Why I Am A Tolstoyan

In Chapter 15 of his late masterpiece Hadji Murat, Leo Tolstoy savages Czar Nicholas I in a fashion that remains as politically relevant as ever:

The blatant, unceasing flattery of those around him had so far detached him from reality that he was no longer aware of his own inconsistency and ceased to relate his words and actions to reality, logic, or plain common sense, fully convinced that all his decisions, however senseless, unjust and inconsistent they were in fact, became sensible, just and consistent simply by virtue of having been made by him.