Autocracy concentrated power without concentrating competence

Montefiore's throughline across three centuries is that the Romanov system placed near-total authority in a single person's hands with almost no institutional check on how that authority was used, meaning the empire's fortunes swung dramatically depending on whether the current ruler happened to be capable, reckless, paranoid, or simply young and inexperienced. There was no reliable mechanism to correct for a weak or unstable tsar beyond conspiracy or assassination.

This structural feature explains why Russia could lurch between periods of dramatic expansion and modernization under strong rulers and periods of chaos, purges, or drift under weaker ones, often within the same dynasty and sometimes within a single generation. Capability was inherited by birth order, not selected through any competitive or institutional process.

Montefiore treats this volatility as baked into the system rather than incidental to it: an empire this large, governed this personally, was always one difficult succession away from crisis. A throne without institutional guardrails makes every succession a gamble with an empire's future.