This paper attempts to delineate the tradition of Russian political culture in the course of history. The three elements that I picked up for dissolving the entangled Russian history are the presence of the ruler so powerful in the execution of government policies, the existence of auxiliary government institutions greatly helpful to enhancing the power of the ruler, and finally, the alienation of the people from the government.
The powerful ruler was the one of the vital elements for the consolidation of Russian state from the beginning of the Russian history. The Muscovite state needed the powerful ruler who could not only subject the hereditary nobility but also expel the Tatar yoke from Russia. Peter the Great also exercised the great power in carrying out the policies of the westernization. The tsars of Romanov dynasty were also energetic in developing the ideology for making the legitimacy of the autocratic rule, which was inherited to Stalin"s socialist Russia.
Throughout the Russian history, we can witness the peculiar government institutions that greatly contributed to consolidating the power of the ruler. These institutions were not in the realm of official executions of the government policies, but in the extraordinary realm only serving to the will of the ruler and playing the role of state police. Ivan the Terrible"s Oprichiniki, Nikolai the First"s the Third Section, cheka, NKVD and KGB in the socialist Russia are all these examples of state polices that continued to function even in Putin"s Russia by the disguised form as FSB.
The third, but not the least tradition of political culture in Russia was the wide discrepancy between the people and the power, the result of which was the emergence of the group called intelligentsia hostile to the autocratic regime. The Russian people regarded the autocratic rule as the natural order compatible with their nature. But beginning from the time of Peter the Great, the Russian tsars tried to implement the western ideas and customs not applicable to Russian soils. In the concept of relationship that regarded the tsars as their fathers, the Russian people could not rebel against their rulers, but adopted a strategy of distancing themselves from the government. The intelligentsia could develop a revolutionary strategy by using the discrepancy between the power and the people, the circumstance of which was inherited to the socialist Russia.