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2 results

  • Chapter 5 - Conversations with Western Ideas I

  • Vanessa Rampton, McGill University, Montréal
  • Book:
    Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia
    Published online:
    10 February 2020
    Print publication:
    20 February 2020, pp 135-160

  • Summary

    Chapter 5 discusses the work of two important neo-idealist theorists, Pavel Novgorodtsev and Bogdan Kistiakovskii, who stand out for their concern with the ongoing tensions within liberal history and theory, and their desire to place the experiences of Russia’s liberal movement in a broader historical context. In the aftermath of 1905, Novgorodtsev wrote two book-length studies explicitly concerned with the history of liberalism, while a number of Kistiakovskii’s long articles, including ‘In Defense of Law’ (1909), demonstrate the fluidity of the concept of liberalism. In the period under consideration, these thinkers, who had been intimately involved in elaborating a legal philosophy applicable to Russia, now distanced themselves from an optimistic theory of historical change, in favour of a much more nuanced view. Their respective intellectual trajectories demonstrate the value of their attempt to learn from Western liberal history, while simultaneously illustrating some of the difficulties they had in using its lessons for Russia.

Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia
  • From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution
  • Vanessa Rampton
  • Published online:
    10 February 2020
    Print publication:
    20 February 2020
  • Liberalism is a critically important topic in the contemporary world as liberal values and institutions are in retreat in countries where they seemed relatively secure. Lucidly written and accessible, this book offers an important yet neglected Russian aspect to the history of political liberalism. Vanessa Rampton examines Russian engagement with liberal ideas during Russia's long nineteenth century, focusing on the high point of Russian liberalism from 1900 to 1914. It was then that a self-consciously liberal movement took shape, followed by the founding of the country's first liberal (Constitutional-Democratic or Kadet) party in 1905. For a brief, revelatory period, some Russians - an eclectic group of academics, politicians and public figures - drew on liberal ideas of Western origin to articulate a distinctively Russian liberal philosophy, shape their country's political landscape, and were themselves partly responsible for the tragic experience of 1905.