The genesis of Russian notions on state and power

The authors of the article prove that Russia was inherent in European, but not Asian power organization from the very beginning. The forming of Russian state dates back to feudalism, when the religious value system laid in the basement of valuation of state and power. The church law based on the Rome law played a very important role in all the Christian states. The study on secular and sacred power as of two heads of a united social body dominated in Western Europe; and it was penetrating and settling in Russia in the 10-15th centuries. The Christian scheme of state administration headed by Jesus Christ dominated in Russia. In the 16-17th centuries Moscow positioned itself as a new center of worldwide Orthodoxy. In the Russian version of the state administration scheme, a Russian tsar took the place of a Byzantium patriarch and had the same position as an Emperor of Holy Roman Empire; ecumenical patriarchs including a Russian one had the level equal to a Pope’s one. The idea of «render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's» was preserved in Russia in forming of national model of absolutism in the second half of the 18th century. It grew to the primacy of the secular power during the reign of Peter the Great. The principle of cooperation of three forms of state administration (democratic, aristocratic, monarchial), described by Polibius and Cicero became an element of the political setup of the Christian states. Russia did not deify monarch with god, and followed the principle «vox populi - vox dei». The collegiality in making decisions was inherited by zemsky sobor (Assembly of Land) from Church one. zemsky sobors after veche (popular assembly) were the forms of people’s representatives. The tsar and patriarch institutes were local bodies of self-governing (zemsky and gubny izba) that showed a great viability in development of national model of absolutism than central estate representatives. Forerunners of Peter the Great’s throne insisted on a strict system in the elections to local institutions and succeeded in their relations with voevodes (governors of a province in ancient Russia) and central executive and court institutions (prikaz).