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| | The Double Arrival of Russia in International Society (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-12) |
 | | But overall, throughout the tsarist period, to a larger extent than in the rest of Europe, as Panin famously put it, Russia was governed not by ‘the authority of state institutions’, but by ‘the power of persons’ (quoted in Florinsky 1955: 456). |
 | | Having broken away from the overlordship of the church, these emerging states ‘reimagined’ the world; ‘the moral purpose of the state was defined as the preservation of a divinely ordained, rigidly hierarchical social order. |
 | | To fulfil this purpose, monarchs were endowed with supreme authority – their commands were law [and law was first and foremost command rather than an outcome of negotiation, enacted ritual, codification, or the like]. |
| www.isanet.org /noarchive/iver.html (8996 words) |
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