The Russian Empire 1450–1801

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Broadcasting Legitimacy


One of the most visible characteristics of early modern empire was its self-
representation of legitimacy, often embodied in visual and literary media. One
might call this“ideology,”but that bookish term does notfit well with early
modern societies of limited literacy. Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper introduce
the moreflexible concept of“imperial imaginaries”to embody the myriad ways in
which states expressed a vision of self in ritual, symbolic, and literary media as well
as in political praxis and terminology. Imperial rulers broadcast their image to
audiences including foreign powers, their subject peoples, and perhaps most
importantly their elites, whose support was crucial to maintaining empire-wide
control. The intent in disseminating an ideal image of ruler, elite, and society was to
inspire respect, awe, cooperation, and, optimally, social cohesion, although the
latter, in early modern conditions, could never be very strong.
Empires constructed wide-reaching, even cosmic, claims to legitimacy that gave
them, in Thomas Allsen’s phrase,“a kind of immortality.”These claims depicted
rulers as bringing“good fortune”on the realm, sometimes arrogating to them
sacred status, more often giving them the role of conduit of the deity’s blessing. In
the Mediterranean and Eurasia, imperial rulers typically claimed legitimacy by
linking themselves to a prior imperial tradition (translatio imperii), adopting its
terminology, regalia, architectural and documentary styles, and the like. Russia
drew on two imperial legacies, the Roman through its affiliation with Byzantine
Orthodoxy and the Chinggisid. From the Mongols Russia borrowed pragmatic
tools—vocabulary, institutions, and practices infinance, military, and politics. In
adopting the title of“tsar”in 1547, Russia was evoking Chinggisid legitimacy, since
its sources used“tsar”for khans as well as for Byzantine emperors. As we have seen,
in negotiations with steppe peoples through the eighteenth century Russians acted
out Chinggisid practices. Furthermore, at the crucial time when Moscow was
assembling its myth of self in the 1480s, Ivan III explicitly deployed Mongol
political symbolism in a missive to the Holy Roman Emperor, calling himself the
“white emperor.”But to European powers this reference was obscure, and there-
after Ivan III’s court deployed the symbolic vocabulary of its Christian Orthodox
heritage.
In so doing, Muscovy followed the example of most empires by creating a
supranational ideology that depended upon a dominant religion, but not exclu-
sively. Imperial ideologies need to somehow encompass their diverse peoples. As
Karen Barkey reminds us, skillful imperial rulers patronize a dominant religion, but
do not let the institutional Church run the show. In the Ottoman empire, for

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