I am the king. The history of self -posterity in Russia. Ingerfle K.

The words “autocrat” and “impostor” are similar in sound, but unites them something more. Political culture in tsarist Russia was arranged so that legal rulers often suspected of usurpation of power, and the impostors found support in the folk environment. Since the beginning of the XVII century, hundreds of people declared themselves kings and princes, and one of them officially ascended the throne. The impostorship took the roots in all spheres of social and cultural life: numerous adventurers impersoned princes, priests, scientists and judges, and after 1917 - for revolutionaries, for the “present” of Lenin, for the sons of Stalin.

Why were there so many impostors and what truth was expressed by their folk legitimacy? Claudio Ingerfle for the first time reconstructs the history of this phenomenon from tsarist times to the present day, explaining how impostority has become the political norm in Russia, and showing how its elements are manifested in modern realities. The study of the Slavic world of the University of San Martin Buenos Aires, the author of numerous works on the history of Russia.