Chosen by »All the Russian People« - The Idea of an elected Monarch in the 18th Century Russia
Chosen by »All the Russian People« - The Idea of an elected Monarch in the 18th Century Russia

Summary/Abstract: Historians are accustomed to defining eighteenth-century Russia as an autocracy, an absolute monarchy with power so unlimited and alienating that it borders on the despotic. For instance, Richard Pipes, the eminent historian at Harvard University, characterizes the Russian form of government as a system that excludes “society from political decision-making,” and in which “a citizenry...as such does not exist at all...the people is the object of the ruling authority.”1 From this point of view, any suggestion that autocracy included an elective element must appear rather startling, if not downright bizarre. Despite the apparent incongruity, an electoral process indeed played an essential political role during the succession crises of the post-Petrine monarchy.

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