I'm not a historian, but to me the difference between despotic (and I'd say Imperial Russia was despotic at all times, given that it was always a system of unch

I'm not a historian, but to me the difference between despotic (and I'd say Imperial Russia was despotic at all times, given that it was always a system of unchecked executive power) and authoritarian is splitting hairs. Sure, it would be impractical for the Tsar to exercise this authority at the individual level all the time, but all the various local vassals only had their power subject to the Tsar's unchecked authority and when the Tsar wanted them to do something, their choices were compliance or ruin. > people don’t typically use terms like “authoritarian” or “totalitarian” to describe the Ancien Régime. Alexis de Tocqueville does, in L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution [1] "In this book, de Tocqueville develops his main theory about the French revolution, the theory of continuity, in which he states that even though the French tried to dissociate themselves from the past and from the autocratic old regime, they eventually reverted to a powerful central government." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Regime_and_the_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Regime_and_the_Revolut...