At the same time, unlike the absolutism in Prussia, Austria, Britain, or France, Russia’s autocracy endured deep into modern times. Prussia’s Frederick the Great (r. 1740–86) had called himself “the first servant of the state,” thereby marking the state’s separate existence from the sovereign. Russia’s tsars would hand out a Siberian silver mine’s worth of medals to state officials but, jealous of their autocratic prerogatives, they hesitated to recognize a state independent of themselves.
