Introduction: a Modern Paradox — Subject and Citizen in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Russia

Abstract

Most prominent among the themes traced in these articles is the transformation of people from subjects of an autocracy into citizens of a polity. Historical representations of Russia have often privileged authoritarianism as a continuity,¹ but this volume traces change that was manifest in the gradual internalization of authority, be it autocracy, one-party dictatorship, or one-person dictatorship. To put it another way, the authors examine the inculcation in the collective and the individual of the bases and principles of authority, which in the process made authority appear less external to the individual. And this process of internalization has long been recognized in other fields as a hallmark of modernity, and as a basis for comparative evaluation.²