Bureaucratic Politics in Imperial Russia

Most of the major historical interpretations of imperial and Soviet Russia share, at bottom, a common belief that the dominant characteristics of the political system are teleological and dualist, indeed even Manichaean. The purpose of this paper is to suggest an alternative model of politics based on a plurality of groups emerging from the peculiar evolution of the bureaucracy in Imperial Russia. Before taking up the substantive part of the argument, however, I wish to review briefly what I mean by the teleological-dualist interpretation which remains up to the present the reigning orthodoxy in the field.