ON ISSUES AND IDENTITY OF THE RUSSIAN LIBERALISM (19TH – EARLY 20TH CENTURY)
https://doi.org/10.18384/2224-0209-2025-4-1627
Abstract
Aim. To reconstruct the values of classical liberalism regarding their axiological revision by the collective West. A retrospective analysis of the basic principles of European liberalism, their interpretation and verification in the socio-political thought of Russia during the period under study made it possible to determine its essential foundations and prospects for the development of Russian political science and the state.
Methodology. The study uses a wide range of general scientific methods and political science approaches: dialectical, descriptive, axiological, structural and functional, analysis and synthesis.
Results. It is concluded that fundamental principles of European liberalism were borrowed and axiologically assimilated by Russian liberals, considering the specifics of Russian reality. The process of interpreting and verifying the key tenets of European liberalism was made with use of new methodological approaches such as the following: the problem of free man was studying thorough a metaphysical dimension (two trends were intertwined – individual freedom and the search for the boundaries of this freedom); the antinomies of Western social theory were solved from moral and humanistic positions; the monarchy was recognized as a form of government, ensuring the unity of the people and state stability; the foundations of constitutionalism were the philosophy of law with a pronounced ideal of moral and legal reason; the philosophy of economy was formed under the influence of socio-cultural factors and expressed itself in the idea of the unity of property and the state. The historical drama of Russian liberalism consisted in its radicalization and, as a result, the rejection of the evolutionary path of Russia’s development at the beginning of the 20th century.
Research implications lie in discovering the identity of Russian liberalism and reactualizing the problematic field of political and legal thought in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
About the Author
Aslanbek K. Denilkhanov
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Россия
Россия
Cand. Sci. (Political Sciences), Assoc. Prof., Department of Philosophy of Political Science and Law, Faculty of Philosophy, Lomonosov MSU Business School
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