Specifics of social governance in the Russian civilization in the 16th - early 20th centuries

This methodology-oriented paper is devoted to the problem of interrelationship of the roles of the state and society in the societal governance of the pre-revolutionary Russian civilization. First and foremost, let us turn to the specifics of the social governance in the Western civilization. In its most essential features, the European system of social regulation was formed as early as in the Middle Ages. Its foundation was the feudal hierarchy of the ruling class of feudal lords. In that social system the organization of the ruling class of feudal lords acted as a part and a matrix (the core) of the society. Consequently, the general social structure of the civilization and subsystem of societal regulation was built on the basis of contractual relations not by the feudal state, but by the society represented in the stratum of feudal sovereigns. Thus, according to the type of social governance the European society can be defined as a social-contractual civilization. Its core and moving force was the society itself and its constituent sovereign social subjects. A qualitatively different picture emerges when the governing system of the Russian civilization is considered. It emerged in the Middle Ages in the Moscow State of the 16th -17th centuries. Its foundation was the highly centralized (based on ministerialism) organization of the ruling class. The major distinctive feature of such a hierarchy is the concentration of power and sovereignty in one center. At the center of the system is the monarch. All the members of the governing class served him only, receiving patrimony or salary (an estate) in return. Therefore, unlike the European stratum of feudal lords, the ruling ministerial class of the Moscow Tsardom acted in the system of social regulation as part of the state and not of the society. As a result, the state-centered type of social governance consolidated in the Russian civilization. It was on the basis of the same principle of the state's system-building role that the general social structure of Russia developed in the 16th - 17th centuries. The subordinate strata and corporations, devoid of independent hierarchical connections, were locked onto the monarch. The subordinate strata served the monarch and the state, fulfilling their social functions and duties. Consequently, a specific civilization developed in Russia distinguished by the ministerial-state type of regulation of social relations. In the second half of the 19th century when the principle of direct service of the strata to the state was abolished the Russian society transformed into a purely state-centered civilization. However, the ministerial attitude of the strata and classes to the state became necessarily entrenched in the Russian mentality as the most essential principle of serving the Homeland-State, the sole guarantor of Russia's sovereign integrity and internal stability.

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