Thread by @epektasis_

While Muscovy did adapt the state institutions of the Kipchak Khanate to its own, an absolutely uncontroversial well-accepted claim, Russian autocracy can be explained primarily by the vast sparsely distances between cities and extremely cold weather.

If it had been "democratic" Novgorod that had conquered the Russian principalities into a single unified state, you would have seen a similar autocracy emerge. The 19th century State school of Kavelin and Chicherin used Hegelianism to justify autocracy as the height of government

Both the Slavophiles and Westernizers agreed on Russian autocracy as an unviolable principle. If anything, the 18th century Romanovs were drawing upon Western absolutism and Lutheran state churches to develop their own institutions.

Should also be noted that Peter the Great's efforts to summon German aristocrats into Russia as his aides were a conscious effort to create a privileged noble class with no pre-Muscovy lands and prestige entirely dependent on the crown to safeguard autocracy.

It was the native Russian families of Dolgoruky and Golitsyn that tried to create a mixed constitution in the Affair of 1730 when Anna I was about to ascend on the throne, still conscious of pre-unification aristocratic republican tradition in Russia.

Russian conservatives like Pyotr Durnovo and Nikolai Karamzin typically cited Aristotelian relativism vis a vis constitutions to argue autocracy was the only system fit for Russia on the basis on geography, not any racial distinction as such.

Also, if there is any innovation in Stalin's historic conception of the Russian state compared to his predecessors, it was his creation of the cult of Ivan IV Grozny as a great statesman and unifier, whereas his prior reception had always been mixed at best.