THE MORTAL GOD
Cathrin Kahlweit in conversation with Jörg Baberowski
THE MORTAL GOD
Power and rule in the Tsarist Empire
THE ILLUSION OF STRENGTH - JÖRG BABEROWSKI DECODES THE TSARIST EMPIRE
Russia's rulers have always staged themselves as all-powerful autocrats who ruled their country with an iron fist. In reality, however, this staging was just a façade that concealed the weakness of the state. The tsarist multi-ethnic empire was a fragile entity that had been ruled in improvisation mode since Peter I had opened it up to the West. But how did the tsars and their bureaucracy manage to successfully hold together a multi-ethnic, poorly integrated empire for two centuries? Jörg Baberowski tells Russia's history from the perspective of rule and its constraints.
Demands and opportunities rarely matched up in Russia. The autocratic state operated in a mode of improvisation because it lacked the instruments of integration. But even those who challenged it were aware of this. It was the criticism that spread with the liberal reforms of Alexander II (1855-1881) that triggered the state crisis in the first place. The mortal god, as Thomas Hobbes called the Leviathan, lives from the illusion of stability and unshakeability. But the mortal god is vulnerable. He rests on preconditions that he himself must guarantee. This is what this book is about: crises and how to overcome them. And in this respect, the story that Jörg Baberowski tells in this book also points beyond Russia: because it questions the foundations of state and social orders and shows how quickly they can disintegrate. Anyone who wants to understand what power and rule are and why they took on different forms in Russia than in Western Europe will find answers in this book.
Jörg Baberowski is Professor of the History of Eastern Europe at Humboldt University in Berlin and the author of numerous books and essays on Russian and Soviet history. In 2012, he received the Leipzig Book Fair Prize for his work „Scorched Earth. Stalin's Reign of Violence“ the Leipzig Book Fair Prize.
Cathrin Kahlweit, journalist and publicist, correspondent for the Süddeutsche Zeitung for Central and Eastern Europe
Jörg Baberowski:
The mortal god. Power and rule in the tsarist empire
C. H. Beck Verlag, September 2024, ISBN 978-3-406-71420-7
Hardcover, € 52, 50; also available as an e-book