monarchy’ which she did much to develop fell short of encroachingon tsarist absolutism, which included rights and privileges for thenobility under the protection and patronage of the autocraticEmpress, and meant little if any advancement for the peasants.This injustice helped to spawn the uprising by Pugachev and hissupporters. In other words, Catherine’s ‘constitutionalism’ wasalready confronted by a primitive form of revolutionary oppositionin the shape of Cossack and peasant insurgents.During the nineteenth century, some significant advance wasmade by Russia as far as our key concepts of liberty, property andlegality were concerned. While Russia moved forward, however,the pace was even faster elsewhere, and the chances for fullassimilation of the main foundations of the Western way of lifeunder the tsarist (or indeed any) regime were severely limited. In1906, Max Weber wrote that:The historical development of modern ‘freedom’ presup-posed a unique and unrepeatable constellation of factors,of which the following are the most important: first,overseas expansion...secondly, the characteristic economicand social structure of the ‘early capitalist’ period inWestern Europe; thirdly, the conquest of life throughscience... finally, certain ideal conceptions which grew outof the concrete historical uniqueness of a particularreligious viewpoint.Looking at Russia in particular in the aftermath of the failedRevolution of 1905, Weber added:It is ridiculous in the extreme to ascribe to modern highcapitalism, as currently being imported into Russia...anyinner affinity with ‘democracy’ or even ‘freedom’ (in anysense of the word). The question is rather ‘How are any ofthese at all possible in the long run under its domi-nation?’5In the long perspective of 1993, perhaps, some of the voters forZhirinovsky were in unwitting agreement with Max Weber, as wellas reflecting traditional attitudes towards liberty, property andlegality.But 1993, of course, was very different from 1906 not only inRussia and the West but throughout the world. As we shift our