Pobedonostsev’s doctrine of autocracy, which the young Nicholas had uncritically made his own, was grounded in religious mysticism. Its essence, as one of Pobedonostsev’s disciples explained to the French ambassador, Maurice Paleologue, was that: “The Czar is the anointed of the Lord, sent by God to be the supreme guardian of the Church and the all-powerful ruler of the empire ... As he receives his power from God, it is to God alone that he must account for it ... Constitutional liberalism is a heresy as well as a stupid chimera.”
