Arkadiy N. Dolgikh

Doctor of Sciences (History), Associate Professor, Professor of the Department of National and World History

Lipetsk State Pedagogical P. P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky University

(Lipetsk, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2024-3-79-85

Abstract. The article deals the problem of terminology related to Russian political system – the use of the ‘enlightened absolutism’ definition and its antonyms – ‘unenlightened absolutism’. This terminology (namely, ‘enlightened absolutism’), adopted in historical literature about a century and a half ago, originally used for Europe in the second half of the eighteenth century, later came to be used for Russia of the same era, and sometimes even for later times. The term, on the one hand, is obvious (it consists mainly in a certain use of Enlightenment ideas for their needs by the rulers of a number of European countries in quite different versions). On the other hand, the vagueness of the term has become customary and has been applied to Russia, despite the rather different state of these states between themselves (the presence, for example, in Russia of serfdom and the absence of serious changes in it). The lack of clearer criteria in defining the regime of, for example, Catherine the Great as ‘enlightened absolutism’ did not prevent a number of Soviet historians from putting forward a new term – the term ‘unenlightened absolutism’, with even less marked criteria, usually used for the reign of Paul I of Russia. The author considers it necessary to abandon the use of both terms in historical research due to their uncertainty and lack of clearly defined criteria, especially in relation to Russia.
Keywords: enlightened absolutism, unenlightened absolutism, Catherine the Great, Paul I of Russia, estate policy, serfdom, peasant issue, Russian absolutism.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Dolgikh, AN 2024, ‘On ‘Enlightened’ and ‘Unenlightened’ Absolutism in Russia’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 3 (19), pp. 79–85, http://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2024-3-79-85 (in Russ.)

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