Towards a Conceptual‑Historical Critique of the Essentialist and Teleological Interpretations of Russian History* **

The author discusses some of the dominant assertions in the literature on Russian history. One of them is the disqualification of the myth of the benevolent tsar as “false”. This disqualification is accompanied by the formulas “naïve or popular monarchism”, which designate the “pre-scientific illusions” that would have guided the collective movements of resistance to autocracy. Given the importance of collective representations of the tsar and power in Russian history, the theoretical premises on which the above-mentioned disqualifications are based affect the general interpretation of this history , for example the conception of the Russian people as “passive”. The author proposes to abandon this positivist scaffolding and approach the sources from other theoretical perspectives, in particular conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), to pose a radically different question: what truth is contained in the myth of the benevolent tsar and to reconstruct, against the essentialist and teleological vision, the historicity of the collective resistance to power in Russia. The first part studies the genealogy of the expression samozvan/ ets/stvo (self-appointment), its original meaning – individual initiative against divine appointment – and its functions in the autocratic political paradigm. The lack of heuristic value of the formulas of “popular, or naïve monarchism,” * I am pleased to express my thanks especially to Maureen Perrie for her review on my book Le Tsar c’est moi [Ingerflom, 2015] (later translated into Spanish and Russian), and the compliments she addressed to it [Perrie, 2019]. Likewise, her unfavourable

of the tsar. The traditional historiography asserted that this belief was "naïve". 3 An old expression, "the myth of the tsar" was adopted to accompany this "popular belief ", which would extend from the early seventeenth century to the present day, through the cult of Stalin's personality. The prevailing verdict is: "the myth of the tsar is false" because the monarch was the very real, and the most responsible, perpetrator of the misfortunes of the people [Field, p. 18;Perrie, 1987, p. 2]. Yet both of those categories and the resulting statements raise as many questions as assertions. Given that "naivety" is presented as inherent in the "traditional peasant mentality", how to explain, using these categories, the changes in the collective representations of the monarch and power between the 16 th and the early 20 th centuries? How to reconcile what should be the historian's central concern -reconstructing historicity, that is, being attentive to discontinuity -with the four-centuries continuity attributed to that "mentality"? With what heuristic and theoretical arguments does this historiography take up the evolutionary ethnology of the late nineteenth century when it affirms, today, that a myth "is false" when, for almost a century, the human sciences have demonstrated that myths are neither false nor true? [Wittgenstein]. And more generally: why are the academic categories of a secularized reason applied to systems of thought and action alien to them by cultural or temporal alterity, without precautions or nuances? All of them are questions whose authorship I do not claim: they are part of the debates that we have carried out in the West in the 1970s, but, unfortunately, those debates did not affect or did not sufficiently affect the historiography of Russia, in particular, on popular resistance to power. 4 The famous "passivity of the Russian people" raises other kinds of questions. Passivity compared to what? To the rest of Europe? Are there many European countries in which there were more popular insurrections than in Russia during the 17 th -18 th centuries and of their magnitude? The popular passivity compared to the Russian nobility? Let's put the dimensions of popular resistance and noble oppositions side by side: the revolts of Bolotnikov and the demands of the boyars and the nobles to Shuiskii; Razin and the Conditions submitted to Anna in 1730; "Pugachevshina" and the Decembrist uprising... I am well aware that the claims and situations are not the same, but I am referring to the enormous difference between the human, sociological and geographical magnitude and also the intensity of the respective antagonisms. Popular naivete? And here, a doubt overwhelms me: Were Alexei Mikhailovich and Catherine II also convinced in their hearts that they were fighting the naivete embodied in the two gigantic insurrections led respectively by Stenka Razin (1670-3 I have always argued that the category of naïve monarchism was not epistemologically relevant and led to misinterpretations of popular adherence to false tsars and tsareviches that populated Russian history since the early 17 th century Ингерфлом, 1991]. 4 Regarding what Marк Bevir calls "developmental historicism", a vision of history marked by evolutionism and teleology, it was recently written that "on Russian soil, the influence of developmental historicism remains predominant" [Олейников, с. 147]. It can be added that this influence is also predominant in the "Western" historiography of popular resistance to power in Russia. 1671) who claimed to be accompanied by the son of the Tsar and in 1773-1775, by Emelian Pugachev, self-appointed Peter III? The popular collective representations were naïve with respect to others that would be scientific, like the monarchism of the nobility or the ideology of Marxism-Leninism? Finally, there is a historiography to which the permanent (although in different forms and proportions) and popular resistance to each reigning monarch does not lead to a rethink of the meaning and function of "the myth of the tsar".
However, it is true that the main form of popular resistance to oppression, namely 'self-appointment' (samozvanstvo) -with its underlying interrogation of the authenticity of the physical body of the tsar -did not offer the prospects of a change in the political system. It is also true that the representation of the one chosen by God to occupy the throne was mythical. The aim of this article is to show that another interpretation of Russian popular resistance to power is possible. Such an interpretation should be focused on the reconstruction of historicity, i.e., it should be non-evolutionist, non-essentialist and non-teleological. The term selfappointment functioned as a keyword from the seventeenth century and, from the beginning of the twentieth century, has been transformed into what Reinhart Koselleck called a fundamental and modern concept: "The concept is connected to a word but is at the same time more than a word: a word becomes a concept only when the entirety of meaning and experience within a sociopolitical context within which and for which a word is used can be condensed into one word" [Koselleck, 2004, p. 85]. Throughout its history, the term registered different political-legal structures and at the same time it was a driving factor in them. In consequence, its meaning and its functions were ever changing. My thesis is that the transformation of the word "self-appointment" into a concept signals a fundamental change in Russian political history. This thesis is actually an answer to a simple question, and rather basic for an historical investigation, but which needs to be made explicit because it is very rarely formulated, if ever formulated at all: did the terms self-appointed / self-appointment have the same meanings at the beginning of the 17 th century and three centuries later?
A journey through this longue durée forces the researcher to reconstruct the historicity of the keyword and the semantic and temporal sediments that converged to constitute the concept self-appointment. At the same time, the revision of the dominant interpretation of popular resistance goes well beyond the latter. Because of the centrality of self-appointment in Russian political history, this revision affects the understanding of Russian political history tout court. Based on historical sources, I will expose the differences between two types of interpretations of popular resistance to power and the dependence of each one of its theoretical premises 5 . In fact, all historians work from theoretical premises, either consciously or unconsciously, and with explicit acknowledgement or not. I am aware of the mistrust that expressions such as "theoretical premises" generate in some colleagues. Notwithstanding that, I believe, without being very original, that it is indisputable that the methods and conclusions of any research depends on such premises. Let us take an example, to which we will return later, that illustrates the preceding lines and serves as an introduction to the further development of the article. Demonstrations of confidence in Soviet leaders, such as Lenin and Stalin, expressed in letters or workers' and peasants' delegations requesting the redress of injustices or improvement of situations, as well as the contrary expressions, such as calling Bolshevik leaders selfappointed or impostors (samozvantsy), are traditionally interpreted by the historiography as the result of the continuity of the so-called naïve or popular monarchism that would have been in force for several centuries. This monarchism is an idea that would change its forms but not its semantic core: an idea turned into an essence that would characterize the "mentality" of the Russian popular masses. This statement results from an ahistorical conception of history, that freezes ideas or phenomena, presenting them as fixed features of a country's history, which means knowing and closing its future: an essentialist and teleological vision, elaborated within the framework of 19 th century positivism and which presupposes a historical continuity held in a single linear time. Now, to what other understanding of the phenomenon do we arrive if, instead of positivism, we take into account, on the one hand, that history unfolds in a plurality of different times, which affect the components of a structure -language, beliefs, institutions, etc. -at a given moment in different ways and, on the other hand, we stay attentive to the semantic modifications of the language and to its articulation with the social and political transformations in factual history? These premises command a reformulation of the research topic and lead to radically different conclusions from those obtained by an essentialist vision. The subject of the investigation would no longer be continuity or essence, but factual discontinuity and contingency registered in the use of ancient words impregnated with religiosity, such as self-appointed. So, as the subject of investigation was changed, naivete becomes a feature of the historiography, which presents the presence of old words as evidence of continuity, when in fact we are facing a structural discontinuity. Those old words have changed their meaning; now they point to the maximum holder of a power -Lenin, Stalin -that no longer claims the Heavenly as the foundation of its legitimacy, but the earthly and immanent social class struggle. Then, when workers' assemblies and peasant soviets, the same actors who conquered the political representation in 1905 and universalized the idea of popular sovereignty throughout the empire asked the leaders of the Soviet country for support or denounced them as self-appointed or impostors, they do so, with greater or less awareness, not in the name of the mythological good tsar, but in the name of the popular sovereignty and representation, the two pillars of political modernity, although the language continues to be the traditional, what is explained, let us repeat it, because history unfolds in a plurality of times 6 . As we see, what is also at stake is the political understanding of the present and its possible horizons of expectations. The contempt for the epistemological orientation, as has been pointed out recently, led to the historicity´s ignorance, as contained in the formula "naïve peasant monarchism" [Коновалова, 2008, с. 15]. The disdain for theoretical reflection on the foundations of our discipline undermines its heuristic potential and can lead to significant errors. It is a situation that led Reinhart Koselleck to write an article whose title "Über die Theoriebedürftigkeit der Geschichtswissenschaft", according to the meaning we give to the word Theoriebedürftigkeit, underlines the need for theory in history science or its indigence, or, both at the same time [Koseleck, 2000, S. 309].

What do we mean when we say self-appointed?
Only the reference to the present creates real history that arouses lively interest. But the reference to the present often leads to the transfer of categories of the present to the past that are not in keeping with it.
О. Brunner. Der Historiker und die Geschichte von Verfassung und Recht 7 "There are no experiences without concepts and there are no concepts without experiences" [Koselleck, 2006, S. 59]. In a few words, Koselleck inextricably linked social and conceptual history, and affirmed that experiences are embedded in language, but the latter is the one that attributes significance to them. This dialectical relationship makes the transmission of history possible. However, this transmission, in the case of self-appointment, raises two difficulties. One, which is visible when we try to explain to the readers who do not know the Russian language, is that neither the Romance languages nor English offer a common term as widespread in common language and equivalent in meaning to the Russian word samozvanstvo (self-appointment). That is, when it is not only a matter of a transparent translation of a signifier but when the operation must integrate the use of the signified. This being specified, we must take this absence as an opportunity, a chance that forces us to reflect on what resists a direct translation in the Russian term. The Russian reader might think 6 This is the heart of conceptual history that is not reduced to a mere history of concepts. The original is in German: "Die Begriffsgeschichte, wie wir sie versuchen, kann ohne eine Theorie der historische Zeiten nicht auskommen" [Koselleck, 1972, S. 302]. My translation would be: "Conceptual History as we conceive it, cannot be developed without a theory of historical times". 7 Sf.: [Brunner,S. 7].
that the problem of the translation of the Russian word does not concern him. But, and here the second difficulty appears, whether it is a linguistic translation into another language or a mental transfer into a modern concept network of the same word and in the same Russian language, this operation reveals an understanding or misunderstanding of a given phenomenon. Paradoxically, in the historiographical debates about the meaning of the term, there is hardly any reference to the sources of the time in which it arose. On the contrary, what we can frequently observe is what Brunner was fighting against: the transfer of modern definitions to ancient times. Such transfer ignores the fact that, since the irruption of political modernity, the meaning of many preceding words, ideas and institutions are no longer understandable without a previous work of exegesis. Let's start with the second difficulty. Many scholars within our field know, and are indebted to, the magnificent work published by Chistov in 1967. In the reissue of 2003, the author added a new chapter, one of the sections of that chapter is entitled "On the term samozvanchestvo". 8 The author writes that "it is very important to find out in what sense this term was used and what are the permissible limits of its use when discussing the problems of socio-utopian legends" [Чистов, с. 457]. The subject of that section is an explicit criticism of B. A. Uspenskii, P. V. Lukin and V. G. Korolenko for -according to Chistov-unjustifiably expanding both the type of experiences that the three have called samozvanstvo or samozvanchestvo (for example: games in which someone disguises himself as tsar) and that of the individuals designated by them as samozvanets. In this way, Chistov writes, the "authentic" (подлинное) samozvanstvo is lost from sight. Without attempting to summarize the work of these three authors in relation to this topic, it seems to me that what Uspenskii did was to reconstruct the organic articulation between the religious factor and self-appointment, particularly during the 17 th -18 th centuries, while Lukin analyzed a relationship between self-appointment and the identity of each subject of the tsar during the 17 th century. Korolenko, in turn, highlighted the contamination of the entire Russian social organism by self-appointment at the end of the 19 th century. The great contribution of these authors is to have demonstrated parts of the mechanism that unites Russian orthodoxy, Russian political culture and everyday life to selfappointment in clearly defined historical times. Chistov opposes them with a notion of the "authentic self-appointment", "exactly (tochno)" defined according to him in the Ushakov Dictionary, published in 4 volumes between 1935 and 1940: a) "A self-appointed [person] is a person who arbitrarily or illegally appropriated someone else's name, title, posing as someone else" or b) "An epithet of a person who appropriated the name of a king or someone from the royal house in the struggle for political power" [Чистов, с. 460]. A look at Russian penal codes shows that Ushakov took up the language and definitions of Razdel IX, glava II Ulozheniya o nakazaniyakh ugolovnykh i ispravitel'nykh (1845) and several articles as the 1415 of Ulozhenie o nakazaniyakh ugolovnykh i ispravitel'nykh (ed. 1885), the 134 of Ugolovnoe ulozhenie (1903) [Малянтович, Муравьев, с. 101-102, 162-163], and, to a certain extent, of articles 91 and 77 of Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR (1922 and1926), respectively. These articles were taken up to define the crime of samozvanstvo in article 194 of Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR (1971). That is, the Ushakov Dictionary conveys the conception that the late imperial and Soviet political powers wanted to impose on the term self-appointment. As it is well known, the Law and its codification are not the truth but always an expression of interests and are historically determined. On the other hand, if we consider the distance between official legal documents and social and political reality, the meaning of the term is revealed to be much broader and is not limited either to the sphere of utopian thought. Indeed, we know that the actors of the same time in which the penal codes were drawn up understood selfappointment in a much broader sense, as demonstrated, among others, by the peasant from a military village who, in front of Nicolas I, blurted out his claim of the latter not being the authentic emperor but a landowner in disguise (we will return to this case). But it is not just about popular discourse: the "exact" definition of the "authentic" self-appointed figure, as advocated by Chistov, does not correspond to the meaning of the word since it appeared in the 17 th century. Thus, the first record that I know of, in Timofeev's Vremennik, associates the false Dimitri, Godunov and Shuiskii under the same accusation of self-appointed, even though the last two did not impersonate other people. The same goes for Stalin, who was regularly accused of being a self-appointed.
Similar difficulties arise in translations from Russian. For example: "A pretender (samozvanets) is literally a 'self-styled' (samozvannyi) tsar or tsarevich, that is, someone who has falsely adopted a royal title or identity" [Perrie, 1995, p. 1, fn. 1]. I am grateful to Maureen Perrie for having called my own translation of 'self-appointment'  "clumsy" [Perrie, 2019, p. 858, fn. 8], thus, inviting me to explain my choice. Perrie uses "impostor" for the false tsareviches of the Time of Troubles because it "is perhaps the more correct translation", although she finally decides to "follow established custom and practice in using 'pretender' along with 'impostor' as English equivalents of samozvanets" [Perrie, 1995, p. 1, fn. 1, 6, 247;Perrie, 2006, p. 8, 422, 615;Perrie, 2014, p. 136]. But these terms do not necessarily convey the religious dimension, which is a constitutive and defining component of the Russian original. In the interpretation of self-appointment and its indissoluble relationship with religiosity there is a before and an after the famous article by Boris Uspenski [Успенский]. Today, I believe, there is no researcher who refuses to affirm that religiosity was an important factor in Muscovy. However, if, in parallel, the sense of the language of the time is not respected and it is secularized instead, the aforementioned affirmation is emptied of content. Thus, the imprecise translation cancels the necessary correspondence between the interpretive framework used by the historian and the historical actor's intended meaning when using that language. That specific language was an indicator of, and a factor in, the theological-political context of the time and, as such, it was this language that gave meaning to events. The terminology about "false tsars and tsareviches" used in the 17 th -18 th centuries, and to a large extent in the 19 th century as well, inhibits their secularization. To think of these events as pretenderism and imposture constructs an object alien to the relations of culture and power that gave birth to the phenomenon we are dealing with. The pretension of having been appointed by God and the religious vocabulary ("apparition", "revelation" and others) of the magical rites sometimes used to verify the authenticity of self-appointed [Ingerflom, 2000, p. 103-112] by the population form a semantic field ignored by the established translations, whose language blocks other possibilities for thinking about the Russian experience. Now, why did I choose "self-appointed"? In some English translations of the Bible, appointed is used to indicate divine designation 9 . North American exegetes have insisted on the fact that "appointed", in contrast to the "ordained", "always contains the notion of an ordering, arranging, setting or appointing from without, that is, from a source other than the individual himself. <…> In other words, their faith was not self-generated" [Ritenbaugh] 10 . I do not claim that self-appointment is a unique translation. But it seems to me to be faithful to the meaning of the Russian signifier since the Time of Troubles of the early 17 th century and whenever the alleged divine legitimacy of the monarch was at stake in the following centuries. A correct translation should primarily convey the idea that selfappointed "names himself instead of being named by God". But, over time, the self-appointed became sociologically very broad, with diverse practices and aims, and included mystification. In this case neither the accusation nor the self-justification necessarily referred to the Heavenly. There are examples of mystification without religious reference in the seventeenth century, but its use expands dizzyingly from the late nineteenth -although this may be partly a product of the state of the sources -while still coexisting with those connoted by religion. 11 To capture this sense of mystification, also designated in Russian as samozvanstvo, the translation imposture is justified. But that is not all, because, as we will see, there is a radical difference between the word "samozvanstvo", in the sense of imposture, used in the 19 th century and the concept "samozvanstvo" also understood as imposture, in the 20 th century. The historian is obliged to reconstruct historicity, identifying what Koselleck, in a geological metaphor, called semantic-temporal sediments: layers of experiences and events that constitute themselves and move in different times and directions, changing the historical fault lines [Koselleck, 2018].
Before exposing the religious sediment, let us summarize the preceding pages around two topics: historiography and the problems we must face in building another way of tackling popular resistance. As we saw, traditional historiography postulates that the terms samozvanets and samozvanstvo, and what they mean, are defined by a core of constant and invariable definitions, thus giving reason to Nietzsche: "Definierbar ist nur was keine Geschichte hat". 12 Both terms could only be defined because they were deprived of historicity: the slight changes that traditional interpretation detects are adaptations that do not alter that core 13 . It is a historiography that, through a work of erudition and accumulation of data of great value, is concerned with verifying the continuity and recurrence of self-appointment throughout the various periods of Russian history. Self-appointment emerges as an idea with a life of its own, independent of the politico-social systems of the time. As is well known, the Cambridge School, also called "Ideas in Context" since its 1969 liminal manifesto, was constituted largely and explicitly against this idealist Anglo-Saxon History of Ideas, paradigmatically elaborated by Arthur O. Lovejoy [Lovejoy, 1940, p. 3-23;Lovejoy, 1953], which ignores the use of ideas and the role of actors [Skinner]. In turn, the German Begriffsgeschichte was constituted against the theoretical assumptions of that paradigm, and against Friedrich Meinecke's Ideengeschichte . Indeed, since semantics always refers to that which is outside language, the temporal relationship of the semantics of concepts with the factual history is close, either simultaneously with their changes or because it anticipates or synthesizes them [Koselleck, 1987;. The timeless definition of the concept forgets that there is always a surplus, either factually with respect to language or vice versa. The sign, i. e. the word, can persist through the ages and even retain its meaning, which allows it to be defined. But when it changes radically and fulfills the double function of registering a new historical structure and, at the same time, being a driving factor in it, then we are talking about a concept. With this distinction between word and concept, Begriffsgeschichte prevents the fixation of its object and the freezing of history. The second topic concerns language: the categories as well as the concepts that we use can cause cognitive distortions and as we have already said, block other possibilities to read the sources, or, on the contrary, unlock the field of interpretations and leave it open to be fertilized by historicity.
To the Christ-loving and God-approved sovereign Grand Duke Ivan Vasilyevich of all Russia... come out against the wicked wolf as I call Ahmat, the selfappointed tsar.
Previously, the only subjects of political action had been the great boyars and nobles. The irruption of several self-appointed with the groups that surrounded them changed the political scene. The emergence of ordinary people in the role of subjects of politics, meant a historical change that was registered by a new term: self-appointed, a keyword that synthesized a nascent political reality.

The place and functions of the leading concept selfappointment in the autocratic political paradigm
The political concepts have to acquire a higher degree of generality, in order to be key concepts (Leitbegriffe). They now aim to speak simultaneously to people of most different living spaces and most varied strata with often diametrically opposite experiences. The concepts become catchwords in their use [Koselleck, 2006, S. 84] From an onomasiological perspective, the set of meanings attributed to the false tsars/evichis of the Time of Troubles was finally recorded in the keyword self-appointed. Dmitri was the first 22 of a large and multi-secular series of self-appointed tsars. Its longue durée and social reach indicate that it was the autocratic system that made self-appointment structurally possible. The word, samozvanstvo, shares with samoderzhavie (autocracy) not only the prefix, but also a set of political practices that accompanied the history of autocracy, and of which samozvanstvo gradually appropriated: the appointment by the Heavenly in a secret and direct relationship, a strategy to render the difference between the false and the true indeterminate 23 ; an inversion of norms that prevents the operation of positive legal criteria to judge the legitimacy of the monarch's conduct; the identification of the monarch with Christ or with the Antichrist as a consequence of the demand for loyalty understood as a religious belief [Живов]; the possibility left open by Peter the Great for persons outside the dynasty to occupy the throne. 22 Dimitri was the first to aim for the Moscow throne. In the Cossack lands, he was only a relative novelty. Between 1490 and the first third of the 17 th c. about twenty false monarchs pretended or occupied the Moldavian throne, often thanks to the Cossacks coming from the same regions from which many of the troops of Dimitri, Razin and Pugachev would be recruited, [Ингерфлом, 2020, с. 42-44;Ingerflom, 2015, p. 57-65]. 23 False genealogies of the tsars, their titles and the boyar clans, the disguises of Ivan IV, Peter I and their respective entourages during official ceremonies, Ivan IV's false resignation to the throne, the false naming of tsars by both monarchs and the exchange of roles between monarchs and boyars. This could sometimes be presented as burlesque, but it always anticipated governmental decisions consisting of real political acts. On the strategy of "disguise" see: [Успенский].
The pair samozvanstvo -samoderzhavie entered into a relationship with a third signifier which has the same root -samovlastie (samo = self, vlast' = power) -thus forming a semantic network in which the meaning of each one was conditioned by that of the other two. Samovlastie emerges in theological debates and refers to the government of men without allusion to legal rules. It was used literally to designate the power of a man who behaved as if he himself were the source of power: the autocrat (samoderzhets). [Московский летописный свод, с. 72; Софийская первая летопись, с. 126-127]. Through Adam, God had granted mortals freewill (svoevolie): the ability to choose between good and evil [Клибанов, с. 139-140, 142, 155-157, 162, 193-196; Памятники литературы Древней Руси, с. 538]. Adam's fall provokes a dispute: do we have the divine gift of free choice in a direct relationship with God or through the Church and the prince? [Юрганов, с. 260, 271]. In the Muscovite Chronicles, Yaroslav the Wise and Andrei Bogoliubskii were called samovlastietsy [Илиева, с. 87]. The first Tsar, Ivan IV, dissolved the conflict in favor of the monarch, the only one who possesses the freewill that allows him to reward and punish the sinner [Послания Ивана Грозного, с. 230, 243-244; Переписка Ивана Грозного с Андреем Курбским, с. 39; Юрганов, с. 273-274]. Punishment, in this divine context, carried a particular benefit because when God punishes, even with death, He saves the sinner. To attribute to the tsar the ability to act like God allowed him to come as close as possible to Him: he was similar in power. But in contrast to the tradition originated with Agapetus in Byzantium [Kantorowicz] 24 , the practice of Muscovite power, in particular that of Ivan IV, opened a mental space for an unstable balance between the different and the similar. The connection between samoderzhavie, samozvanstvo and samovlastie was indissoluble, but conflicting. The people's revolt was contemptuously labelled "samovlastie of the slaves" [Тимофеев И., с. 113]. A major change in this usage took place in the 18 th century, at which point it was the autocrats themselves, the samoderzhets, who defined their power as samovlastie. Meanwhile, the disgruntled complained that the monarchs were allowing themselves to samovlastvovat', that is, to exercise a self-power not delegated by God. Regularly revived, the samoderzhavie (autocracy)samovlastie (self-power) -samozvanstvo (self-appointment) paradigm was the theological-political foundation of tsarism.
As a keyword and as a set of practices, self-appointment functioned as the indicator and as a reality-transforming factor of the paradigm. I am referring to the set of phenomena that the Russian language covers with the polyvocal noun self-appointment, without distinguishing instances in which the divine is invoked from those where mystification is based on secular disbelief, nor splitting samozvanstvo into social-political and com-mon forms of crim. 25 Self-appointment functioned as a weapon, loaded with historically different contents: used by the tsars against their doubles and by the people to accuse the former of despotism and, as we will see later, to condemn the Soviet regime for rejecting political representation.
Clarification of the functions of the concept is worthwhile. Within selfappointment, the protest factor had the greatest impact. Let us put Kliuchevskii in dialogue with Foucault. "Self-appointment became the stereotypical form of Russian political thought, the form taken by all social discontent" [Ключевский, с. 333], wrote the Russian historian. The philosopher generalized to the historian: to make power relations visible, let us take "as a starting point the forms of resistance to different kinds of power" [Foucault,p. 225]. Research confirms the accuracy of the Foucauldian thesis: the form of resistance represented by the self-appointment as indicator and factor, makes the functioning of autocratic power visible, provided that its historicity is reconstructed in order to avoid any essentialist, ahistorical temptations, such as those conveyed by the expressions "the monarchism inherent in the peasantry", the "peasant mentality" and others [Lloyd].

"Popular naïve monarchism"
I beg you, once again, never to send me anything from those who do not ingenuously seek the truth.
Descartes to Mersenne. 12 October 1646 The traditional approach has simplified the analysis of the collective representations of the tsar, calling them "naïve monarchism". In Soviet times, the reference to the "ideology or consciousness of the peasantry" had to be accompanied by the so-called "Leninist characterization": the "naïve monarchism" of the peasants [Konovalova, 2010[Konovalova, -2011. Lenin's political comments without any ambition of a conceptual systematization [example: Ленин, с. 425-426] were transformed into a hermeneutical category. As it has already been shown, Lenin's reference to naïve monarchism was inserted into the positivist scientific tradition [Коновалова, 2008, с. 15]. This category belongs to the conceptual arsenal of the Enlightenment whose inherent inability to recognize otherness is well known [Ингерфлом, 2003, с. 68]. Nevertheless, the epistemological critique of the category "naïve monarchism" is far from unanimously accepted in the historiography. Some authors use it as valid and scientifically relevant [for example: Антипов,с. 89;Пихоя,177,[192][193][194]Mamonova;Донских,с. 123].
Other authors employ it, but indicate that, in some cases, there was little or no naivete at all [Карапетян, с. 7;Савельева;Field, p. 214;Филд;Perrie, 1995, p. 249]. 26 However, in his anthological article of 1988, Nikolai Pokrovski, probably aware of the fragility of the adjective "naïve", put it between quotation marks, while also adding, without quotation marks, the adjective "popular" («'naïve' popular monarchism»). The author sought to contrast this "'naïve' popular monarchism" with "official monarchism" and, thus, designate the collective representations of the tsar, which convey the idea that, if he is the authentic one, he is benevolent [Покровский, с. 25]. At the same time, since the late 1980s, several historians have highlighted the epistemological inconsistency of the category "naïve monarchism". 27 In its place the category "popular monarchism" spread in reference to the beliefs held by the peasantry and the lower social sectors in relation to the tsar [Терехова, с. 39]. The critique of "naivete" lay the groundwork for restoring the historicity of collective representations of power. In this same process of overcoming essentialism, I propose a new step: to ask ourselves to what extent, in the use of the new category, the replacement of the signifier "naïve" by "popular" is accompanied by a change in their respective signified. The reason for this concern is the following: how to justify the opposition between "naïve" and "popular" if it is claimed that popular monarchism is founded on tsarist illusions. In Western historiography, Maureen Perrie also preferred the expression "popular monarchism" instead of "naïve monarchism", but this shift, as is clear in her explanation, means characterizing the "popular" as "naïve" : "A number of more recent scholars have associated pretense with 'popular monarchism' , the naïve faith in the benevolence of the tsar towards the common people (narod)" [Perrie, 1995, p. 2]. So, popular monarchism is naïve and naivete would be what distinguishes popular monarchism from that of the literate, ecclesiastical and political elites. A vicious cycle takes 26 Regarding circumstantial cases, Perrie and Field consider that the "peasants were not naïve" but they maintain "naïve monarchism" as a hermeneutical category [Perrie, 1995, p. 249;Field, p. 214]. However, cases of the "not naïve" were so frequent that their exceptionality of the "not naïve" becomes problematic. There are also examples of "utopian legends" in which there are not even traces of monarchism [Чистов, с. 463]. There were samozvantsy who "revealed" themselves in the districts where they were born, others were known to the inhabitants, and there were those who took the name of the same monarch and acted simultaneously in the same region. Pugachev's "court" was composed of atamans who were well known to the troops but who bore the names and titles of the dignitaries who seconded Catherine II, while the "Cossacks, colonels and generals" who dispensed justice in the seized villages were often Tatars or peasants from the same region, and known to all. And how to reconcile the supposed faith that Pugachev was really Peter III when other participants in the revolt, such as the ataman Pyotr Evsevev also self-appointed Peter III in his own village and in the surrounding region, and who was addressed by the peasants as if he were the monarch? Simultaneously with the insurrection, in the Tambov region, the peasant Iev Mosiakin, proclaimed himself Peter III [Сивков, с. 120-122;Коган, с. 222-224;Миронов, с. 134;Ингерфлом, 2020, с. 252-253;Ingerflom, 2015, p. 308-310]. 27 Some examples cited in chronological order of publication, without any claim to completeness [Андреев, 1995, с. 8;Ingerflom, 1996;Андреев, 1999, с. 10;Лукин, с. 29-32;Кедров;Терехова;Мауль, 2017;Коробков, Королев, с. 44-45]. place which invalidates the usefulness of replacing "naïve monarchism" by "popular monarchism". Without quotation marks, the formula naïve popular monarchism is nowadays commonly used [Инсаров]. Pokrovskii was undoubtedly right in making explicit the equivalence between "naïve" and "popular" by grouping the two terms in a single formula. Viktor Maul broke that vicious cycle and offered a true perspective for reflection when he eliminates the ahistorical "naïve" component: "In the context of monarchical mythology, the tsar is not just the vicar of God on earth, but also the guarantor of the immutability of the order established by him" [Мауль, 2017, с. 225]. I agree with this recovery of the myth -I will return to this below -but, that function of guarantor of immutability was shared by most Russians, from slaves to Prokopovich, Uvarov and Alexander III. In other words, Maul confirms a consensus that far exceeds what historiography understands as "popular". Indeed, he not only invalidates the adjective "popular" and with it the category "popular monarchism": he also surpasses it by directing the reflection towards the question of myth.
There are also other reasons for us to distance ourselves from the term "popular. " It is used in two very widespread formulas. The first is "popular illusions". The traditional interpretation does not cease to describe "popular hopes" in the Tsar as "illusory". Scholars were right in pointing out that belief in the benevolent tsar was not the monopoly of the popular sectors [Field, p. 14-15;Perrie, 1999, p. 160]. Why should "peasants' monarchist beliefs" be any naïve or more illusory than those of high dignitaries such a Count Golovkin officially addressing Peter I in the words of the Prayer of the Trisagion of St. John Chrysostom: "You have brought all things into being out of nothing" is something that the historiography that affirms the naivety or illusory of the popular beliefs has not yet explained.
The second formula is "popular culture", whose impasses have been signaled [Chartier]. This category has been the subject of debates, which have shown that there are eras, civilizations and items in which the division between "popular" culture and literate or elite culture does not work. Natalia Gurianova demonstrated that the monarchism of the old-believers in the 17 th -19 th centuries, both in their references to the Scriptures and in their interpretations, practically coincides with that of the political-ecclesiastic elites and distinguished religious intellectuals. According to Gurianova, what distinguishes the monarchism of the old-believers and intellectuals like Rozanov, from the monarchism of the elites as in the case of Prokopovich or Pobedonovtsev, is that the former admits the possibility of criticizing the concrete tsar or his policy. Despite this difference, there is a culture common to every "Russian individual": a tsar is the animated version, living image (odushevlennyi obraz) of God and not only his lieutenant on Earth. However, Gurianova designates this culture as a "popular variant" of monarchismsince it harbors the possibility of denouncing as a personification of the Antichrist the tsars that it does not consider pious -though she immediately adds that it is a "conventional denomination" [Гурьянова]. The caution is understandable: it is a convention that does not seem the most appropriate to the panorama described by Gurianova: a common representation of the tsar in the abstract, and of the tsarist institution that is not exclusive to the sectors to which the term "popular" refers.
If the object of investigation is a predominantly common culture, the adjective "popular" tends to be confusing. Conversely, if the adjective "popular" was used to differentiate a particular culture, other problems would arise since that would imply the emergence of comparisons. But with what other forms of culture? What would be the relevant oppositions? Maureen Perrie explained that the adjective "popular" refers to peasants [Perrie, 1999, p. 156]. Regardless of the author's will, the use of the expression evokes the idea of a cultural hierarchy: high / low -and its variant highbrow / lowbrow, elite / mass, scholar / popular, legitimate / non-legitimate, cultivated culture / popular culture, cultivated / vulgar, etc. [Pasquier,p. 61;Fabiani]. Then, what does the use of the formula lead to if not stripping the culture and language of the most humble and oppressed people of all social value. Let us summarize: first, it seems to me necessary to reject the dependence that ties the representations of the tsar to social differences: the former are not the ideological translation of the latter, especially in the case at hand, when entirely immersed in the religious sphere [Тимофеев Д. В., с. 35, 44]. Second: the way in which the term "mentality" is usually used does not take into account social practices, the experiences of resistance and the creative capacity of the subjects, that is, of what elements produce diversity and discontinuity, thus, breaking the apparent homogeneity. It is a use that ignores them doubly: as moments of discontinuity, which historiography freezes with the word "tradition", and as producers of changes in a collective vision of the world and, in particular, of power. The sources repeatedly illustrate the changes in collective representations, thus rejecting the replacement of historicity by essentialism, as conveyed by the categories "popular culture" or "peasant mentality".