Why Republics Always Fail: Pondering Feofan Prokopovich’s Case for Russian Autocracy

Abstract

The article considers Feofan Prokopovich's contribution to redefining Russian autocratic ideology. In the first section, it uncovers an implicit polemic with Samuel Pufendorf's assessment of republican and mixed forms of governance. The second section traces the evolution of the genre of the Pindaric ode, with its attendant poetics of autocratic agency, in Polish Neo-Latin tradition leading up to Feofan's Epinikion, written to celebrate Peter's victory at Poltava.

Keywords

• Autocracy
• Pindar
• Classical Reception