‘Letters from Russia. Russia in 1839’ (Marquis de Custine). A postmodernist analysis

Abstract

How does a despotic state function? What is the relationship between the sovereignty's power and the individual? How do the individual's desires integrate into a despotic society's social body? What is the role of violence within the state or the civil society? To what extent does a social fact become a cultural fact? Are all of these facts connected to the Tzarist Empire's XIX-century expansion? These are the questions upon which the current analysis was based.