this day in the religious cult and customs of the common people” (Hecker, Reference Hecker1933, chapter 2). Even today, traces of these primitive religions can still be seen in religious worship and civilian customs in Russia.

Moreover, the overall literacy level in Russia was exceptionally low. Meanwhile, there was no Bible in the Russian language and barely any clergy could read the Bible in Greek. In this context, the Church in Russia indigenized and Russified Orthodoxy by simplifying its teachings. Moreover, it was the principality rulers who decided to adopt Christianity and establish it as the state religion, imposing it on the populace by decree and collective baptism. Given that the faithful were largely illiterate and lacked religious education, a considerable amount of pagan fetishism became interwoven into Russian Orthodoxy. Consequently, many believers and some clerics regarded the cross, icons, and Bible as magical amulets (Hecker, Reference Hecker1927, chapter 3).

Furthermore, there were deeper and more intricate aspects of the issue. The Reformation refers to the religious movements that spanned England, Bohemia, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and the rest of Western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, alongside the emergence of theological theories. This phenomenon could not have materialized without Latin as the common language of Catholicism. Through centuries of communication facilitated by this shared linguistic medium, Catholicism attracted numerous intellectual luminaries, fostering the development of advanced theological theories. It laid the groundwork for the intellectual challenges that were to surface later, which included not only Luther’s reformist manifesto in Germany, Calvin’ religious, political, and social vision in France, Erasmus’ philosophical conjectures in the Netherlands but also the utopian aspirations of Thomas More in England. Any noteworthy or challenging idea from one region could quickly permeate all Catholic regions through Latin, energizing the faithful.

In addition to language, another fundamental difference between Orthodoxy and Catholicism concerned the organizational structure of the Church. One of the key demands of the Reformation was regional autonomy, prompted by resistance to the over-centralization of the Catholic Church. In other words, the high degree of centralization within the Catholic Church ignited the spark to revolt against it, intensifying the depth, scale, and intensity of the rebellion. In contrast, in an effort to facilitate dissemination, the Orthodox Church had endeavored to develop local scripts and translate the Bible into local languages in different countries from the very beginning. As a result, not only did the Orthodox Church lack a highly centralized structure but it also did not possess a common Orthodox language script. Over the centuries, this led Orthodoxy to evolve into a collection of Orthodox churches using different languages, which obstructed communication among clerics from different regions and limited the potential for theological advancements. This, in turn, rendered the Orthodox Church increasingly conservative.

The Catholic Church, due to its high degree of centralization, had substantial ecclesiastical power. Thus, the Catholic Church constantly clashed with secular authorities in Western Europe. In contrast, the Orthodox Church was relatively fragmented, resulting in less ecclesiastical power. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian monarchy had a highly integrated relationship between church and state. Historically, the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire and the relocation of the empire’s capital to Byzantium happened concurrently. The emperors of the empire supported the state religion while also endeavoring to control it. Therefore, ever since Byzantium (Constantinople) became the capital of the Roman Empire, the Greek Orthodox Church had been under significant control by the secular powers. The Byzantine Church prided itself on its harmonious relationship with the Roman Empire.

The relocation of the Roman Empire’s capital created a power vacuum in Rome, providing an immense opportunity for the growth of the Latin Roman Christian Church. It not only gained high independence in ecclesiastical power but the powerful Roman ecclesiastical authority was often also eager to intervene in secular matters. The Roman Church’s influence thrived even more after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Coronation by the Roman Church became a prerequisite for the legitimacy of all Western European monarchs.

In stark contrast to the powerful Catholic Church, the Greek-speaking Christian Church had been under secular control since the Roman Emperor moved to Byzantium. Coupled with the lack of a unified language and a centralized Church in Orthodoxy, the Orthodox Churches in various countries have generally been controlled by local secular powers over centuries of evolution. These characteristics of Orthodoxy made it more localized and more submissive to local secular powers. Orthodox clergy, protected by secular power, when becoming wealthier and more influential, were ironically more dependent on secular power. Under the patronage of secular power, the Orthodox clergy grew richer and more influential and became further dependent on secular power (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a, pp. 224–225).

The absence of a common language also curtailed theological developments within Orthodoxy, making substantive theological challenges unlikely. As a result, Orthodoxy did not produce theological luminaries like Aquinas, nor theological challengers or reformers like Erasmus and Luther.

Orthodoxy had been the state religion of Russia since the formation of Kievan Rus’, Russia had been the seat of Orthodoxy since the fifteenth century, Russia’s grand princes and tsars had regarded Orthodoxy and the Church highly, and both Orthodoxy and the Church had deeply influenced the population and culture. Despite all of these factors, there was an astonishing dearth of substantive exploration of the Christian canon and Greek classics in Russia. Russian Orthodoxy placed formality and ritual above theory and understanding and was not concerned with preaching the Bible or teaching theology. Its clergy generally lacked both the knowledge and motivation to educate the faithful and priests in rural areas were often illiterate (Hecker, Reference Hecker1927, pp. 10–11). The first complete translation of the Bible into Russian was not available until the 1870s, underscoring the superficiality of Russian Orthodoxy among its followers. Worse still, even in many seminaries, clergy members were not taught Latin or Greek. The pervasive level of ignorance within the Russian Orthodox Church was indeed shocking (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a, pp. 225–227). On the other hand, deep yet superficial belief is a key element in fostering fanatical masses, which can fuel a totalitarian movement.

The Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment in Western Europe, along with the emergence of empirical science and modern thought, including the establishment of modern constitutionalism, were all inextricably linked to the Church and its associated universities, which were independent of secular power. However, the Russian Orthodox Church was not only lacking in independence but it also rarely delved into systematic and in-depth exploration of theological texts, let alone presented any challenges to theological theories. Russia did not undergo a renaissance or a reformation and the Enlightenment that it experienced was largely detached from the Church, having more roots in European influence. These phenomena are all associated with the Russian Orthodox Church’s lack of independence and its overall superficial nature. No school within the Russian Orthodox Church evolved into an institution that made contributions outside of theology. The major universities in Russia were all established by the Tsarist government, beginning in the eighteenth century. As a result, empirical science and modern thought in Russia were largely reliant on imports from Western Europe.

Nevertheless, the Russian Orthodox Church had a profound influence on Russian society. Superficial and fanatical religions tend to foster blind religious zeal among ignorant believers. In the late 1670s, rumors of the imminent end of the world were rife among the Russian Orthodox faithful. Many fanatics went to extremes such as nailing themselves into coffins and more than 20,000 people self-immolated. Some even went as far as threatening to burn Russia to the ground (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a, p. 236).

From the sixteenth century onwards, Russia developed an entire set of ideologies concerning the relationship between the Orthodox Church and secular power. Moscow was hailed as the Third Rome, not only as the successor of the Roman Empire but also as the ruling center of the Orthodox world, and even the entire Christian world. Russian priests claimed that the Russian Church was purer and more sacred than the Byzantine Church, the reason being that the Byzantine Church had abandoned its principles and merged with the Roman Church at the Council of Florence in 1439 and this position was reversed only when Moscow replaced Byzantium as the center of Orthodoxy. In Russia’s distinctive theory of divine mandate, the power of the crown came from God, yet also overrode the divine. Therefore, the monarch governed the Church. In practice, the monarch decided the appointment of the Patriarch, determined the list of attendees for the Holy Synod, and interfered in religious courts. The Church was content with such arrangements. Aside from the tradition of the Orthodox Church being controlled by imperial power for centuries, the Church eradicated heresies by relying on the absolute monarchy (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a, pp. 232–234).

In the early days when the Orthodox Church was introduced from Byzantium to Russia, despite enduring secular intervention, it was still independent or semi-independent of secular power. Byzantium referred to the relationship between the Church and secular power as a harmonious one. The golden age of the great development of Orthodoxy in Russia was the period of Mongol rule. Under Genghis Khan’s charter for the protection of Orthodoxy, the Orthodox Church was granted privileges such as tax exemptions. Meanwhile, under Mongol rule, the grand princes were merely vassals of the Mongols and had no power to interfere with the Church.

As Russia gained independence from the Mongols and eventually became an empire, the Church formed a relatively independent Patriarchate. However, the Tsars sought to directly control the Church and put it in the service of the state. After decades of effort, Peter the Great finally abolished the Patriarchate (Hecker, Reference Hecker1933). He eliminated the secular judicial immunity enjoyed by the Church, confiscated its revenues, and transformed the Church into an administrative branch of the government (this was continued and completed under Catherine II). Moreover, he mandated the clergy to report to the authorities any content detrimental to the monarch and the government that they heard during confessions (Pipes, Reference Pipes1995a, pp. 239–241).

But unlike Confucianism in the Chinese Empire (see Chapter 5), the Tsar and the Russian imperial court did not significantly interfere with the doctrine and religious rituals of the Orthodox Church. This was mainly because these had been inherited from Byzantium before the rise of the Tsar and had already taken root in Russia. In addition, following the tradition of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Church had always served secular power during the formation of the Russian Empire. Russian Orthodoxy controlled Russian society through faith and ideology, fully instilling in the Russian people a religious interpretation legitimizing the Tsar’s rule. It was one of the core components of the Tsarist system. Over the centuries, it portrayed the Tsar as God’s agent on earth and declared that disobedience to the Tsar was a sin. As an effective tool, the Church helped to prolong the autocratic rule of the Russian Tsars (Hecker, Reference Hecker1933, p. 23). Nobel laureate for Literature Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once commented, “If the [Russian] church had not surrendered its independence and had continued to make its voice heard among the people as [the Catholic Church] does, for example, in Poland,” then Russian history might have been “incomparably more humane and harmonious in the last few centuries” (New York Times, March 23, 1972, p. 7).

Since the emergence of the Russian language, Orthodoxy had been an inseparable component of Russian culture. It played a vital role in popularizing education in Russia. The vast majority of Russians learned to read and write through the education provided by the Orthodox Church (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, pp. 87–89). The Russian Orthodox Church was exclusivist, disallowing changes in faith. Its canonical law explicitly stated that all Orthodox believers must raise their children in the Orthodox faith (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1896, pp. 512–513). All the most important Russian revolutionaries, whether Social Revolutionaries or Bolsheviks, even those who proclaimed themselves atheists or anti-Orthodox, could not escape the profound influence of Russian Orthodoxy, which was reflected in their revolutionary theories and the revolutionary spirit they revered.

Nikolay Chernyshevsky, the founder of Russian socialism and populism, was representative in this respect. Born into an Orthodox priest’s family and graduated from a seminary, he was the spiritual leader of several generations of Russian intelligentsia, including all the founders of the Russian Social Democratic Party and the Bolsheviks. He claimed to be an atheist but his works were replete with deep Christian influences, many of which were secular expressions of Christianity. His famous novel What Is to Be Done? portrayed the revolutionary Rakhmetov, who was in fact a secular reinterpretation of many Christian martyrs. The anarchist leader Kropotkin claimed that this book had a greater influence on Russian youth than Turgenev, Tolstoy, or any other writer, saying, “it was a kind of banner for Russian youth” (Kropotkin, Reference Kropotkin1915). Lenin read the book numerous times during his life – the book and the character of Rakhmetov had a great impact on his revolutionary drive.

As discussed in Chapter 6, communist ideology has its roots in Christianity and the first communist organization was founded by Engels in collaboration with a Christian priest. Moreover, both Marx and Engels, consciously or otherwise, shaped the ideologies and movements they initiated to be highly similar to Christianity in many ways, making them all the more enticing. The communist movement in Russia was no exception to this.

Pavel Axelrod, one of the founders of the Russian Marxist movement, stated that his dedication to the cause of socialist revolution originated from religious faith. He anticipated the inclusion of a God-building program within the socialist movement. Pioneers of Russian Marxists like him disseminated Marxism and established Marxist organizations not because they were fully convinced after studying Marxism but because they, as revolutionaries, found Marxism to be more useful. This group of Russian revolutionaries did not passively adhere to the Marxist theory of historical stages; instead, they sought to realize their ideal of a revolution of religious nature (Rowley, Reference Rowley2017, pp. 3–4). Such ideals were common to the Land and Liberty society and its successors, including the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR Party), the Mensheviks, and the Bolsheviks. More precisely, the Bolsheviks inherited such aspirations from the Land and Liberty.

The influence of Orthodoxy on the Bolshevik leaders was profound and extensive. It affected their revolutionary ideals, the formation and design of the communist totalitarian system, and their methods of propaganda and governance. Stalin, along with Lunacharsky, the first Bolshevik responsible for culture and education, Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka,⁴ and several other leading figures from the first generation of Bolsheviks, all came from a formal Orthodox educational background.

Gorky and Lunacharsky saw Marxism as a religion that offered salvation in advance and advocated for a God-Building Project. Bolshevik propagandist Aleksandr Voronsky claimed that some revolutionary terrorists were guided by the Christian Bible in their attempts to overthrow the Tsarist regime (Slezkine, Reference Slezkine2017, p. 23).

Some historians have referred to the Marxist-Leninist religion in Russia as “Millenarian Bolshevism,” alluding to the fact that the Bolsheviks used Christian millennialism to disseminate their ideology and attract people (Rowley, Reference Rowley2017). The Millennium prophecy predicted that Christ would return to Earth to punish sinners through the Last Judgment and put an end to the corrupt old world, thus saving mankind, who would enter a paradise under Christ’s reign.

The Bolsheviks made promises highly similar to this Millenarian prophecy. Marx’s prophecy that the old world (the sinful class society) would be buried by violent revolution and that humanity would enter a communist paradise resonated with those who had been indoctrinated into Christianity, making it easier for them to believe in Marxism. Radicals could become revolutionary martyrs.

Moreover, many people confused the two. Indeed, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Russian revolutionaries believed that revolutionary socialism was a form of Christianity. Likewise, many considered Christianity to be a form of revolutionary socialism.

7.4.3 The Institutional Genes of Secret Political Organizations

Similar to the Chinese imperial system, in the Russian imperial system, the Tsar monopolized all power. This resulted in the absence of any independent force in society that could negotiate with it. The situation stemmed from the historical formation of the Russian Empire, which was marked by the weakening and eventual elimination of various independent social forces. Under a series of Western influences, including the French Revolution and the establishment of a constitutional republic in the United States, a generation of social classes, known as the “intelligentsia,” emerged in Russia, eager to transform society radically. It was a group of intellectuals who pursued political power and were fascinated by revolution.

The term intelligentsia lacks a universally accepted definition. This group differed from the broadly defined intellectuals. While some of this group were highly educated, many others were not. They had a strong sense of social responsibility and political radicalism and were passionate about revolution. Some were exceptional revolutionary writers, philosophers, leaders, and so on, while others could barely read. The major disagreements among them concerned their visions for a new world and strategies for disrupting the old one. Some aimed to dismantle the old world through plots, violence, and even acts of terror while others advocated for disseminating education and waiting for a favorable moment for revolution. Some were eager to establish constitutional governance and a republic, without realizing that constitutionalism is inseparable from compromise. Some were keen to establish socialism, while others were passionate about the dictatorship of the proletariat (“The Intelligencia,” in Pipes, Reference Pipes1991).

The emergence of the intelligentsia was a particularly crucial phenomenon in Russia, having its roots in Europe. The phenomenon and terminology of the intelligentsia evolved in France and Germany before being transmitted to Russia. This development occurred in conjunction with social movements and transformations such as constitutionalism, socialism, and Marxism. In France, severe repression of reform-minded intellectuals by the absolute monarchy, which denied them the opportunity for peaceful change as seen in England, led to a collective radicalization of this group, forming the intelligentsia (Tocqueville, Reference de Tocqueville1856). However, by the end of the nineteenth century, the establishment of a constitutional government in France enabled reformist intellectuals to operate effectively, leading to the gradual receding of the intelligentsia class.

The Tsarist regime in Russia was even more oppressive towards reformist intellectuals than the French absolute monarchy. In Tsarist Russia, the conditions for the existence of open social organizations were absent, as was a foundation for rational discourse. Moreover, the Russian Orthodox tradition had evolved into an empty shell devoid of religious substance, fostering theoretical superficiality, emotional euphoria, and self-sacrificing fanaticism among Russian intellectuals. These conditions catalyzed the evolution of the Russian intelligentsia. The French intelligentsia was the central force behind the formation of the Jacobin dictatorship, while the Russian intelligentsia laid the foundation for Bolshevism and played a vital role in establishing the totalitarian regime.

Since the nineteenth century, the intelligentsia had been at the forefront of social change in Russia. The majority were secular. Yet, even those self-professed atheists were deeply influenced by Russian Orthodoxy. The Decembrists, an early radical group who attempted an armed coup (while it is debatable whether they were part of the intelligentsia, their influence on it henceforth is undeniable), had a profound and far-reaching influence. The Bolsheviks inherited some traditions of the Decembrists, particularly in conspiring armed coups to seize power.

The ideas of constitutionalism that impacted Russian society came from the French Revolution, especially its early stages. Following the Napoleonic Wars, Tsar Alexander I initiated tentative reforms, including drafting a constitution and partial emancipation of the serfs. However, some radical young aristocratic officers, including those who had participated in the war and had been in France as part of the victorious troops, believed that the Tsar was merely stalling on reform. Confronted with the Tsar’s autocratic rule and inspired by the French Revolution, they were convinced that constitutionalism could only be achieved by forcefully abolishing the Tsarist autocracy. As a result, they established several secret revolutionary societies, the earliest being the Union of Salvation, which advocated for a constitutional monarchy, and the Union of Prosperity, which called for the establishment of a republic.

In 1825, Alexander I died. Various secret societies conspired to stage an armed uprising on the eve of Nicholas I’s accession to the throne. They drafted a republican constitution and planned to convene a Constituent Assembly immediately after overthrowing the Tsarist government and declaring the abolition of serfdom. The uprising was scheduled for December of the Russian calendar, hence the name of the participants, the Decemberists.

After the suppression of the Decembrist uprising, Nicholas I pushed the Tsarist Empire, already one of the most authoritarian in Europe, one step further towards totalitarianism to prevent further armed insurrections. He aimed to establish a police state that integrated ideology and autocratic rule based on the Russian Orthodox Church. Nicholas I enhanced the secret police system, including the network of informants, and proposed the trinity of fundamental principles for governing Russia: Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, Reference Riasanovsky and Steinberg2011).

This trinity directly contradicted democratic constitutionalism. It declared to the public that the Orthodox faith was the foundation of Russia and that all beings were created by God and were subject to His will. The populace was warned not to entertain thoughts of changing Russia’s autocratic system. The Tsar’s absolute authority was depicted as a sacred power bestowed by God, inviolable and similar to a father’s authority over his family. Building upon this foundation of Orthodoxy and autocracy, the concept of nationality referred to the unique characteristics of the Russian people and their deep loyalty and affection for the Tsar.

This trinity of principles, as summarized and proposed by Nicholas I, persisted into the twentieth century and even continued after the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1905. The ideology of the Tsarist Empire, along with the caesaropapist rule and the rigorous secret police system, evolved into institutional genes that were inherited by the totalitarian regime.

At the same time as Tsarist rule became increasingly autocratic, the tide of striving for democratic constitutionalism and advocating socialism was rising in Europe. These two factors further strengthened the Russian intelligentsia. The spirit of the Decemberists, with their secret societies and conspiratorial violence, became a model for generations of Russian intelligentsia with strong religious messianic sentiments. Like secular religious believers, they saw themselves as having a sacred duty to save Russia and the world, including through intrigue and violence, when necessary,

An important successor to the spirit of the Decemberists was Alexander Herzen. Together with his follower Chernyshevsky, he was one of the most influential revolutionary leaders among Russia’s intelligentsia. As a young man, Herzen was influenced by Jacobinism and inspired by the Decemberists to stand firm against private property. He founded the ideology of Russian socialism, arguing that the peasant communes (Obshchina) prevalent in the Russian countryside were socialist in nature and that the peasants were a revolutionary class. He believed that by mobilizing the peasants to overthrow the Tsar, Russia could bypass capitalism and make an immediate transition to socialism. To attract the intelligentsia committed to the ideal of agrarian socialism, he launched the Populist movement, or Narodniks, participants of which proclaimed themselves to be the “essence of the people” and were known as Populists. Before it was suppressed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, the Populist movement was not only the most impactful initiative of the Russian intelligentsia but also the one with the strongest support from the Russian public. Ironically, it was also the cradle of the Bolsheviks, linking them to the Decemberists.

Populist socialism, like Marx’s communism, originated from the utopianism of Christianity. Both advocated the violent overthrow of the old world through class struggle to realize a utopia. The key divergence between the two was that Marxists believed that social development proceeds through inevitable stages, adhering to the immutable laws of historical materialism. As such, Russia had to first pass through the capitalist stage before entering socialism. Populists, however, believed that Russia could bypass capitalism and directly enter socialism through violent revolution, with the momentum of revolutionaries acting as the transformative force in society. The so-called Leninism, which advocated that Russia could lead the world communist revolution, fundamentally departed from the orthodox Marxist theory of historical stages, effectively originating from Herzen and populist theories. Beyond ideology and theory, the Bolsheviks inherited the Populists’ method of organizing secret societies, embraced their revolutionary spirit, and utilized their broad influence among the intelligentsia.

In 1861, a few years after Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War, Tsar Alexander II abolished serfdom. The Tsarist government attributed their defeat to the serfdom system. Although the aims of this decision were to strengthen the military, enhance national power, promote the prosperity of the empire, and had nothing to do with the emerging socialist ideology advocating the emancipation of the serfs, Russian peasants hailed Alexander II as the “Liberator” for abolishing serfdom. However, in reality, the majority of peasants, unable to afford to buy land, remained financially dependent on the nobility and resentful of them. Thus, the abolition of serfdom further weakened the Russian nobility while enhancing support for the Tsar.

The Populists saw the abolition of serfdom as a reform towards capitalism and feared that it would destroy the existing communal system and transform the Russian peasantry from serfs into a proletariat exploited by the bourgeoisie. Chernyshevsky even considered the abolition of serfdom a deception and thought it necessary to immediately incite a peasant uprising to overthrow Tsarist rule. Consequently, Herzen and Chernyshevsky founded the secret organization Land and Freedom in the early 1860s. They planned to organize an armed coup by the peasants against the Tsar’s rule in order to realize autonomy for rural communes and establish Russian socialism (a concept invented by Herzen, as opposed to Marxism). They propagated the idea that history was made by outstanding leaders and it was the intelligentsia’s responsibility to instigate a peasant revolution, overthrow Tsarist rule, and establish socialism. The more radical members believed that immediate assassination attempts must be made to overthrow Tsarist rule.

Land and Liberty brought together a variety of beliefs and political forces in Russia opposing Tsarist rule, with the most popular being the left and extreme left. Notably influential members included anarchist leaders Bakunin and Kropotkin, who advocated instigating a comprehensive peasant uprising, and also included the socialist revolutionaries, who argued for the radical intelligentsia to seize power through conspiratorial methods like assassination. The founders of the Russian Marxist movement were originally Populists. By the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, the Populists reorganized and their mainstream established the SR. After the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution, prior to its suppression by the Bolsheviks in 1918, it was the party that gained the most votes in the general elections of Russia in 1917.

The mainstream of the Populists advocated for a peasant revolution to overthrow Tsarist rule and transition towards socialism based on Russian rural communes. They went to the countryside to propagate their ideas in order to arouse class consciousness among the peasants. They incited revolution, agitated for the overthrow of Tsarist rule, and called for land redistribution. However, most peasants held more faith in the Tsar and the Church than in the propaganda disseminated by the intelligentsia. The failure of these revolutionary activities led some intelligentsia to realize that perhaps Marxism was closer to the truth that Russia could not bypass the capitalist stage. In this sense, the Land and Liberty, directly or indirectly, nurtured the first generation of Russian Marxist leaders, including Plekhanov and the founder of the Bolsheviks, Lenin.

Plekhanov joined the Land and Liberty Party in 1875. Then he went into exile abroad after being imprisoned for organizing a demonstration. From there, he was introduced to Marxism, becoming the first revolutionary to systematically introduce Marxism to Russia. He also established a personal relationship with Engels. In 1883, Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod, who originally introduced Plekhanov to the Land and Liberty Party, as well as Vera Zasulich, established the first Marxist party in Russia, Emancipation of Labor. In 1898, this party was reorganized into the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), from which the Bolsheviks split in 1903. All the leaders of the Russian communist movement, including Lenin, had once been members of the Emancipation of Labor (Baron, Reference Baron1995). However, Plekhanov was an adherent of Orthodox Marxism in the sense of historical stages, thus fundamentally disagreeing with Lenin. Once he recognized the nature of the Bolsheviks, he strongly opposed the party’s tendencies towards terrorism and dictatorship. He explicitly opposed the violent revolution later. After the October Revolution, to escape persecution by the Bolsheviks, he fled to Finland.

It is worth mentioning that on the eve of the creation of the Emancipation of Labor, Vera Zasulich wrote to Marx to inquire about the feasibility of a populist socialist revolution, which aimed at the regeneration of Russian society based on the Russian rural commune. Marx pondered repeatedly and revised his draft four times. Although theoretically ambiguous, he affirmed that the commune would be the fulcrum for social regeneration in Russia. However, harmful influences needed to be eliminated to achieve this (Shanin, Reference Shanin1983). Zasulich later became a leader of the Mensheviks and resolutely opposed the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution (Bergman, Reference Bergman1983).

Whether Marxism can gain traction in a country crucially hinges on whether there are enough people who need Marxism (regardless of their understanding of the theory itself), or whether the revolutionary ideals of Marxism are compatible with the incentives of a substantial number of people. This compatibility largely depends on the society’s institutional genes. Furthermore, those in Russia who needed Marxism had diverse objectives. Many Russians who subscribed to Marxism also adhered to other ideologies. Since the Decembrist uprising, political terrorism and various philosophies, strategies, and tactics closely related to it had gained popularity among the Russian intelligentsia. It was this aspect of political terrorism that set Lenin apart from Plekhanov and, likewise, distinguished the Bolsheviks from the German Social Democratic Party (which was the largest and most crucial party in the international communist movement at that time). Moreover, the aspect of political terrorism within the Bolsheviks laid the groundwork for the split between Russian Marxist groups and the international communist movement, catalyzing the development of the Bolsheviks and the subsequent purges within the Bolshevik Party.

The political terrorism of the Bolsheviks was not a creation of their own but stemmed from Russia’s institutional genes. The seeds of terrorism sown by the Decembrists rapidly grew among the radical intelligentsia in Russia under the extremely autocratic Tsarist regime. After repeated failures, many revolutionaries in the Land and Liberty became more radicalized, believing that their revolutionary goals could only be achieved through terrorist activities. In 1879, some of its core members secretly established the People’s Will Party (Narodnaya Volya), a political terrorist organization that later served as a model for other such organizations. Upon establishing the People’s Will, they declared a death sentence for Tsar Alexander II (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, p. 142).

The People’s Will claimed that its aim was to overthrow the Tsarist regime through terrorist means and ultimately to establish a national parliament. It was a highly centralized organization and all members were required to be ready to sacrifice everything for the revolution and unconditionally obey the decisions of the Executive Committee. These organizational principles later became the foundational principles of Leninist party-building.

The advent of the People’s Will ushered the Russian Revolution into a new phase. Although Rousseau had long argued that sovereignty represented the general will of the people and could compel obedience, and the Jacobins had practiced dictatorship in the name of the general will, it was not until the establishment of the People’s Will that Russian revolutionaries began to self-proclaim as representatives of the people, claiming to embody the will of the people and make decisions on their behalf. They systematically legitimized violent terrorism as a primary political tool, under the guise of the people’s will.

On March 1, 1881, the People’s Will successfully assassinated Tsar Alexander II, a move that greatly encouraged violent revolutionary and terrorist activities in Russia, Europe, and even worldwide. Determined to overthrow the Tsarist regime, they also planned to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. Lenin’s older brother was executed for his involvement in this plot, a circumstance that not only propelled Lenin’s later commitment to violent revolution but also greatly shaped his values and revolutionary strategy. Lenin stated that Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? had molded both him and his brother into revolutionaries and, from his youth, he had aspired to become the revolutionary hero Rakhmetov, as portrayed by Chernyshevsky (Sebestyen, Reference Sebestyen2017).

A widely held belief among the Russian intelligentsia was that revolution could not be disentangled from violence and conspiracy and that secretive organizations were necessary. In this respect, the various radical groups were in sync. They prepared themselves as secular crusaders and propagandists, ready for martyrdom, and accumulated decades of experience in secretive organizations and terrorist activities. For instance, the SR Party, a rival to the Bolsheviks and a consistent victor in elections, had always maintained several clandestine branches involved in political assassinations. The Bolsheviks’ highly centralized and secretive organizational principles for party-building were derived from the institutional genes of secret political organizations originating in Tsarist Russia. These principles evolved based on these institutional genes and were not entirely Lenin’s invention. The following chapters (Chapters 8–10) will further analyze the specific role that the institutional genes of secret terrorist organizations played in the construction of the Bolshevik Party and the Chinese Communist Party, respectively.

7.5.1 Constitutional Plight and the Birth of the Soviets

The inception and centuries-long evolution of the Russian Empire did not foster the development of institutional genes necessary for constitutionalism, such as secured and dispersed private property rights and freedom of association. The Tsarist system and Eastern Orthodoxy drove a wide and profound chasm between Russia and Western Europe in terms of institutions and ideologies, a divide that only widened and deepened after the Renaissance and Reformation. Tsar Peter the Great studied in Western Europe and, recognizing Russia’s backwardness (a consensus among Russian intellectuals for centuries), was determined to Westernize its arts and technology. However, he not only insisted on retaining but also on strengthening and centralizing Russia’s autocratic system. He aimed to consolidate the autocratic system through the acquisition of Western scientific and technological knowledge. As a result, while fortifying a centrally controlled autocratic system, he built many Western-style factories, attracted numerous Western experts to Russia, and sent intellectuals to study in the West. He also established Russia’s first Western-style university, paving the way for economic and cultural exchanges with the West and marking the onset of Russia’s enlightenment.

Inheriting Peter the Great’s legacy, Catherine the Great (r. 1762–1796) further propelled Westernization in Russia across various fields. Born into Prussian nobility, she ascended to the throne through a coup d’état supported by the nobility. Her reign coincided with the flourishing Enlightenment movement in Western Europe. Catherine was particularly interested in the liberal ideas prevalent during the Enlightenment. She maintained extensive private correspondence with intellectual leaders of the French Enlightenment, such as Voltaire, and was a generous patron to Denis Diderot, who urged her to transform Russia into a utopia and proposed specific implementation strategies (Durant and Durant, Reference Durant and Durant1967). While promoting liberalization in culture, she firmly upheld imperial power. She only permitted discussion of ideas of constitutionalism but not its practice, nor the formation of any significant social force that could potentially challenge the imperial power.

Since the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, Russia found itself in a predicament where liberal ideas were widespread but could not be implemented. The variance over time was merely the extent of control by the Tsarist government. During more lenient periods, people could openly advocate for liberalization and constitutionalism. In stricter periods, dissidents were banished to Siberia or expelled from the country. However, when some intellectuals were prepared to die for freedom, the deterrent effect of punishments became limited. Consequently, liberal ideologies such as human rights, democracy, freedom, and constitutionalism spread rapidly and gained popularity in Russia from the late eighteenth century onward. This early phase of Enlightenment, which Russia had undergone, served as another distinguishing factor from China, apart from Orthodoxy.

Russian intellectuals and aristocrats, having not experienced the Renaissance or the Reformation, were abruptly exposed to liberalizing ideas from the West and became enthusiastic about actualizing these new ideals. However, within the Russian system, even moderate constitutionalist goals were a utopia that could only be dreamed of but not realized. Shortly after the beginning of the French Revolution, Catherine realized that liberalization could lead to revolution, endangering the imperial rule. Subsequently, Russian monarchs deliberately resisted the idea of a constitutional monarchy, striving to maintain the autocratic system.

Among Catherine’s successors, Alexander II went the furthest in terms of liberalization. The most significant of his reforms was the emancipation of the serfs, although this was intended to strengthen the country’s military and economy. He also initiated top-down reforms on local administration and established autonomous zemstvo assemblies at the local level. Although the members of these assemblies were elected, they did not possess legislative power and only managed local administration. His judicial reforms, which fully implemented jury trials, public hearings, and a counsel system, abolished noble privileges in legal proceedings, seeming to take a step towards institutional justice. However, he stipulated that the Tsar was not subject to judicial constraints, thereby weakening the nobility compared to their status before the reforms. Nevertheless, these reforms did lead to the creation of numerous lawyers and related intellectuals. Similarly, the establishment and development of district and regional assemblies cultivated a desire for local autonomy among elected officials and led to the formation of legally recognized local organizations. Universities also saw significant development, becoming the primary breeding grounds for the intelligentsia. All of this laid the groundwork for the subsequent creation of generations of intellectuals and social change in Russia.

However, Alexander II was assassinated. On the day of the assassination, he had just signed the document for constitutional reform (Montefiore, Reference Montefiore2017, pp. 446–449). The substantial content of this reform involved inviting various sectors of society to consult on national policies, relaxing restrictions on freedom of speech, and expanding local election rights. However, it had nothing to do with any social force that could counterbalance the Tsar, nor was it related to constitutionalism in any conceptual sense. In fact, Alexander II made it clear that the power bestowed upon him by God could not possibly be shared with any so-called elected representatives, let alone be constrained by them (Montefiore, Reference Montefiore2017, pp. 429–446). Count Loris-Melikov, who drafted the reform document on behalf of the Tsar, was a general with numerous military honors and a record of successfully suppressing political terrorists and was one of Alexander II’s most trusted loyalists.

After Alexander II was assassinated, his successor Alexander III completely reversed all reforms with liberal tendencies. Through the establishment of a more stringent secret police system and harsher repression, Alexander III further solidified the Russian system, pushing one more step closer to totalitarianism. This bred more radical actions that violently resisted the Russian government, further nurturing the growth of the intelligentsia and their radicalism.

Towards the end of Alexander III’s reign, another crucial social event in Russia shook the foundation of imperial rule – a devastating famine with massive casualties. Faced with a disaster that was beyond its control, the Tsarist government reluctantly issued a decree calling for voluntary relief, eliciting an enormous response from all sectors of society. Tolstoy led tens of thousands of volunteers, raised funds, and opened hundreds of soup kitchens in the affected areas. Almost everyone, from zemstvo assemblies to universities, intellectuals, and political groups ranging from conservatives to liberals and even the most radical factions, participated in the relief efforts. This fostered the widespread development of radical ideologies, political parties, and terrorist organizations within Russian society. The severe crisis brought on by the famine was transformed into an opportunity to stimulate and politically mobilize Russian society (Figes, Reference Figes2017, pp. 157–164).

This devastating famine marked a turning point in the fate of Marxism and thus communist totalitarianism in Russia. During this period, many radical populists who had previously disdained Marxism came to realize that Marxist historical materialism was more insightful and persuasive and the global proletarian revolution proposed by Marx was more appealing. Both Lenin and Martov, who later became the leader of the Mensheviks, transformed into Marxists during this time and joined the Labor Emancipation League. Simultaneously, many populist ideas, such as the collective definition of workers and peasants as “the working people” (Figes, Reference Figes2017, pp. 151–152), were incorporated into Bolshevism through Lenin. This concept was the theoretical launching pad from which the Bolsheviks initiated the communist totalitarian revolution in Russia. However, it contradicted the Marxist theory about the proletariat and proletarian revolution, thus violating the logic of Marx’s theory. Nonetheless, from the perspective of the communist totalitarian revolution, theories that can incite the people are most valuable, even if their logic is flawed. Decades later, the term “working people” was passed on to China, becoming a fundamental concept of the Communist revolution there and to communist revolutions worldwide.

The remarkable growth of civil society organizations throughout the country in the process of voluntary relief posed a threat to the Tsarist government. Once the severity of the disaster slightly abated, suppression was reinstated. In an attempt to suppress the spread of radical organizations and radical ideas, the Russian government’s persecution of university students became blatant. This sparked a full-scale revolt on university campuses, with thousands of students joining the Social Revolutionary Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Union for Liberation, the latter of which, unlike the first two left-wing parties, aimed to achieve constitutional reform. Alexander Kerensky, who later became prime minister of the Provisional Government, joined the Social Revolutionary Party during this period.

At the same time, the government also persecuted intellectuals, zemstvo members (the assemblies were monarchist but also reformist), social celebrities, and aristocrats. In 1899, after the Tsarist government closed down all zemstvo assemblies, the originally moderate conservative members and nobles established a constitutional reform organization known as the Forum (Beseda), which became the main force for constitutional reform (Figes, Reference Figes2017, pp. 164–165).

However, the attempts to promote constitutionalism were weak and far from capable of carrying out constitutional reform. What eventually forced the Tsarist government into constitutional reform was a combination of internal and external pressures. The Tsar did not promise constitutional reform or the establishment of a State Duma until the disastrous defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. A month after the defeat, Russia signed an armistice with Japan as the defeated party.

The Russo-Japanese War was a war fought on Chinese territory and in Sino-Japanese waters due to Tsarist Russia’s encroachment on Chinese land, which infringed on Japanese interests in China. By bribing high-ranking officials of the Qing Empire in the final years of the nineteenth century, the Tsarist government obtained China’s consent to build a railway across Manchuria. In 1896, under the pretext of attending the coronation of Nicholas II, Li Hongzhang, the Qing Minister, visited Russia and signed a secret treaty, forming a Sino-Russian alliance to jointly respond to Japan’s aggression. However, two years later, the Tsar deployed troops to capture Port Arthur (Lüshun) on the Liaoning Peninsula of China. Sergius Witte, one of the Russian signatories, mentioned in his memoir that the Chinese side greatly treasured this secret treaty with Russia. After the Japanese Army helped the Russians to invade Beijing during the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Russians found the original copy of this secret treaty signed by Witte, surprisingly stored in a safe in the Empress Dowager’s bedroom. Witte commented with a hint of regret that had Russia adhered to the Sino-Russian secret treaty, the disastrous Russo-Japanese War could have been avoided (Witte, Reference Witte2016, pp. 68–79). Contrary to Witte’s wishes, in 1903, Nicholas II decided to fully annex Manchuria, posing a threat to Japan. After a series of protests, Japan launched an unexpected attack on the Russian forces in Manchuria in 1904 (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, p. 13). Thus, the Russo-Japanese War began.

The Russo-Japanese War stirred a nationalistic frenzy in Russia, completely overwhelming all divisions on other issues. Almost all political parties, including the majority of radicals, fervently sided with the government. Japan was portrayed as the Yellow Peril, as Mongols, and even as spiders and monkeys. This event seemed to present the Tsar with an excellent opportunity to resolve domestic issues. However, the Russian military quickly fell into disarray and defeat. What initially appeared as potential nationalistic fervor that could have been beneficial for the Tsarist government quickly turned into a comprehensive denouncement of the government’s incompetence. The defeat became a catalyst for the destruction of the absolute monarchy and caused deep panic within the Tsarist government, and in May 1905, the news that the Russian fleet had been wiped out in the Battle of Tsushima triggered an immediate internal reaction from Nicholas II: a call was made for the urgent deployment of a maximum police force to suppress any anti-government reaction at home (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, p. 31).

In the face of both internal and external threats, the Tsar was more concerned about the internal ones. At the height of the Russo-Japanese War, when Russia’s defeat became evident, the Tsar’s favorite, the chief of police Vyacheslav von Plehve, was assassinated by the Terrorist Brigade of the SR. The turning point in Russian history came with the Bloody Sunday events in early January 1905, sparking a constitutional revolution and giving birth to the first Soviets.

The events of Bloody Sunday began with a non-political petition organized by a semi-official, semi-religious union, the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers. The Assembly was initially orchestrated by the police head Plehve to counter the autonomous trade unions. Its members were typically devout Orthodox Christians who considered themselves loyal to the Tsar. The main purpose of the petition was to call for better working conditions for workers. The Assembly had discussed coordination and mutual support with the zemstvo (which was pro-tsar but favored constitutional monarchy) representatives prior to the petition and it also had support from the Union of Liberation. However, the government not only banned this non-political petition but threatened violent repression if it went ahead. This angered the workers who had hitherto been loyal to the Tsar. On January 9, over 100,000 enraged workers marched to the Winter Palace to petition the Tsar about the welfare of the workers. Pre-arranged military police opened fire on the demonstrating crowd, causing hundreds of casualties. The tragedy, known in history as Bloody Sunday, pushed Russia to the brink of chaos and fueled the emergence of totalitarianism. In response to the threat from the Tsarist government, a month later, nearly 150,000 workers in Petersburg elected the Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies through anonymous voting (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, pp. 21–27). It was the first elected, region-wide workers’ organization in Russian history. However, groups composed of individuals without property rights do not primarily aim to limit governmental power in order to protect property rights. Therefore, even if they are elected, they cannot become the main driving force for constitutionalism. Indeed, the Bolsheviks later used the Soviets, which initially had no connection with them, as a tool to seize power and rule, making them a part of the totalitarian system. This led to the Soviets becoming the official name of the first communist totalitarian regime in history.

In the months following the Bloody Sunday events, the near total destruction of the Russian fleet in the Tsushima Strait fully exposed the weaknesses of the Tsarist government and military, greatly shocking Russian society. Half a century earlier, people attributed the great defeat of the Russian Army in Crimea to serfdom. This time, the incompetence of the Russian military was generally attributed directly to the Tsarist autocracy. National radical organizations were actively operating and collectively established a general national alliance, the Union of Unions. The primary goal of most parties within this Union was to establish constitutional governance, with the ultimate aspiration of transforming Russia into a democratic republic. To exert pressure on the Tsar, they planned to organize general strikes across the country. The mobilization was concentrated on university campuses. Radical students from various factions within the Union of Unions turned these campuses into bases for propaganda, organization, and incitement of workers. In this way, the Union transformed spontaneous workers’ movements, originally organized for welfare purposes by individual factories, into large-scale political strikes.

Menshevik and SR university students ventured beyond their campuses to assist in the large-scale establishment of workers’ councils, or Soviets. These young communist/socialist revolutionaries mobilized the power of workers, positioning the Soviets as institutions competing for power with the soon-to-be-established parliament. On October 13, the day when a large-scale strike paralyzed the national railway, the Saint Petersburg Soviet convened its first plenary meeting, with the SR Party, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks each taking a third of the seats. However, the Mensheviks exerted the most influence over the Soviets, with Trotsky as their key leader. Ironically, the Bolsheviks at the time scorned, mistrusted, and even antagonized the Soviets, as they were solely concerned with the conspiratorial activities (Figes, Reference Figes2017, p. 190). They even once boycotted the Soviets, citing the proletariat’s yet unrealized seizure of power as the reason (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, p. 41).

Under the impetus of the SR Party and the Mensheviks, Soviets were established in more than fifty cities across the country, organizing larger-scale strikes. Peasant riots and even armed uprisings took place in more than a fifth of the country’s counties. The Tsarist government’s repression proved ineffective. Prime Minister Witte and other ministers strongly advised the Tsar to accept moderate demands for constitutional reform in order to avert the escalating revolution. Under immense pressure from internal and external threats, on October 17, Nicholas II felt he had no choice but to sign a decree, announcing the initiation of constitutional reforms. This document, known as the October Manifesto, pledged allegiance to the Tsar and announced the pursuit of reforms in three major areas: recognizing basic citizen rights, holding elections for the State Duma, and legislating by the State Duma (Witte, Reference Witte2016, p. 174). The October Manifesto was drafted by Prime Minister Witte on his own initiative and he painstakingly persuaded the Tsar to sign, under the long-term pressure of the Union of Liberation and the zemstvo and pressure from the Union of Unions and ongoing national strikes. Subsequently, in response to the demands for voting rights from the striking workers, the Tsarist government promulgated a new State Duma Election Law on December 11.

However, constitutional governance cannot be established solely through laws or edicts. For the establishment of such governance, it is essential to address and resolve numerous deep-rooted societal issues. Paramount among these is the necessity for a force to exist within a society that can balance imperial authority, a precondition for making constitutional governance viable. Indeed, the Tsar’s signing of the October Edict served merely as an expedient last resort. In addition, various factions opposed to constitutional governance became more active within Russian society, particularly the Bolsheviks. As such, from its very inception, Russia’s constitutional reform was pervaded by the risk of failure.

7.5.2 A Failing Constitutional Reform

Constitutionalism is a system of rules designed to limit and govern powers, ensuring mutual restraints between competing forces. These rules regulate the interplays of interest groups, facilitating their mutual compromise and keeping them in check. Many striving for constitutionalism often concentrate on the formulation of these rules. However, the history of the global quest for constitutional democracy over the past two centuries proves that the existence of mutual checks and balances in society is a prerequisite for establishing constitutionalist institutions. Written constitutional rules alone, when formulated in the absence of evenly balanced power blocs, often fail to function in practice.

The evolution of the Tsarist imperial system represents a process of suppressing and dispossessing the nobility. The Tsars explicitly made autocracy the fundamental principle of governance, systematically employing violence and the secret police to annihilate any competition. The intelligentsia that surfaced in response to this autocracy aspired to institute a constitutional system in Russia akin to those found in Western European nations. However, Russia fell short of the necessary social forces capable of counterbalancing the imposing imperial autocracy. As a result, tensions soared between the Tsar’s pursuit of self-preservation – which mandated further autocracy – and the intelligentsia’s endeavors to champion constitutionalism by challenging the status quo. This fraught climate of constitutional reform and mounting discord presented ripe opportunities for the Bolsheviks not only to undermine the constitutional reforms but also to kindle a communist totalitarian movement.

Following the issuance of the October Manifesto, the Tsar soon regretted the concessions. He maintained that he had no alternative at the time but he strongly believed that royal authority should remain unrestricted, viewing this as an inviolable principle. To avoid implications of power checks and balances in the constitution, Nicholas deliberately titled the officially promulgated 1906 charter as the “Fundamental Laws,” rather than the constitution. He stated, “I did not create the Duma to direct me, but to advise me.” He further affirmed his prerogative to both grant and revoke the power of the Duma and the Fundamental Laws. Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin made it abundantly clear that the 1906 Fundamental Laws were a grace bestowed by the Tsar, not an agreement reached through negotiation between the ruler and the ruled. Thus, Russia had no real constitution at all (Pipes, Reference Pipes1991, p. 154).

Despite Nicholas sanctioning of the Fundamental Laws with the intent of preserving the Tsar’s autocratic dominance, the Laws did pave the way for the establishment of the Duma, catalyzing the first general elections in Russian history. More notably, the Duma, born from these elections, held a modicum of legislative power and control over a segment of the state budget, marking a small stride toward a constitutional monarchy. However, the Fundamental Laws unequivocally declared the Tsar as a despot, firmly grasping the reins of fundamental authority including administration, armaments, foreign relations, the right to declare peace or war, and oversight of the imperial courts. The Tsar also retained the prerogative to dissolve the Duma. In a move to further dilute the power of the elected Duma, the Fundamental Laws restructured the State Council, an entity dating back to the reign of Alexander I, into the Duma’s upper house. This upper house was heavily influenced by the Tsar, with half of its representatives being nobility appointed by him.

When Prime Minister Witte initially endeavored to convince the Tsar to approve the October Manifesto he had composed, his efforts were propelled not solely by the imperative to reconcile with the constitutionalists but also by his sanguine expectations about the electoral outcomes. The government, under the assumption that the peasants – comprising over 80 percent of the Russian populace – would rally behind the Tsar and pro-monarchist right-wing faction, severely miscalculated public sentiment. The electoral results painted a starkly different picture: right-wing parties only managed to secure 45 out of 497 seats. In contrast, the centrist-left Constitutional Democratic Party, a vigorous advocate for constitutionalism, clinched 184 seats, making it the majority party. The left-leaning factions gained 124 seats and a significant number of the largely centrist-left independents captured 112 seats (Riasanovsky and Steinberg, Reference Riasanovsky and Steinberg2011, pp. 406–408).

Immediately upon the Duma’s establishment, stark internal divisions began to emerge. After heated debates, the Duma passed a political reform program on May 5, 1906. A mere few days later, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Goremykin, speaking on behalf of the government, contended that the Duma had overstepped its jurisdiction with its reform demands, thereby rejecting the Duma’s program. Countering this, Nabokov, representing the Constitutional Democratic Party, sharply retorted, “The executive power must be subordinate to the legislative power.” Consequently, the Duma passed a resolution demanding the immediate resignation of the current cabinet. In a swift act of retaliation, the Tsar promptly disbanded the first State Duma.

The second State Duma convened at the dawn of 1907, with the Social Democratic Party, encompassing both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, capturing approximately 10 percent of the seats. However, on June 3, 1907, the Tsar, not for the first time, issued a decree to dissolve the Duma. He rationalized his decision by alleging that “a significant proportion of the members of the second State Duma were insincere,” and in a subsequent move, he subjected the Bolshevik and Menshevik representatives to judicial trials, grueling labor, or life-long banishment. By twice dissolving the nationally elected Duma immediately after the inception of the constitutional system, the Tsar clearly conveyed to the electorate the profound failure of the constitutional monarchy. Furthermore, by sentencing Bolshevik leaders to punitive measures, he inadvertently transformed them into martyrs of the revolutionary cause.

In the aftermath of dissolving the Duma, the Tsar unilaterally modified the electoral law without the involvement of the legislative body, which violated the Fundamental Laws. Under the newly instituted electoral law, landowners were slated to occupy half of the Duma’s seats. Nicholas II justified this change by claiming that his divine autocratic authority as the Tsar entitled him to rescind past promises. The new electoral law led to a shift in the Duma’s composition, with the Octobrist Party, a centrist faction favoring a constitutional monarchy, becoming the largest party and the Constitutional Democratic Party emerging as the main opposition. Although the Octobrists aimed to advance moderate conservative constitutional reforms, they found themselves increasingly marginalized by the Tsar’s government. Their representation diminished from 154 seats in the third term to a mere 95 in the fourth.

The ten years of the third and fourth Dumas were characterized by extreme left- and right-wing terrorist organizations undertaking rampant assassinations of government officials and Duma deputies, as well as the government’s frantic suppression of opposition. Collectively, these forces pushed Russia towards the brink of collapse, laying the groundwork for the birth of the more violent Bolshevik totalitarian regime. In just two years from 1906 to 1907, the SR Party assassinated 3,400 people. The far-right assassinated several Duma representatives of the Constitutional Democratic Party. In response to these terrorist activities, Stolypin’s government greatly enhanced the already rigorous secret police system, including the informant system. This sophisticated and rigorous system, perfected by him, would subsequently morph into a critical component of future totalitarian regimes. Ironically, Stolypin himself was assassinated in 1911 by police agents with revolutionary ties (Figes, Reference Figes2018, pp. 230–231).

From the onset, the Bolsheviks, as a Marxist-Leninist party, were fundamentally opposed to constitutionalism, viewing it as their primary target for revolutionary action. Their goal was to seize power through armed struggle to establish a proletarian dictatorship. Therefore, during the inaugural Duma elections, they initiated a nationwide strike to boycott what they termed “bourgeois Duma elections,” all under the banner of advocating for universal suffrage. This move, however, resulted in a significant setback. Years later, Lenin acknowledged the Bolsheviks’ boycott of the Duma elections in 1906 as a strategic miscalculation. Consequently, the Bolsheviks began to perceive the Duma as a battleground for undermining its constitutional reforms. Although the Bolsheviks were relatively weak at this time, and their strategies for derailing constitutionalism did not significantly affect society, the pervasive institutional genes resisting constitutionalism in Russian society were strong enough to help the Bolsheviks.

Indeed, from the first Duma onwards, the majority of elected deputies were from the left, reflecting the fundamental situation in Russia at the time. Because all the far-left parties like the SR Party, Bolsheviks, and Mensheviks boycotted the Duma and refused to participate in elections, the center-left forces dominated the first Duma. The Constitutional Democratic Party, which held the largest number of seats, nominally aimed to pursue democratic constitutionalism with all its might. If they had taken the Fundamental Laws as a starting point to promote constitutionalism gradually, seeking opportunities for compromise and steadying each small step in the process, and if the government, too, had compromised under pressure, there might have been a chance for constitutional democracy in Russia to develop. However, the Constitutional Democratic Party almost repeated the practice of the constitutionalists in the Estates-General on the eve of the French Revolution. This similarity was not coincidental. Russian constitutionalists were intentionally learning from the French Revolution. They believed that with voters’ support, they could pressure the Tsar to surrender sovereignty to the Duma. Therefore, not only did they refuse to compromise with the government on any issue but they also declared that they did not recognize the Fundamental Laws and demanded the immediate convening of a constitutional assembly to formulate a constitution. They further demanded the resignation of the whole government and the Duma to legislate for land reform to equally distribute land (Figes, Reference Figes2017, p. 217).

In the end, the ultimate failure of the constitutional revolution resulted in a power vacuum upon the collapse of the imperial regime. This provided the Bolsheviks with an opportune moment to seize power through military force. The institutional genes of Russia facilitated the Bolsheviks, post-coup, to establish an even more despotic totalitarian regime. In the ensuing chapter, we will substantiate, through historical evidence, the reasons why the failure of the constitutional revolution in Russia was inevitable, even in the absence of Bolshevik sabotage. We will then delve into how Russia’s institutional genes, including aspects such as the Russian Orthodox Church, the Tsarist imperial system, and the tradition of covert political organizations, laid the groundwork for the creation and evolution of the Bolshevik totalitarian regime in varied ways.