it down in the Fundamental Laws of the time that: "To
the Emperor of all the Russias belongs the supreme auto-
cratic power. To obey his commands, not merely from
fear but also for conscience sake, is ordained by God
Himself."

The "elder statesman" and leading spokesman of the
age was Pobiedonostsev, Procurator of the Orthodox
Church and close adviser of three successive sovereigns.
In his Reflections of a Russian Statesman ( 1896) Pobie-
donostsev argued with considerable skill and semi-official
authority his championship of the autocratic principle.
He particularly condemned such items as democracy, elec-
tions, the representative process, the jury system, the
press, free education, charitable institutions, social re-
forms, devotion to knowledge, and the doctrine of evo-
lution. Corresponding to, and indeed partly responsible
for, the so-called "nihilism" of the revolutionists, he
represented the slow, stifling nihilism of reaction. "It is
terrible to think of our condition," he said, "if destiny
had sent us the fatal gift--an All-Russian Parliament."

Some writers think that Russia owes her autocratic
heritage to her close association with the Byzantine Em-
pire, the source from which, and not as in the West from
the Roman Empire, she acquired her religion, her alpha-
bet and the basis of her culture. Other writers attribute
the autocratic tradition to a carry-over from the Mongol
conquest which for two hundred years held Russia in
Asiatic bondage to a semi-barbarous power. Still other
writers see the autocratic principle as more of a native
development, tracing especially from the reign of Peter
the Great and his attempt to bring all aspects of life
under the controlling, and also Westernizing, power of
the state. Whatever its source, a dominant feature of
pre-1900 Russian history would seem to be the develop-
ment in theory and in practice of a centralized state
power at the top of the social pyramid unchecked by any
parallel organization of the masses at the bottom of the
pyramid.

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