The Tsar Must Die: The Thanatological Discourse of Male Rule in 18th-Century Russia

Abstract

This article considers the reasons for the degradation of male principles of rule in 18th-century Russia with reference to official documents, memoirs, and literary texts (F. Prokopovich, M. Lomonosov, G. Derzhavin, A. T. Bolotov, Catherine II, Ch. Masson, G. L. Oberkirch, etc.). The author considers the formation of the ideology “the Tsar must die” in conditions of gynocratic rule and “Russian matriarchy”, which reached its climax in the era of Empress Catherine II. The author considers the main mechanisms of women’s reigns, which include the formation of a state mythology of classicism based on grand genres and discrediting their royal opponents by accusing them of insanity, betraying national interests, or childishness unforgivable in the Enlightenment. The article also analyses the causes of the thanatological discourse of male rule, based on the sacrificial complex of the male ruler voluntarily sacrificing himself to the interests of the Fatherland (the case of Peter I) or being sacrificed to such interests by female rulers, guided by the ideology of the Enlightenment and based on the broad support of their subjects (Ivan Antonovich, Peter III). In the case of Emperor Paul I, the author studies why he was an implacable opponent of gynocratic rule as such, realising in his behaviour the literary mythologemes of the Russian Don Quixote and Hamlet on the throne. The article concludes with an answer to why gynecocracy exhausted its potential at the turn of the 19th century.