Menachem Mendel Lefin and the rise of dictatorships

I just read a wonderful book Out of the Shtetl: Making Jews Modern in the Polish Borderlands (Brown Judaic Studies) by Nancy Sinkoff.

I ask myself:
1. Why did Chassidim select the most reactionary societal model of the time, namely Russian Absolutist monarchy?
2. How did European waves of enlightenment affect the Jews?
3. How did partition of Poland and the territorial splits affect the Jews?
4. How was it possible that at the same time when the fledgling America (and even France) was debating the social order of freedom, jews were deliberately mentally and physically enslaved by the reactionary monarchical cults of personalities.

I am not in mood for a long review. But let me say that Nancy wrote a wonderful dissertation turned book. Although Maggid placed the Jewish society on the cursed path of the absolutists dictatorship, there was at least one man who saw through it. Menachem Mendel Lefin, he was different from the German Maskilim in his unwavering respect of tradition. Lefin considered and wrote about Jewish governance and addressed proper procedural rule of an ideal Beis Din.

He lived in the time of the Maggid and saw thing first hand. Incidentally his patron, the mason and enlightened prince Adam Kazimirierz Czartoryski often resided in Medzhibozh. One has to understand that till the time of Maggid when Prussia, Austria and Russia split the kingdom of Poland, all eastern Jews including White Russia lived in Poland. Let me say this unequivocally, utopian romantics like Buber are guilty of glorifying the wrong leaders. Certainly Mendel Lefin was a significant leader on par with the Maggid and most certainly Lefin was a more honest visionary. It is our national tragedy that the legacy the Mendel Lefin was brushed aside, we all pay the price till this very day.