The role of the state and its apparatus in Russian history has always been a controversial issue. The state, as abstraction and as actual center of power, was prominent in the thought of supporters and critics of the regime and historians, whatever their place on the political spectrum. In recent years there has been renewed and intensified interest in the state which has been expressed in three distinct, but related areas of research. First, Soviet and Western historians
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Daniel Orlovsky (1976) studied this question.