[n] Ivan III (reigned 1462–1505) built upon Byzantine traditions and laid foundations for the tsarist autocracy which with some variations would govern Russia for centuries.
After the chaotic Time of Troubles (1598–1613), the first monarch of the Romanov dynasty, Michael of Russia (reigned 1613–1645), was elected to the throne by a Zemsky Sobor ("assembly of the land").
The tsar himself, the embodiment of sovereign authority, stood at the center of the tsarist autocracy, with full power over the state and its people.
[8] The autocrat delegated power to persons and institutions acting on his orders, and within the limits of his laws, for the common good of all Russia.
[19] Richard Pipes is another influential historian among non-specialists who holds the position about the distinctness of Russian history and political system, describing the absolutism of the Muscovite political system as "patrimonial", and saw the stability of the Soviet Union in the fact that Russians accepted the legitimacy of this patrimonial organization.
For example, American Cold War analysts, including George Kennan, linked the Soviet government's autocratic rule to Tatar influences during its history, and biographies of Russian leaders often stressed their possible Asiatic ancestries.
Some scholars have pointed to a sentence in the Hypatian Codex under the year 1162, when Andrey Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal is said to have exiled his brothers, their mother and bishop Leon, because "he wanted to be the sole ruler" in Suzdalia.
Other scholars regarded this as "rather anachronistic", arguing that Andrey only seemed to have tried to change the order of succession from agnatic seniority to collateral succession[26] Regarding the substance of the autocracy model, its equation with despotism and its supposed origins in Mongol rule, as well as its supposed rise in medieval Muscovy, have been heavily debated.
This led to a difficult position within Marxism because absolutism revolves around institutions and laws, which were fundamentally less important than the socioeconomic base of society.
By showing that the state was not a unified and powerful whole (commanded by the economically dominant class), they likewise tackled common (Marxist) conceptions of Russian autocracy.
[30] While like Troitskii, they studied the nobility and bureaucracy (in a later period), Zaionchkovskii and Zakharova painted a different picture of the tsar's position.
Coinciding with Western scholars like Robert Crummey, they lay bare the interdependence of monarch and nobility in the practice of rule.
[32] Torke acknowledges that the tsars were not reined in by any form of constitution, but he emphasizes, for example, the limitations of Christian morality and court customs.
Edward Keenan went even further in his well-known piece on Muscovite political culture, claiming that the tsar was merely a puppet in the hands of boyars who wielded the actual power behind the scenes.
b ^ The existing literature pairs the words Russian, tsarist, Muscovite and imperial with despotism, absolutism and autocracy in all possible combinations, rarely giving clear definitions.
Overall, out of the available terms, "tsarist autocracy" is the one that seems most correct for the entire period discussed, but it is worth keeping in mind that there are no ideal types and that the Russian political system evolved through time.