Autocracy in the ProvincesThis book explores the possibilities for rich and varied social, cultural, and political development under the rule of an autocratic state. Seventeenth century Muscovite society was theocentric, highly traditional, largely illiterate, and deeply dependent on the state in all aspects of life, and therefore does not at all fit Western definitions of a civil society. Nevertheless, Muscovites found interstices in the overarching autocratic culture in