"The Russian People and the State" by Nikolai Alekseev, summary

Nikolai Alekseev’s treatise was written in exile after the 1917 Revolution. The work explores in detail the political worldview of the Russian masses, sharply distinguishing it from the Westernizing views of the upper classes. The book’s most important aspect lies in its methodology: the author analyzes the people’s legal consciousness through folklore, epics, and religious teachings.

Being a rigorous academic study in the field of legal philosophy, the book has never been adapted for film. The text has not been nominated for any prizes, but remains a fundamental source for the study of Eurasian political thought.

Critique of the Slavophile myth and the nature of the Russian Time of Troubles

Since the time of Peter the Great, the upper classes had been guided by the interests of the Western European world. The masses maintained their own spiritual life. Slavophiles such as Konstantin Aksakov and Ivan Kireevsky created the myth of Russia’s peaceful development. They argued that the Russian state was based on the voluntary adoption of power and mutual trust.

Alekseev refutes this idyll. The Muscovite kingdom was formed in the harsh struggle with Asian nomads. It was built as a military camp with harsh draft service. The people fled state oppression into the steppes. This flight gave birth to the Cossacks and a continuous series of rebellions. The Time of Troubles and the uprisings of Stepan Razin, Kondraty Bulavin, and Yemelyan Pugachev were fueled by these fugitive freemen. Marxist historians have rightly identified these movements as a profound social crisis, not dynastic intrigue.

Official ideology and popular monarchism

The organizing idea was the Moscow autocratic monarchy. Its theorists were Joseph of Volokolamsk and his followers, the Josephites. They likened the earthly king to the God of the Old Testament. The king was endowed with divine wrath and mercy. Ivan the Terrible put this ideal into practice. Joseph’s monastic rule was built on strict external discipline and total control.

The people accepted this form of monarchy. Proverbs expressed their belief in the tsar as the bearer of divine truth. However, the peasants hated the boyars and the clerks, seeing them as a distortion of the tsar’s will. The establishment of the empire by Peter the Great destroyed the alliance between the state and the people. The Old Believers perceived the empire as the reign of the Antichrist. They rejected the new laws, the Senate, and the imperial title, demanding a return to the pre-Nikonian church and the zemstvo system.

Alternative to the Trans-Volga elders

Josephism was opposed by the teachings of the "Trans-Volga Elders," led by Nil Sorsky. Vassian Patrikeyev and Maxim the Greek joined this movement. They demanded the separation of church and state. Monasteries should serve as free schools of spiritual practice, not state-run correctional institutions. Nil Sorsky’s Skete Rule taught inner mystical experience.

The Trans-Volga people rejected the cruelty of the Old Testament. They called on the monarch to rule on the basis of evangelical love, mercy, and law. The concept of an Orthodox legal monarchy emerged. Thinkers condemned the arbitrary rule of nobles and slavery. The political defeat of the elders deprived the country of the chance for peaceful legal development.

The ideology of dictatorship and oprichnina

Ivan Peresvetov formulated the concept of a harsh dictatorship. He saw Muscovy’s main problem as the arbitrary exercise of power by the boyars. Peresvetov valued state truth above formal faith. His ideal was the Turkish Sultan Muhammad, who created a loyal army of janissaries and judged his subjects equally.

Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich implemented Peresvetov’s plan through the oprichnina. The monarch divided the country into zemshchina (districts) and oprichnina (communities). The oprichniki were given extraordinary powers to eliminate traitors. The dictatorship relied on terror. The people supported the sovereign in his fight against the aristocracy, seeing in terror a search for lost justice.

The Cossack ideal and epic democracy

The fugitive freemen formed their own political system — the Cossack democracy of the Zaporizhian Sich. Supreme power rested with the general assembly. Legal guarantees for the individual were absent. The hetman could be a despot, but he was easily overthrown by the mob.

This ideal is reflected in Russian epics. The bogatyrs serve Prince Vladimir voluntarily. The prince himself is depicted as weak, cowardly, and dependent on the peasant’s son, Ilya Muromets. Epic Rus’ knows no strict state power. It is a nomadic, semi-anarchic environment. The people’s strength despises bureaucracy and the boyars. Ilya Muromets easily finds common ground with Nightingale the Robber, but clashes with the Prince of Kyiv.

Sectarian radicalism

Russian sectarians went further than the Old Believers in their rejection of the state. They considered secular authority to be an instrument of the devil. Retreats to the desert were practiced, and sometimes mass self-immolations occurred. Mystical sects, such as the Skoptsy, believed in the imminent arrival of the "Tsar-Redeemer," Peter III. He was to overthrow the unjust rulers and establish an earthly paradise.

Rationalist sects, the Doukhobors and Molokans, preached Christian communism. They refused to serve in the army or obey government officials. The Doukhobors divided the world into oppressors and the poor. Their ideal was a powerless community with complete equality of property.

Triumph of folk primitiveness

In 1917, the imperial system collapsed. Western democratic models failed to take hold. Ancient popular instincts resurfaced. The ideas of Cossack freedom, Peresvet’s dictatorship, and sectarian communism prevailed.

The Bolsheviks retained power by relying on this political primitivism. They replaced the Cossack impostor with a system of soviets. The combination of dictatorship and popular representation became a new form of governance.

“The future belongs to an Orthodox state governed by the rule of law, which will be able to combine firm power (the beginning of a dictatorship) with democracy (the beginning of freedom) and with service to social truth,” the author concludes his work.