totalitarian
In time the ruling class of Russia became acquainted with
Byzantine culture. They were dazzled by it, and sought to import it
into their wilderness domains in the north. In this way they
imposed on the Slav peoples many of the accessories of the
Byzantine Empire, such as Orthodox Christianity, the Byzantine
alphabet, the Byzantine calendar, the used of domed ecclesiastical
architecture, the name Czar (Caesar) for their ruler, and
innumerable other traits.
Most important of all, they imported the Byzantine totalitarian autocracy, under
which all aspects of life, including political, economic,
intellectual, and religious, were regarded as departments of
government, under the control of an autocratic
ruler.
These beliefs were part of the Greek tradition, and were based
ultimately on Greek inability to
distinguish between state and society.
Since society includes all human activities, the Greeks had assumed that the
state must include all human activities. In the
days of Classical Greece this all-inclusive entity was called the
polis, a term which meant both society and state; in the
later Roman period this all-inclusive entity was called the
imperium.
The only difference was that the polis was sometimes
(as in Pericles's Athens about 450 B.C.) democratic, while the
imperium was always a military autocracy. Both were totalitarian, so
that religion and economic life were regarded as spheres of
governmental activity.
This totalitarian autocratic tradition was carried on to the
Byzantine Empire and passed from it to the Russian state in the
north and to the later Ottoman Empire in the south. In the north
this Byzantine tradition combined with the experience of the
Northmen to intensify the two-class structure of Slav society. In
the new Slav (or Orthodox) Civilization this fusion, fitting
together the Byzantine tradition and the Viking tradition, created
Russia.
From Byzantium came autocracy and the idea of the state as an
absolute power and as a totalitarian power, as well as such
important applications of these principles as the idea that the
state should control thought and religion, that the Church should
be a branch of the government, that law is an enactment of the
state, and that the ruler is semi-divine.
From the Vikings came the idea that the state is a foreign
importation, based on militarism and supported by booty and
tribute, that economic innovations are the function of the
government, that power rather than law is the basis of social life,
and that society, with its people and its property, is the private
property of a foreign ruler.
These concepts of the Russian
system must be emphasized because they are so foreign to our own
traditions. In the West, the Roman Empire (which continued in the
East as the Byzantine Empire) disappeared in 476 and, although many
efforts were made to revive it, there was clearly a period, about
500AD , when there was no empire, no state, and no public authority
in the West.
The state
disappeared, yet society continued. So also, religious and economic
life continued. This clearly showed that the state and society were
not the same thing, that society was the basic entity, and that the
state was a crowning, but not essential, cap to the social
structure. This experience had revolutionary
effects.
It was discovered that man can live without a state; this became
the basis of Western liberalism. It was discovered that the state,
if it exists, must serve men and that it is incorrect to believe
that the purpose of men is to serve the state.
It was
discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private
property can all exist and function effectively without a
state. From this emerged laissez-faire, separation
of Church and State, rule of law, and the sanctity of private
property.
In Rome, in Byzantium, and in Russia, law was regarded as an
enactment of a supreme power. In the West, when no
supreme power existed, it was discovered that law
still existed as the body of rules which govern social
life.
Thus law was found by observation in the West, not enacted by
autocracy as in the East.
This meant that authority was established by law and under the
law in the West, while authority was established by power and above
the law in the East.
The West felt that the rules of economic life were found and not
enacted; that individuals had rights independent of, and even
opposed to, public authority; that groups could exist, as the
Church existed, by right and not by privilege, and without the need
to have any charter of incorporation entitling them to exist as a
group or act as a group; that groups or individuals could own
property as a right and not as a privilege and that such property
could not be taken by force but must be taken by established
process of law.
It was emphasized in the West that the way a thing was done was
more important than what was done, while in the East what was done
was far more significant than the way in which it was done.
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