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Instructions and Teachings

St Tikhon of Moscow, Russian Orthodox American Messenger, 1898–1905

A Sermon Delivered on the Anniversary of the Coronation of the Emperor (May 14-27, 1905)

My beloved compatriots!

We celebrate today the sacred anniversary of the coronation of our Emperor. I think it is a good opportunity to speak to you of the power of the Russian Tsars.

We who live far from our country, in a strange land, amongst people who know little or nothing concerning our country, and its institutions, often hear reproaches, condemnation and derision of institutions which are natural and dear to us. These reproaches are especially often directed against the Autocracy, one of the foundations of the Russian State. Many in this country imagine it to be a “bogey”; eastern despotism, tyranny, Asiatic darkness. To it are ascribed all the failures, miscalculations and disorders of the Russian land. To the mind of these people, Russia will always be a Colossus with feet of clay, so long as it has not established at home Western constitutionalism, law and representative institutions. And of late our own home-made politicians have begun to repeat the cry of these detractors: “Away with Autocracy!”

It is not within our power to try to convince all those who wish to be misled, whose eyes see not, and whose ears hear not. But it is for us, who live abroad, and who, from this distance, love the country of our fathers, to make it a duty to enlighten the honest thinkers of this country, and to give them a true idea as to what autocracy truly is in Russia¹. The idea of autocratic power implies that this is a power which depends on no other human power; that it does not borrow from it, and is not limited by it, but, on the contrary, carries in itself the source of its own life and strength. All these ought to be the sign of the power of a Tsar.

For what is the cause of its existence? The Hebrews asked the prophet Samuel for a king, that he might judge them and defend them. (I Samuel, viii, 5, 20). The psalmist David prayed thus for his son Solomon: (Psalm 72, I, 2, 4, 12 etc).

“Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son.

“He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.

“He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

“For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; the poor also, and him that hath no helper”.

In other words, the Tsar’s authority must watch over right and justice, defending his subjects against violence, especially the poor and needy who have no other helpers or defenders. It is for this reason that it must be autonomous, not limited, and independent either of the mighty or the rich. Otherwise it could not fulfill its destination, because it would for ever be forced to fight for its existence for fear of being overthrown, it would have to please the rich and the mighty and the influential, serving truth as it is understood by the latter, doing human justice and not the justice of God.

The Tsar’s autocratic power exists in our country, which has come to it by the way of long suffering, civil wars, or princes, and grievous slavery of alien rule.

The Tsar in Russia has as great power and freedom of action as is possible for a human being. Nothing and no one can restrict it, neither the ambitions of parties nor the interests of one class against the interests of another. He stands immeasurably higher than all parties, all professions, all conditions. He is disinterested, no respecter of persons, he is free from flattery, from seeking favors, and interested impulses of any kind. He has no need of any of these things, because he stands so high that to his greatness no one can add anything, or take anything from it. “He receives no favors from the hand of any of his subjects, but on the contrary he distributes gifts to them himself.” He does not seek his own interests, but seeks the good of his people, that he may “arrange all for the good of the people entrusted to him, and for the glory of God”.

The rights and interests of all his subjects are equally dear to him, and every single one of them has in him a defender and protector. The Tsar is a “Father” of the people, as the people touchingly call him. Autocracy is founded on the feeling of fatherly love for the people, and this love puts aside all shadow of despotism, of enslavement, of self-interested possession, which some people try to impute to the Russian autocracy. Yet they should be ashamed to talk of the Tsar’s despotic authority, when those invested with it, to take the examples nearest to hand, the Tsar—Liberator Alexander II, the wise and just Alexander III, the gentle and kind Nicholas II, are the subjects of wonder and admiration of all well disposed people, even outside Russia.

And is it not strange to speak of the tyranny of the Tsar’s authority, when a Russian imbibes with his mother’s milk a true affection for his Tsar, when in later years he educates this love into an enthusiastic reverence, when he shows perfect obedience and devotion to his Tsar, when a Russian is always ready to die for his Tsar, and when various makers of trouble have actually to use the name of the Tsar in order to deceive a Russian into revolt? Despots and tyrants are feared; men tremble before them, but do not love them.

Of late, one hears especially often that the power of the Tsar in Russia is autocratic only in theory, but that in reality the true autocrats are the ministers, the bureaucrats who rule over everything, and rule badly, who create a wall between the Tsar and the nation, so that the voice and needs of the nation do not reach the Tsar. (“God is high, the Tsar is far”.) One also hears that the people know their own needs better than do the bureaucrats or the Tsar himself; that the people better understand their own good and interests, and the, consequently, it is the people who should rule, as in other lands.

Of course the authority of the Tsar has its organs, and these organs, being human, are not free from defects and imperfections, occasionally giving rise to just reproaches; but we may ask; Where does this not happen? I wish people would point out such a happy land to me.

As to ourselves, we live in a land where the people rules itself, choosing its own officials. Yet are these officials always equal to their high calling? Are there no great abuses here?

We are told that under the authority of the Tsar there are more abuses, because it affords a wider field for bureaucracy, which nowadays has assured all the reins of power. In our days, bureaucracy finds especially many opponents, yet bitter historical experience proves that the opponents of bureaucracy turn into the same kind of bureaucrats, or even worse occasionally, as soon as power comes into their hands. Yet bureaucracy does not touch upon the essence of autocracy, and the Tsar comes into direct contact with the people, listening to the voice of the people in all questions of state organisation, receiving deputations even of strikers, which does not always happen in republics, and in unceasing care for the good and the bettering of the state “he invites the worthiest people, invested with the trust of the people, and chosen by the people, to take part in the preparatory working out and discussion of juridical plans.”

As to the rule of the people, beloved of some types of men, it is an error to think that the people themselves can govern a country. It is supposed that the nation in national assemblies makes laws and elects officials. But this is so in theory only, and would be possible only in a state composed of a single moderate-sized town. But in reality it is not so. The great masses of the people oppressed by cares for their daily life, and unacquainted with the higher objects of state, do not profit by their “autocracy”. Handing over their rights to a few chosen people, who have their favor. How the elections are conducted, what means are used in order to be elected, there is no need of saying here. You have seen it all yourselves.

And so the people does not rule, but the elected, (chosen not by the whole people, but by a part of the people, a majority, a party) who, in ruling, does not express the will of the whole people, but only of his own partisans. At times, they express solely their own will, forgetting the promises that they made before election, caring for the good and interest of their own party, treating the members of the opposing party in a very despotic way, oppressing it, and thrusting it out of power by all possible means.

This unsatisfactory order some people wish to introduce into Russia, in most cases because this order exists among other nations who are better educated than we Russians are. However, they forget that every nation has its peculiarities and its history, and that which is good for one proves useless for another. Only those institutions are stable and real which are firmly established in the past of a given nation, and have arisen from the peculiarities of its spirit. Constitutions and parlamentarism are thus rooted amongst some of the Western peoples, but amongst us in Russia, the national spirit gave rise to autocracy, for autocracy is more akin to the Russian spirit.

One has to reckon with this fact; trying experiments with changes of the order of the state is no easy work: it may shake the very foundations of the state, instead of helping the existing conditions, and correcting a few deficiencies. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear!”

As to us, brothers, let us pray the Lord that he may in future preserve her autonomous, autocratic Tsar to Russia, giving him understanding and power to judge the people in truth, and to keep the state of Russia in peace and without sorrow.

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