The Caesar Temptation

And you have the blood of the Caesars in you.

Just think what Suetonious was at the time of the Caesars!

Czarist rule withstood many harsh tests during its long history peasant revolts, conspiracies, and the alienation of the educated class.

Both events crystallized a peculiar Latin American phenomenon the temptation to empower a new, local Caesar.

The Bolsheviks inherited the autocracy of the Czars Putin rediscovered the old monarchical principle of anointing his successor, bypassing democratic competition for the presidency.

Spain and Portugal continued to date by the Era of the Caesars or Spanish Era, which began counting from 38 BC, well into the Middle Ages.

Background Previously, the Russian Tsars had exerted some influence on church operations however, until Peter's reforms the church had been relatively free in its internal governance.

Stalin's repressions led to the creation of a vast system of internal exile, of considerably greater dimensions than those set up in the past by the tsars.

After the First Sino Japanese War and the failure of the 1903 negotiations between Japan and the Tsars's government, Japan chose war to protect its domination of Korea and adjacent territories.

Heir to an imperial tradition that has shaped its national identity, Russia is resuming in the Middle East a role and status more in tune with the one it had from the Czarist era to Soviet times.

This Caesarism is not a new idea. Instead, it marks the return of a practice that had seemed to have been consigned to history s dustbin which has now returned with a vengeance.

Despite the August 1921 instruction, the state took a very hard line against the Orthodox Church on the pretext that it was a legacy of the Tsarist past (the difference in practice and policy may have reflected internal disagreement among the party leadership).

However, while it appeared that the congress exercised sovereign power, this body was actually governed by the Communist Party, which in turn was controlled by the Politburo from Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union, just as it had been under the tsars before Peter the Great.