Axiological Foundations of Russian Civilization: Autocracy and Consent in the Ideological and Political Discourse of the 11th–17th Centuries

The article analyzes the concepts of ‘samoderzhaviye’ (‘autocracy’) and ‘soglasiye’ (‘consent’) as value categories, which are the most important for the Russian spiritual and political thought of the 11th-17th centuries. Both of these concepts have undergone some semantic changes, but in general they have retained their semantic core and continue to influence in social and political discourse in the present day. Being value categories, ‘samoderzhaviye’ and ‘soglasiye’ were used in texts of different genres and by different authors, which allows us to trace their development in detail. The concept of ‘samoderzhaviye’, related with sacred meaning and a strict hierarchical structure, is in many ways similar to the modern idea of sovereignty. The concept of ‘soglasiye’ implies a kind of universal agreement, good-neighborly cohabitation within a single community. In Russian spiritual and political thought of the 11th–17th centuries the concepts of ‘samoderzhaviye’ and ‘soglasiye’, although not in an obvious way, were linked together: autocracy ensured the preservation of consent; consent gave a permission to autocracy. Both autocracy and consent were aimed at maintaining the power and independence of the Russian state. These and other conclusions were made based on the study of Russian texts of the 11th–17th centuries using the search database of the National Corpus of the Russian Language.

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