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LAWRENCE LANGER (Storrs, CT, U. S. A.) THE "STRANGENESS" OF R US' IN THE MONGOL ERA : PROBLEMS OF COMPA RA TIVE HISTOR Y "'Curiouser and curiouser! "' cried Alice (she was so surprised that she forgot how to speak good English,)."' Russian history is a bit like Alice hur- tling through the rabbit hole, not sure what is on the other side, everything a distortion, where the past becomes filtered through the present. The Soviet totalitarian system is said to have its roots in the Russian autocratic tradition and even the current effort of reform cannot escape the autocratic past, or as Nancy Shields Kollmann has phrased it: "For those who see autocracy as despotism, Russia's future today is doomed because it lacks the essential le- gal preconditions for modem liberal development."2 Russian autocracy has been the prism through which Russian history has been examined. It has be- come the defining experience toward which medieval Rus' was in some sense destined and which gave shape to the twentieth-century totalitarian state. Whether drawn from Byzantine or Mongol models, or the result of a home- grown variety, the autocratic tradition is a common staple of the historical lit- erature and
Russian History – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 2001
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