People of the Revolution and the USSR

Russian Empire state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1827–1907 ○ Natural causes

The 'Grand Inquisitor' who made autocracy a creed

To Nicholas II he is reported to have said: "The prolongation of the existing order depends on keeping the country in a frozen state. The slightest warm breath of spring, and everything will collapse."

The chief conservative ideologue of Alexander III's Russia and Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod from 1880 to 1905. He drafted the Manifesto on Unshakeable Autocracy of April 1881, which killed Loris-Melikov's constitutional reform and inaugurated reactionary counter-reforms: parish school expansion, tighter censorship, and repression of religious minorities. A formidable jurist who wrote the three-volume Course of Civil Law, in Reflections of a Russian Statesman he denounced parliamentarism as 'the great lie of our time.' Tutor to Alexander III and Nicholas II, he was in office when the Synod excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901, and resigned after the October Manifesto of 1905; the autocratic order he spent his life defending was precisely what the revolutionary generation set out to destroy.

Union of 17 October (Octobrists) Conservatism and Christian democracy 1859–1924 ○ Natural causes

The parliamentarian the Tsar called 'fat-bellied': last chairman of the Imperial Duma

In February 1917, Rodzianko telegraphed the Stavka: "The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralysed. Any delay is fatal. The last hour has struck." Nicholas II read it and told his court minister: "That fat-bellied Rodzianko has sent me some more nonsense."

Of Ukrainian noble stock, Rodzianko co-founded the Octobrist Party in 1905, pursuing constitutional reform of the Tsarist system through parliamentarism. As chairman of the Third and Fourth Dumas (1911–1917), he openly denounced Rasputin and confronted the wartime government's paralysis. During the February Revolution he led the Provisional Committee of the Duma and drove the negotiations for Nicholas II's abdication, but his constitutional-monarchy project collapsed when Grand Duke Michael refused the throne. He emigrated to Yugoslavia in 1920, dying in poverty after completing his memoir The Reign of Rasputin. Reviled by monarchist émigrés as a traitor and dismissed by the left, Rodzianko embodied the brief, thwarted experiment of Russian parliamentary politics.

Russian Federation state institutions Conservatism and Christian democracy 1952–

A ruler who recast the loss of the Soviet Union as a narrative of state restoration

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Vladimir Putin is a Russian politician and former Soviet security officer who rose to national power amid the crises of the 1990s. Alternating between the presidency and premiership, he strengthened federal and presidential authority while making the restoration of Russia’s international influence a central narrative of rule. In 2005, he called the Soviet collapse “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” a remark that condensed his memory of dissolution as a Russian experience of loss and dislocation. His rule also narrowed political competition and independent media while expanding the state’s military interventions abroad.