While the regimes supplied by the tsars and by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union differed radically in their goals, both were outside the mainstream of European political development. Thus, Vladimir Putin was correct in emphasizing that what is viewed as normalno by the country's political elites is not what is normal in democratic regimes of Europe or in the United States.

Under the influence of Mongol invaders and Byzantine civilization, the tsarist regime originated as a despotic autocracy resembling an Asian empire rather than a European feudal state (Hosking, 2001: chapter 1). The nineteenth-century industrialization of Europe produced a reaction from Slavophile writers, who stressed Russia's uniqueness.Western travelers saw Russia as alien to Europe too (see Wolff, 1994; Hedlund, 1999: chapter 4). While European regimes came and went, the Russian tsars successfully maintained their regime through cycles of steady-state and dynamic equilibrium for more than three centuries before being overthrown in 1917.

Although Lenin was familiar at first hand with European constitutional autocracies and democracies, the Soviet Union was founded as a challenge to European regimes.