Ruler Personality Cults from Empires to Nation-States and Beyond

Symbolic Patterns and Interactional Dynamics

Kirill Postoutenko, Darin Stephanov, Kirill Postoutenko, Darin Stephanov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367546939
• eBook ISBN: 9781000177176
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Baltic History
• Index: History

Encompassing five continents and twenty centuries, this book puts ruler personality cults on the crossroads of disciplines rarely, if ever, juxtaposed before: among its authors are historians, linguists, media scholars, political scientists and communication sociologists from Europe, the United States and New Zealand. However, this breadth and versatility are not goals in themselves. Rather, they are the means to work out an integrated approach to personality cults, capable of overcoming both the dominance of much-discussed 20th century poster examples (Bolshevism-Nazism-Fascism) and the lack of interest in the related practices of leader adoration in religious and cultural contexts. Instead of reiterating the understandable but unfruitful fixation on rulers as the cults' focal points, the authors focus on communicative patterns and interactional chains linking rulers with their subjects: in this light, the adoration of political figures is seen as a collective enterprise impossible without active, if often tacit, collaboration between rulers and their constituencies.

1 “Personality cults”

The career of the contested notion

Dmitri Zakharine

The current project aims to work out some systematic criteria to grasp the phenomenon of ruler personality cults throughout history. Like many other political and historical terms, the term “personality cult” may be used in two different contexts. The first context is that of objectifying observation which implies measuring against a scale of distinguishing features. Seen from this perspective, any political phenomenon does exist if something what we come across today fits into a catalogue of initial (one might say: historical) categorizations. The second context is that of evaluative statements which aim to exclude those who do not think like the speakers do. Seen from the second perspective, the term “ruler personality cult” might be applied in a negative sense to anyone who should be humiliated or ostracized. Carriers of the Western values have always been blaming their Eastern neighbors for the spread of what they called “ruler personality cults”. From the Old Greek point of view, Persians were prone to favoring ruler personality cult, and Soviet people were ascribed the same in the Western historiography of the post-war period (Lukács 1963; Gill 1980; Montefiore 2003, 27–28; Ennker 2004, 83–101; Brandenberger 2005; Kelly 2005, 199–224; Plamper 2012). In what follows below, it has first to be shown that the evaluative use of the term “ruler personality cult” is characteristic for all main periods of European history. Secondly, it should be determined which historical dilemmas and definitions might justify the use of the term “ruler personality cult” in the context of modern politics. “The difference that makes a difference” between objectifying observations and evaluative statements also pertains to history (Bateson 1972, 459). Thus the history of political reasoning about ruler personality cults makes the central point of the current chapter.

“Ruler personality cults”: the discourse, its meanings and use

The normative use of the term “personality cult” takes its origin in the Antique historiography that considered adoration and deification of rulers as an essentially alien habit. The Old Greeks believed that the use of particular gestures, such as kissing the knee, falling on the face, striking of the earth with the forehead in front of human beings was not of a local origin. Such acts of homage or worship were allegedly introduced by the Persian tsar Cyrus the Great in order to demonstrate the uniqueness of the ruler (Walter 1910; Delatte 1951; Hoffmann 1990, 42–49; Zakharine 2005, 637). Verbal expressions like prostrating, kissing one’s feet were commonly used in order to emphasize the precarious relation between sovereigns and their subjects. Even prostrations before God could be condemned by philosophers as signs of superstition (Marti 1936).

The antique clichés were further developed in the modern times. Disregarding the discrepancy between self-observation vs. alien observation, the occidental travelers, warriors and ambassadors of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries had been blaming their oriental rivals for the spread of customs that could allegedly evoke associations with a ruler personality cult. We are going to show below that different practices associated with the worship of a ruling person have always been condemned from outside as “Persian”, “Greek”, “Tatar”, and “Russian”, or, later on, as “Soviet”, “Nazi-German”, and “Fascist Italian”, to name just a few.

Ruler personality cults are “Persian” for ancient Greeks

As already mentioned above, the extreme bodily attitudes linked to the divine cults were considered as prejudices of Persians by the Old Greeks. It has to be noticed that even a kneeling veneration of gods was far from self-evident in Old Greek worship practices. A kneeling way of praying conveyed an extreme piety (gr. δεισιδαιμονία to be translated as “fear of gods”, but also as “cowardice in front of the divine”), which was incompatible with the philosophy of Stoics and Epicureans (Bolkestein 1929, 17). Plutarch disrespectfully writes about pious worshippers who are inclined to “explain all their misfortunes with the rage of wrathful gods” and “who then lie spread-eagled in excrements shouting loudly about their crimes” (De Super. 3). Herodot Halikarnassos describes a goofy relationship between sovereigns and subjects, pointing out the servile spirit of the Persians. According to Herodot, Persians were accustomed to “fall down in worship and stretch out their bodies” (gr. προσκυνεῖν “worship” and προσπίπτειν “fall down”) when greeting their sovereign. Comparing peoples’ customs, Herodot recounts a story about two Spartan ambassadors who refused to kneel to the ground after being invited to perform a kneeling homage ritual at the Persian court (Hdt. 1, 334, 1 and 7, 136, 1). A similar comparison appears in the tragedy The Persians, written during the Classical period of Ancient Greece by Aeschylus: those who decline a kneeling veneration of the ruler are described as heroes. These are keen not to participate in a Persian ritual (Pers. 584–585). Xenophon justifies the Greek victory over Persians by arguing that Greeks did not do prostration in front of any rulers unless it concerned the immortal gods (Anab. 3, 2, 13). Isocrates, one of the most famous ancient Greek rhetoricians and speechwriters, explains Persian military by the pervasiveness of the ruler personality cults in Persia:

They [the Persians] keep their minds in a humble state and cringe in fear because they are subject to a single man’s power; they present themselves for inspection at the door of the royal palace, prostrate themselves (προκαλινδούμενοι—‘roll about’), practice a lowly attitude of mind, and make proskynēsis before a mortal man (θνητὸν μὲν ἄνδρα προσκυνοῦντες), addressing him as a god and showing less respect for gods than for men.

(Isoc. 4.151)

Ruler personality cults are “Greek” in the Roman Empire

According to the claims of Roman historians, the first evidences of a ruler personality cult should be traced back to the reign of Alexander the Great who allegedly forced the Greeks and Macedonians to adopt the Persian custom of prostration in front of the sovereign. It is said Alexander insisted on adoration (adorari) instead of salutation (salutari) demonstrating the same insolence as the Persian rulers (Justin 12.7.1, compare Schnabel 1925, 118). As reported Alexander also urged the Greek cities to assign him the right of a semi-divine veneration. From that point on, many cities took care of a ruler cult by setting up a temple in which the rulers’ statues were placed. The ruler was thus given the honor of sharing the place of worship with gods.

The kneeling veneration of a ruler that was deemed to be “Persian” in Greece became thus a practice of a “Greek” origin in Rome. It was vehemently condemned by the leading Roman philosophers known for their tireless criticism of the powerful. Seneca did his best to deter Emperor Caligula (AD 37–41) from introducing Alexander the Great’s ruler worshipping practice in Rome, claiming that it would not be reasonable to substitute the customs of liberal citizenship by those of Persian servitude (Sen. Ben. 2.12.1). With the similar vigor, Philon castigated a Greek ruler who let the servile prostration spread over Italy (Legat. 116).

Ruler personality cults are “Mongol” in the old Russia

Until the rise of the Tsardom of Muscovy by the end of sixteenth century, Russian nobility tended to consider kneeling in front of the Tsar to have “Mongol” origins. The expression “bit’ chelom” (old Russian for “knocking one’s forehead to the ground”) that triggers the association with a kneeling bowing posture suited for touching the floor with the head, is much older than the corresponding Russian practice related to the veneration of the Tsar (Richter 1825, 334). For the first hundred years of Mongol domination, the Russian princes had no choice but to appear as subservient as possible to their overlords and hope for the best. Veselovsky says that every Russian ambassador had to kneel before the Mongolian headman (VeselovskiĬ 1911, 14; Spuler 1943, 360; Silfen 1974, 18; Кrivosheev 1999, 253–271). The Mongols claimed to have taken over the kneeling greeting kow-tow from the Chinese Court (Abe 2018).

As to the Great Duc of Muscovy, he was not entitled to receive the same honors as the Holy Roman Emperor or the King of Poland until the end of the seventeenth century. The Venetian merchant Contarini was allegedly the first to draw a comparison between the customs at the Polish and the Russian courts. Contarini had to kneel before the Polish King Casimir IV when performing a ceremonial act of greeting (stando in genocchioni). While greeting the Great Duc of Moscow Contarini remained standing in an upright body position (Contarini 1476, 208). The old miniature book painting from the end of the sixteenth century shows boyars approaching Tsar Fedor without falling on the ground (Zakharine 2005, 416).

Due to the strengthening of the Early Modern Russian state, western ambassadors were forced to seek politically relevant correspondences between the statuses of the Tsar and the Holy Roman Emperor. The latter’s ambassador Antonino Possevino, who was commissioned to integrate Russia into the anti-Ottoman coalition, became allegedly the first who fell on his knees while greeting the Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. The kneeling posture thus meant that the Great Duc of Muscovy was equal to the Holy Roman Emperor (Pamiatniki diplomaticheskikh snosheniī 1871, 304). As the art of performance was the Jesuit Order’s claim to fame, Possevino made his best to flaunt his acting skills.

There is no evidence that Russian nobility performed any kneeling rituals related to ruler personality cults until the end of the seventeenth century. This means that the Tsar was considered to be primus inter pares (first among equals) by the state elites of that time. It should be recalled that Mikhail Romanov, the first Tsar from the Romanov dynasty (1596–1645) was elected by the Boyars (1613) after the fall of the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Symbolic patterns and interactional dynamics in ruler personality cults: state of the art and open questions
• 1 “Personality cults”: the career of the contested notion
• 2 The mechanisms of cult production: an overview
• 3 Making the cult of personality from bottom up: the case of seventeenth-century Mughal India
• 4 A personality cult against one’s will? Traits and trajectories of popular veneration of Emperor Alexander I (r. 1801–1825)
• 5 Of death and dominion: Queen Victoria and the cult of colonial loyalty
• 6 The magic mirror: supplicant letters and the role of false equivalences in shaping ruler dominance
• 7 Father of the people, face of the nation: the premodern and modern foundations of ruler personality cults
• 8 The image of Josip Broz Tito in post-Yugoslavia: between national and local memory
• 9 Deification, canonization and random signaling: upholding and sustaining personality cults
• 10 ‘We thank you, our beloved leader!’ The origins and evolution of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s cult of personality
• 11 Embodied practices of leadership: the case of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
• 12 Symbolic patterns and interactional dynamics in ruler personality cults: responding to questions and formulating ideas for future research
• Index