1917 was profoundly different from anything experienced in France. Habermas’ theory, in short, outlines that the state must be accountable to public opinion in order to be legitimised. However, Romanov’s legitimacy stemmed from the crown itself, reflected in the coronation oath of the Tsars in which the Tsar swore to protect the ideals of autocracy, ruling with justice and impartiality. 114 Orlando Figes in A People’s Tragedy has described this autocratic society as being held up by ‘unstable pillars’; a backward aristocratic bureaucracy, a backward society within the illusion of civilization, a feudal army, the transfer of religious power to secular Tsarist power, and finally a ‘prison of peoples’ a vast empire made up of divergent nationalist ideals and peoples. 115 A number of these pillars will remain pertinent throughout this essay in order to showcase the divisive public sphere created through obshchestvo. Nicholas II himself expressed the backwardness of the first pillar in 1902, “I conceive of Russia as a landed estate … of which the proprietor is the Tsar, the administrator is the nobility, and the workers are the peasantry.” 116 Despite the growth of the industrial sector, the nobility made up the vast majority of the civil service, dependent on a small number of elite families with a diminishing shortfall of expertise. This ruling elite, and indeed the Tsars themselves, was committed to an increasingly archaic view of Russian society outlined in the soslovie (social estates) system, which divided society into the nobility, the clergy, urban dwellers and rural peasants. This 114 R. Monk Zachariah Liebmann, “The Life of Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II” in The Orthodox Word , 26.4, (July-August, 1990), p. 200. 115 Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 (London: The Bodley Head, 2014), p. 35-84. 116 Tsar Nicholas II, as printed in Figes, A People’s Tragedy p. 35.
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