Thread by @DimitriASimes

The problem with this piece is that it basically goes from Ivan IV to Putin, and draw a completely straight line through 500+ years of Russian history.

Totally ignoring the legions of nuances or trying to do any comparisons with other European societies of the time.

https://twitter.com/jsmilbank/status/1502620468544782336

I mean for example, Tudor England also had political centralization, state-backed violence against its subjects, and a subordination of the church to the regime.

So…not all that different from Russia under Ivan IV. Maybe the 1500s are not the point of divergence after all?

In fact, Russia’s political development for most of its history has been very closely aligned with that of Europe. The Russian Empire was explicitly modelled after European absolute monarchies by Peter I. Centralization and absolutism were continent wide trends

By 1914, Russia was a constitutional monarchy with a parliament that had real power and influence (although balance of power favored the Tsar).

There was also a fairly free press and burgeoning trade union movement that was able to gain real political concessions.

All of that changed following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. So that’s probably a more accurate “turning point” for Russia than Ivan IV.

But the Bolsheviks were also lead by intellectuals who grew up reading Western manifestos and spent extensive time abroad.

So in other words, it’s very a strange decision to blame Ivan IV for a totalitarian political system that was established by followers of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who died in London.

But even then, you can’t draw a straight line from Lenin or Stalin to Putin. There are enormous ideological, political, and economic differences between Putin’s Russia and the USSR. Putin has both denounced the Soviets and praised them.

I think that Putin’s Russia is best understood as a hybrid state that was largely formed by the chaos following the collapse of the USSR. This is an entirely new Russia, although it obviously draws upon some of its prior history.