Adam Zamoyski

Autocracy tempered by strangulation

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s gripping account of life under the tsars shows how Russia has always been dedicated to autocracy

‘It was hard to be a tsar,’ Simon Sebag Montefiore writes in his opening sentence, and what follows fully bears this out. In his thought-provoking introduction, he stresses the unique nature of Russian autocracy and its perverse contradictions; the tsar was absolute ruler, yet he was bound by a tangle of restrictions. His subjects were prepared to accept his tyranny and any cruelty its exercise required, but claimed the right to punish him if he failed to provide strong leadership. The system was never meant to give one person tyrannical powers over everyone else. Nor was it intended to work for the greatest good of the greatest number. It was a very different animal from anything we, with our traditions emanating from ancient Greece and Rome, Judaism and Christianity, have ever known. It was, in the words of the French woman of letters Madame de Staël, ‘autocracy tempered by strangulation’.

The Romanov dynasty reigned for just over 300 years, from 1613 to 1917, and while they expanded their empire at a spectacular rate (an average of 20,000 square miles a year), not one of their 20 monarchs slept easy — with good reason. Few died of natural causes.

The founder of the dynasty was the 16-year-old weakling Michael Romanov, a great-nephew of Ivan the Terrible. He was bullied into accepting the crown as Muscovy emerged from the decade and a half of civil war and foreign invasion known as the Time of Troubles, in which a succession of his predecessors, and most of his family, had suffered more or less grisly ends. Surprisingly, Michael succeeded in stabilising his realm politically and imposing a degree of deference to the person of the tsar. He used religion to create a numinous aura around the throne, and involved the nobility in the process of strengthening it.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in