Passages about Russia from "Tragedy and Hope"

In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it into their wilderness domains in the north. In this way they imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine alphabet, the Byzantine calendar, the used of domed ecclesiastical architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and innumerable other traits. Most important of all, they
imported the Byzantine totalitarian autocracy, under which all aspects of life, including political, economic, intellectual, and religious, were regarded as departments of government, under the control of an autocratic ruler. These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based ultimately on Greek inability to distinguish between state and society....From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of the state as an absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such important applications of these principles as the idea that the state should control thought and religion, that the Church should be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment of the state, and that the ruler is semi-divine. From the Vikings came the idea that the state is a foreign importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and tribute, that economic innovations are the function of the government, that power rather than law is the basis of social life, and that society, with its people and its property, is the private property of a foreign ruler.

These concepts of the Russian system must be emphasized because they are so foreign to our own traditions. In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about goo, when there was no empire, no state, and no public authority in the West. The state disappeared, yet society continued. So also, religious and economic life continued. This clearly showed that the state and society were not the same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the state was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social structure. This experience had revolutionary effects. It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became the basis of Western liberalism. It was discovered that the state, if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe that the purpose of men is to serve the state. It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a state.

From this emerged laissez-faire, separation of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private property. In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no supreme power existed, it was discovered that law still existed as the body of rules which govern social life. Thus law was found by observation in the West, not enacted by autocracy as in the East. This meant that authority was established by law and under the law in the West, while authority was established by power and above the law in the East.
The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property could not be taken by force but must be taken by established process of law. It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was more important than what was done, while in the East what was done was far more significant than the way in which it was done.