Religious factor in the modernization process of the Russian state

Ways and shapes in forming of centralized national states in Western Europe and Russia differ essentially. The Rome and Byzantine rules, adopted by the Orthodox Church, lay in the base of modernization of the political system in Rus. The principle of conciliarity was in harmony with veche traditions of Slavs and the model of a peasant community. This principle received a large development effort in the system of zemsky sobors, as well as the autocracy, based on the «symphony» between church and state. The national Russian model of the absolutism of the second half of the 17th century supposed not only the intensification of the state control over the church but also a preservation of the significant role of a patriarch and the Sanctified Sobor in solving state problems. The Europeanized absolutism that started its development in Russia in the epoch of Peter I created another model of state and church relations in principle. The Synod of Peter I became a realization of the idea of bureaucratic administration of the Church and had nothing in common with the Synod and representative administration of Zwinglian churches. The excessiveness of European borrowings became an obstacle to the further development of Russia as a center of the Slavic and Orthodox world.