Professor N.A. Zakharov on the distinctive evolution of the historical development of Russian state power

The article is devoted to the concept of the sociology of power by Professor Nikolai Aleksandrovich Zakharov (1883–1937), as set out in his study “The System of Russian State Power” (1912). N.A. Zakharov defended the state’s right to uniqueness, dissimilarity, and originality. In his eyes, it is the individual characteristics of the state that generate political independence and the vitality of these states. From this position, for him, there followed the need to study the state system of states in connection with history. He saw the peculiarities of the formation of the Russian system of power in the influence of the Byzantine idea of the power of the emperor, the idea of religious autocracy, and the private law nature of the power of the great princes from the Rurik dynasty, who viewed their possessions as their inalienable patrimony, passed on by inheritance in their family. The influence of Westernizing ideas was replaced by state reforms of 1905-1906, which N.A. Zakharov perceived it as both a correction of some of the excesses of absolutism and the establishment of an order that restored the traditional principles of Russian power.

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