«Dictatorship of Conscience»: Religious and Moral Foundations of the Russian Statehood According to Ivan Solonevich

Abstract

The article examines religious and moral foundations of the Russian statehood as presented by the philosopher and public figure Ivan Solonevich (1891–1953), who, following Vladimir Solovyov, defined his concept as “the dictatorship of conscience”. From Solonevich’s perspective, the specifics of the Russian political tradition consists in its fundamental difference from European feudalism. In Muscovy, the ruling class was selected according to its moral qualities, and the people’s life was based on the self-government (“the people’s monarchy”). Peter the Great ended this tradition by replacing the moral selection criterion with a pragmatic one, which led to the actual destruction of the autocracy and established the dictatorship of the nobility, substituting the people’s monarchy with European absolutism. Due to the unity of the tsar and the people based on the Orthodox faith and the Orthodox Church as the highest authority in worldly affairs, the Russian monarchy was primarily the people’s power and was never established by violence against the people’s will, while its opponents always employed the violence, i.e. murders, uprisings and conspiracies. The foundation of the Russian Orthodox monarchy was the moral feat of the people, its resignation for the sake of fulfilling the will of God. This was possible only in Russia, where the founders of the state themselves were saints. Thus, the Moscow Orthodox Tsardom had no problem with the people’s “control” over the government, which was so pressing in Europe, where outright criminals often became monarchs. In Russia, the principle of absolute trust in the authorities has always been present and has always proven its worth. Only thanks to this trust a small Duchy of Moscow could grow into a great empire. As shown by Ivan Solonevich, the obvious pragmatic effectiveness of the pre-Petrine people’s monarchy was also ensured by a very effective system of the people’s self-government, unparalleled in feudal absolutist Europe.