Social Sciences

Social Sciences
Vol. 30, No. 2/June 1999

Russian Liberalism in Terms of Historiography and Historiosophy
By Valentin Shelokhaev

The transformation processes under way in postcommunist Russia have revived professional and public interest in the history of Western and Russian liberalism. The defeat of the communist doctrine and politics in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has produced a pressing need for a new system of philosophical and ideological values adequate to the changes of the 1980s-1990s. This is why social scientists, the scientific community and political elites are displaying an increased interest in the values of liberalism, which is the basic ideology and politics of the leading Western European countries. A discussion (direct or indirect) about the historical destiny and prospects of liberalism in modern Russia is going on in the press and in scientific publications.

In the 1990s, monographs, 1 collections 2 (I should like to specially mention the collection Liberalism in Russia, which is referred to in the text 3 ) and dozens of articles in scientific journals 4 appeared in Russia. Publication of a unique multi-volume collection of documents and materials of the principal Russian liberal parties was attempted. 5 In the past few years, new editions of the works of prominent theorists and ideologists of Western European and Russian liberalism appeared, monographs and articles by Western scholars were translated into Russian, 6 and a number of international and national conferences and symposiums on the history of Russia liberalism was held. 7 In 1995-1996, the journal Otkrytaya politika (Open Politics) played host to the seminar “Liberalism: Ideas, Experience, the Present” with the participation of philosophers, political analysts, sociologists, historians, economists and lawyers, as well as politicians belonging to the liberal-democratic trend. 8

Analysis of the large multi-tiered body of writings prompts two preliminary observations. While ten years ago, Russian liberalism was studied mainly by historians, economists and lawyers, it is now an object of research of philosophers, political analysts and sociologists as well. It is also productive that foreign and domestic researchers are pooling efforts in the study of liberalism as a worldwide phenomenon. One can already say that in the 1990s, a new stage in the study and identification of issues of liberalism began. There has occurred a change in the theoretical and methodological approaches to this subject, which has stopped being an “area study” and has acquired worldwide scope. Good results have also been achieved in the study of Western European historiography. Articles by N. Dumova, A. Medushevsky, I. Narsky and R. Arslanov thoroughly analyze Anglo-American, German and French writings highlighting their merits and identifying the range of inadequately researched and debatable issues in the history of both Western and Russian liberalism. 9

But the past few years have also witnessed the emergence of adverse trends. First, a large number of articles whose authors try to jump on the band wagon has appeared.

Second, works on liberalism within the framework of different social sciences remain largely isolated, taking little account of what has been achieved in the adjacent fields.

Third, the pluralism of approaches, stands, judgments and opinions on this subject has reached a critical limit. As a result, the integral subject of Russian liberalism has become fragmented in both theoretical and historiographic terms, and this could make its outline too vague. I cannot but agree with V. Pustarnakov, who said, summing up the current historiographic status of the study of Russian liberalism, that it would be difficult to decide whether modern authors writing about the history of Russian liberalism have any conceptual points of contact. These authors differ about the essential characteristics of liberalism, the composition of the Russian “liberal family” and the periods of the history of this trend; neither there is clarity about the correlation of “liberalism and philosophy”; the link between the studies of history and the present, which is often publicly declared, is extremely weak (p. 21).

And, finally, modern notions, assessments and judgments of liberalism are often projected to its past, which leads to modernization of its history. This is true of both Western and Russian liberalism, and does nothing to promote the understanding of its genesis, stages of formation and evolution, philosophical foundations, doctrine, programs, organizational structures and their transformation, and the strategy and tactics of political action.

There are numerous definitions of the concept of liberalism, and they all coexist (pp. 30-48). An Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1983, in Russian) reads: “Liberalism (Lat. liberalis, free)–an ideological and political movement uniting advocates of the bourgeois-parliamentary system and bourgeois ‘freedoms’ in the economic, political and other spheres.” In the past few years, the concept of liberalism has been approached from another angle. “Liberalism,” says the encyclopedia Political Science (1993, in Russian), “is an intellectual and moral orientation towards such organization of public life that is founded on the recognition of the individual’s political and economic rights within boundaries limited by the operation of laws interpreted as a summary of the natural needs of normal civilized people.” Noteworthy is the characteristic given by K. Gajiev, who, like B. Croce, views the liberal doctrine as metapolitical. “It is a system of views and concepts regarding the surrounding world, a type of consciousness and political-ideological orientations and attitudes that is not always associated with concrete political parties or politics. It is simultaneously a theory, a doctrine, a program and political practice.” 10

It should be remembered, however, that before becoming a metapolitical philosophical system, liberalism traversed a long way of genesis and transformational changes whose substance and depth depended on concrete historical circumstances. The researchers who favor the historical method maintain that the evolution of liberalism had several phases, each with its own volume and components. “The topicality of liberalism for political theory,” writes B. Kapustin, “is demonstrable only provided that liberalism is, first, evolving thought and, second, its establishment is commensurate with and adequate to the evolution of some substantial issue of the Present” (p. 48). Hence the attempts on the part of some modern researchers to find (or single out) an invariant of liberalism.

According to Kapustin, the “hard core” of the liberal type of mentality and mode of action is the “issue of human existence in the Modern Times”. Liberalism, he maintains, becomes “the first and pivotal ideology of the Present Time only having ‘grasped’ this issue”. The issue itself is viewed by this scholar as “the feasibility of a social order and communal existence generally if their foundation is constituted by individual freedom interpreted as the right (i.e., ability and possibility) of man to act at his own discretion” (p. 49). This is why the “mission of a private individual’s freedom as the starting point for the construction of a social and political theory is a line that separates the “extended family of liberalism” both from the pre-Modern concepts of freedom (including the proto-liberal views of the Modern Times, e.g., Montaigne and Spinoza, which found different foundations for the freedom of conscience, speech, religious tolerance, etc., and which later became important elements of liberal ideology), and from conservative and socialist theories” (p. 50).

A different point of view is set forth by A. Kara-Murza, who maintains that the liberal response to the universal question of political thought, “How is social order possible, if it is absent or threatened at the given moment?” is as follows: “Social order is possible when and inasmuch as there exists freedom of the human personality.” The author stresses that the reference should be made not to just the “individual” but to “human personality”. This distinction of principle, he continues, is “the whole point of the liberal answer to the question of the possibility of social order”. In his view, the liberal idea socializes, stabilizes, and is saving civilization from “new barbarism” rooted, among other things, in the “old power”. The main thesis of liberalism is, therefore, “to retain sociality not by the power of totalitarian statehood (which has exhausted itself historically and has itself become a source of disorder) but by the power of society, giving personality an autonomous space and ensuring the prevalence of right-based laws” (pp. 56, 58).

Kara-Murza draws four conclusions from this general theoretical assumptions. “First. An archaic society based on the principle of normative distribution does not need liberalism, ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, etc. Second. In a dynamic society in a situation when the old regulators stop performing their integration functions, the liberal solution may prove the only salvation for social order. Third. Liberalism ‘imported’ from organic context into a context where it is objectively unrealistic often degenerates into destructive individualism and generates social chaos. Fourth. If order cannot be maintained in the old way, attempts at rigid revivalist “assembly” can produce even greater disintegration; if the “social way” for introduction of liberal measures has not been paved, socium may prove helpless before the pressure of “new barbarism”. “Thus,” Kara-Murza concludes, “ the goal of liberalism is not to declare the freedom of ‘the individual in general’ but to protect the freedom of the personalities who have reached a certain development standard and proved (on the basis of liberal criteria) their civilization status” (p. 58).

Another advocate of the identification of the invariant core of liberalism is Pustarnakov, one of the initiators and most active contributors to the collection Liberalism in Russia. In his view, liberalism is a “product of new Western European history, the epoch of capitalism that had entered the phase of relative maturity and, most important, the phase of awareness of its identity. Liberalism was the most adequate response to the new social, political and economic reality connected with the transition from the medieval, feudal system to the bourgeois regime, which had largely emancipated itself from the utopian forms of its ideology, especially ideology of the Enlightenment.” Pustarnakov thus sums up his reflections on the essence of liberalism: “Liberalism is a theory, a doctrine, not just a perception of the world; it is also a specific world outlook and ideology; it is a definite socioeconomic, political-legal and cultural orientation” (p. 62, 61).

The ideas of modern philosophers can help understand the historical past and the prospects of Western and especially Russian liberalism. With regard to the latter, the issue has been formulated in such general theoretical terms for the first time and casts a new light on its genesis and evolution. In principle, one can also agree with the general assumption that liberalism as a system was shaped in Modern Times. But one must not forget that the liberal concept of individual freedom is a universal human idea rooted in the Antiquity. The idea of individual freedom, of atomized (Kapustin) or socialized (Kara-Murza) personality, is determined by the free will of man who grows aware of himself, singles himself out from “us” and becomes emancipated from the traditional ideas and prejudices regarding the fatal determination of his life and accepts responsibility for his choices and his actions towards the other individuals and socium as a whole. The “gnoseological” prerequisite of the liberal world outlook, Gajiev stresses, is the revelation of human individuality, realization of man’s responsibility for his actions both towards himself and society, establishment of the concept of all people’s equal and innate right to self-realization.” 11 The idea of individual freedom has been incorporated into many philosophical doctrines, but only in liberalism has it become a system-forming idea. The other structural elements comprising the system of liberal values perform the function of prerequisites and conditions for man’s fullest possible self-realization.

The difficult thing is to “grasp” the very process of the “assembly” of the liberal value system into a definite type; to comprehend the junctions and transitions from one type to another retaining, on the one hand, all the essential characteristics of the given type, and on the other, taking account of the changes which occur in the system itself, including the changes in the priorities of its “supporting” structures.

Historical and philosophical writings thoroughly examine this issue within the framework of the analysis of the types and stages of Western liberalism. 12 Depending on the applied normative methodological criteria, researchers identify the following types of liberalism: classical, post-classical, neo-liberal, libertarianism, social-liberalism, national-liberalism, etc. Each type is supplied with a characteristic of its evolution’s stages. Herbert L. Samuel identifies five stages in the evolution of the classical type of Western liberalism: intellectual, economic, political, democratic and social. 13 Kapustin identifies three main types of sociophilosophical concepts of liberalism: gnoseological, ontological and technological (p. 52). There is also a “geographic” typology of liberalism: Anglo-Saxon, continental European, etc.

Historiographic analysis prompts several comments. First, being a historical phenomenon (not extra-historical, as the German political analyst Gunter Rohrmoser believes 14 , both as regards the genesis of the idea/ideas and their assembly into a system of values, liberalism passed through a number of stages whose length was determined by a sum of objective and subjective factors before becoming a definite type. The advanced Western European states had a natural sequence of stages and types of liberalism. In the countries with the catching-up development pattern (second or third echelon), which usually borrow advanced ideas and technologies, not only were the stages compressed but the very order of the liberal system’s assembly was different.

Second, the fact that the assembly of the liberal value system (type) is completed does not mean that its transformation and evolution is over. Unlike the philosophical systems that have ceased to exist, liberalism is an open value system able both to self-regulation and transformation in order to adapt to the progress of modernization of the historical environment.

Third, agreeing with Kapustin about “the extended family of liberalism”, 15 it should be borne in mind that this “family” is a complex living organism which manifests itself in a variety of ways depending on the historical and geographical dimension. It is no chance that some researchers’ attempts to mechanically transfer the evaluation criteria from one type or stage of liberalism to another prove unproductive.

Discussion of the genesis of Russian liberalism is still in progress, although with varying intensity. Following in V. Leontovich’s steps, a number of researchers assert that Russian liberalism is a Western transplant, which allegedly has no tradition in Russian public thought and has found itself in an alien social environment. According to Rohrmoser, Russia has no liberal tradition, no liberal philosophy and no favorable social conditions for the advancement of liberal consciousness. 16 I. Khudushina calls Russian liberalism a “chip” off the Western liberalism and asserts that the “energy core” of liberalism, individualism, remains outside the Russian perception of liberal ideas and liberal practice. Describing Russian liberals in general terms, A. Sobolev writes: “Their attempts to transplant to the Russian soil ready-made Western European forms are determined by the ignorance of the creative processes that create these forms. Russian pseudo-liberal positivists are unable to understand that all political and economic programs of Western European liberals are situational in principle because they have no organ for grasping the situation, that is, because they have no spiritual depth that can help develop those cognitive abilities which for the sake of brevity are encompassed by one term, ‘intuition’.”(pp. 79, 84, 103, 303).

Other researchers assert, on the contrary, that “liberalism is one of the intellectual traditions of Russian social thought.” This point of view is shared by A. Walicki, who emphasizes that “Russian 20th-century intellectual thought progressed along the same lines as Western and in no way lagged behind it.” 17

There is hardly need to prove that the borrowing of ideas and technologies is a worldwide phenomenon. The point at issue is different: who borrows what and how? Are the borrowed ideas adapted to the historical environment? Do they reflect the social need of the given country? The issue of borrowing has recently been raised and subjected to detailed analysis by L. Selezneva. For the first time in Russia, her monograph discusses the general theoretical, methodological and historical aspects of the culture of borrowing and reveals the mechanism of the borrowing of Western liberal ideas by the Russian intellectual elite. It also criticizes the common enough opinion that the Russian liberals of the early 20th century favored the British political system model. Like Medushevsky, who widely used comparative methods to support the idea that liberal ideas were borrowed from continental European sources, Selezneva draws a general conclusions: “Comparative analysis demonstrated the dominance of German influence in the matter of both state order and party-political relations.” In my view, another conclusion drawn by Selezneva is more correct: “The final liberal model had an interactive character.” 18

Continuing to work on the question of borrowing, one would have to consider several circumstances. First, this issue should be approached historically, taking into account both the time and the conditions of the origin of the sources and elements of borrowing in the donor countries (e.g., Anglo-Saxon and continental European types of liberalism); second, like any other, Russian liberalism was a complex phenomenon, being heterogeneous not only at the intellectual stage but also at the stage of its transformation into a sociopolitical movement; third, Russian liberals included advocates of both the Anglo-Saxon and the continental European models of liberalism.

Historical-philosophical writings have exhaustively analyzed the difficulties liberalism encountered in Russia. The country, Kapustin writes, “revealed the absence of all or almost all conditions which in the past had enabled the West to channel the liberation intention to maximize private benefit into economic interest that managed to set up a system of universal usefulness without resorting to authoritarian-despotic methods.” 19 According to Pustarnakov, “the first pages of the history of liberalism in Russia are associated with the penetration of liberal ideas under the law of ideological interaction, the influence of the subjects of influence upon the object, partial and total borrowings, assimilation of borrowed ideas into the national cultural environment, their adaptation to it, etc.” However, the author continues, “at the earliest stages”, the borrowings made by Russian thinkers “were doomed to inadequate reproduction and interpretation, to their inevitable transformation”. Only with time, “when social reality in Russia became more and more similar to Western European reality, which had generated liberalism, there began to appear opportunities for the Russian thinkers’ more adequate perception of Western European liberal ideas and for the emergence of liberal ideas under the impact of new social reality in Russia itself” (p. 360).

There is hardly need to specially stress that the progress of Russian liberalism came up against many obstacles, both objective and subjective. To use the words of Kara-Murza, Russian liberalism developed “in historically high-risk space” (p. 370). Carrying on this idea, one may say that since the moment of its inception to the end of its existence, Russian liberalism bore the “birth marks” typical of the catching-up development pattern. While in the West, the genesis and formation of the liberal doctrine and politics were coordinated with the rate of formation of civil society and its institutions, with the development standard of social thought in the broad sense of the word and, consequently, with objective social needs, in Russia the process took a somewhat different turn.

Russian intellectuals (first individually and then in small groups) borrowed Western ideas and tried to forcibly “plant” them into traditional soil that was ill fitted for their perception, counting on its gradual transformation into civil society and a rule-of-law state. While in the West liberalism (as a doctrine and as politics) acted as an ideological and philosophical antithesis to the traditional world outlook, structures and institutions, in Russia liberalism long developed “not through open confrontation with the feudal socioeconomic system but inside it.” 20

Liberal ideas began to spread in Russia at the time when the authoritarian regime had not yet lost its capacity for constructive historical work, was able to rise to the challenge of the time, to introduce multi-level reforms from above, reforms that promoted stabilization of the political situation and dynamic economic development. In view of this, the vehicles of liberal ideas tried to use the creative potential of the regime and, supported by the vehicles of supreme power and the liberally-minded bureaucrats, hoped to direct social development into acceptable channels.

While in the West, liberalism was formed as the ideology of the middle class, which in the struggle against feudalism made a wide use of extreme violence, including mass-scale terror (a fact which both Western and modern Russian researchers conveniently forget), in Russia the forerunners of liberalism were members of the aristocracy and the intelligentsia, who until the last looked for a compromise with the traditional social and political forces so as to avoid using violence to solve objectively pressing problems. In the West, democracy in the broad sense of the word emerged as an alternative to liberalism, which had already become an open system of values and was able to adapt to the democratic values and even incorporate some of them into its doctrine and politics. In Russia, however, liberalism was formed within the democratic tradition and in the end acted as an alternative to it. “In Russia,” writes I. Pantin, “liberal values failed to fertilize the democratic ideology and mass consciousness.” 21 It is no chance that as Russian liberalism evolved, it accumulated conservative characteristics and trends (this was discussed by many historians and philosophers). V. Prilensky identifies five features of Russian liberalism that distinguish it from Western: “I refer to the absence of solid social support for liberal thought in society, its anti-democratic character, the principle of monarchism, a strong and pronounced conservative trend and the absence of civic freedoms in Russian society during the initial period” (p. 358).

Summing up, one can say that the Russian historical environment produced a special type of liberalism, which has made a place for itself in the “extended family of liberalism” and enriched it with new ideas and a new perception of the present-day problems.

Historical and especially philosophical-political writings have made a fruitful attempt to identify the range of these new ideas, which, having been “assembled”, created the new liberal value system (type) of Russian liberalism. First of all, the reference is to the questions formulated and discussed by Russian intellectual liberals: the philosophy of human rights (including the right to a life worthy of man); the morality and ethics of politics; solidarity; relations between the state and personality; personality and society; democracy and its institutions; regulation of economic and social relations; dealing with ethnic and confessional issues in a polyethnic and polyconfessional country. One may well agree with I. Osipov that the philosophy of human rights of Russian liberalism was a phenomenon of “outpacing” thinking, which in the course of spiritual-practical activity transgressed the boundaries set by the time”, and that the “ethics of Russian liberalism was the ethics of civic service to the state, society and the people, was a state and social ethics.” 22

According to Walicki, one of the specifics of Russian liberalism was its accent on the autonomy of law from politics, the logical and axiological priority of legal culture over political freedom. L. Novikova and I. Sizemskaya emphasize that “as regards its definition of freedom, Russian liberalism assimilated not only Western ideas but also the domestic humanitarian tradition. The general abstract forms of legal equality typical of European liberalism were imbued in Russia with concrete humanitarian meaning, specifically, the ideal of ‘truth’, which combined the principles of equality and justice and gave civil society a high moral potential.” 23

Describing the essential features of “new liberalism” in Russia, Novikova and Sizemskaya note that, while retaining the core of Western liberalism, the representatives of “new liberalism” complemented and advanced it along three main directions: interpretation of human rights (legal claims to the state); interpretation of the principle of equality (equality of the initial status); and interpretation of property. Describing these directions, the authors emphasize the following points: first, each person has a right to expect from the state a certain minimum of social benefits (the right to education, social security, etc.); second, recognition of the “inviolable core of personality” serves as a guarantee against its use as a tool for achieving ends alien to it and gives it a right to resist this by all the means at its disposal; third, the idea of right is complemented with the idea of benefit guaranteed by the state; fourth, the notion of property extends to the conditions of labor, labor itself and the products of labor, including the products of intellectual labor; fifth, democracy implies that no one may regard himself as the vehicle of absolute truth and that each person has a right to collective quest for it (pp. 294, 296-297).

These ideas, which have principle importance, assumed the role of supporting structures in a liberal value system that determined the special type of Russian liberalism. It should be stressed that the central place in this system belonged to the issue of Man understood and considered, Osipov notes, from the angle of collective existence. 24 It is another thing that the very process of “assemblying” liberal ideas into a system was long, difficult and painful in Russia. On the one hand, the champions of these ideas, who were constrained by authoritarianism and the constant threat of a plebeian-peasant revolt, had to overcome various types of friction with their environment. On the other hand, constructing a model of their own, they were forced to take into account Russia’s historical specifics (e.g., the role of the state), age-long cultural traditions and the psychological peculiarities of the majority and the educated minority.

I.Pantin has analyzed the sum of the conditions in which Russian liberalism happened to take shape. The key word in Russian culture, he writes, is not personality (unlike the West) but society (community, mir, the village commune, the people, etc.). Prevalent in Russia is “the one-way movement from ‘society’ (commune, artel, corporation, collective, country) to individual”. This is why “ identification of personal and public interests is substituted here for their harmonization by reducing the former to the level of insignificance”. What is more, in Russia, “personality, which is suffused by mir, is also suffused by the state”. As a result, “the liberal trend in Russia has failed to emerge as a popular movement: liberalism did not exist as an independent factor of strength and a source of popular initiative”. 25

These observations make a lot of sense. However, it is important to draw a line between the unfavorable environment in which liberalism shaped in Russia and the liberal value system proper. Aware of the cultural traditions and the majority’s mentality, Russian liberals tried to “combat” these unfavorable factors and create an environment for the assimilation of their ideas that Russia did not then have. It should be stressed that one of the principal problems of Russian (especially new) liberalism was that of the freedom of personality, which they wanted to fit into the context of real collective existence and cultural humanitarian traditions. The priority task was emancipation, not so much political, as, Pantin notes, economic. Unless the latter were achieved (the majority was hovering on the brink of physical survival), an emancipated individual could not appear. 26

While in the West the formation of the liberal doctrine and politics on the whole coincided in time with the individual’s emancipation, in Russia liberal ideas appeared long before the abolition of serfdom. It is no chance that right from its inception, Russian liberalism had a mighty social and democratic potential used, above all, to pave the way for personality’s emancipation. However, the latter process proved very long in Russia, and liberalism got stuck at the intellectual stage of its formation. Noting that in Russia, it is difficult to talk about liberalism in the Western sense of the word, Medushevsky sees the resemblance between Russian and Western liberalism not “in the kinship of their social base and essence (which were different) but rather in the similarity of their ideologies, programs and objective goals”. Unlike Western, Russian liberalism “had a different form and different (incomparably weaker) instruments” and was based on reception of Western European ideas. This is why in Russia, “it is much more interesting to study the history of liberalism than the history of liberals, that is, the real contribution of liberal ideology into creating a new society and its political institutions.” This viewpoint is shared by Pantin: “But here is a paradox: the fundamental political ideas of European liberalism had a queer fate in Russia: they were studied and shared but provoked no sense of urgency in their implementation.” 27

The protracted intellectual stage had good points: there was no need to go through all the stages passed, for instance, by classical Western European liberalism. At theoretical level, Russian liberals had already skipped a number of stages, later trying to forcibly introduce their ideas into the environment. This increased the discrepancy between the advanced liberal doctrine and backward society, which was not ready to assimilate it. That was the drama of Russian liberalism, which was far ahead of the environment that was to receive it.

Modern historical-philosophical writings continue to look for answers to many questions: When did liberalism appear in Russia? Who can be considered the first liberal? Are Westernism and Slavophilism versions of liberalism? When did liberalism become a sociopolitical movement? Why was it defeated in Russia? Writes Pustarnakov: “If we want to understand what Russian liberalism is, we should learn to see the essence behind appearances and identify the moment when the period of dissemination of isolated liberal (in origin or form), converted and para-liberal ideas ended and dissemination of the principles of genuine, real liberalism began, when liberalism became an ideological movement in its own right” (p. 361).

There are two views on the periods and types of Russian liberalism. One group of researchers (e.g., Novikova and Sizemskaya) maintain that “liberalism came to Russia as enlightened absolutism and passed through three stages: (1) 18th century–1850s-1870s; (2) 1850s-1870s–1890s; and (3) 1890s–the present. At the first stage, in A. Radishchev’s work, liberalism already acquired the features of “a consistent enough sociopolitical doctrine” and had “common roots with the revolutionary-democratic ideology. At the second (classical) stage, liberalism represented by of K. Kavelin and B. Chicherin was supplied with a theoretical foundation as an ideological trend of Russian social and philosophical thought. Since the 1890s, new liberalism was gradually formed, with its peak falling to the first quarter of the 20th century. According to A. Gogolevsky, the period of the formation and establishment of liberalism encompasses a long historical period, from the 18th century to 1905. He asserts that the political doctrine of Russian liberalism was shaped as early as at the turn of the 18th century and found its first embodiment in Radishchev’s work. 28

According to other researchers, Russian liberalism came into being in the mid-19th century. “Under the rule of an absolutist, centralized, bureaucratic and police state incompatible by definition with either the liberal idea of the nation’s sovereignty or political freedom,” stresses Pustarnakov, “the adequate political principles of liberalism had no chance of dissemination in Russia before the mid-19th century.” In his view, the liberal ideas borrowed from the West “were, before the mid-1850s, grafts upon non-liberal trees”. As a result of this belated formation of Russian liberalism, “genuine Russian liberalism has, from its birth, had a predominantly post-classical form”. Prilensky names T. Granovsky as the herald and forerunner of theoretical liberalism, and Kavelin and Chicherin as the most brilliant and consistent vehicles of liberal thinking in Russia (pp. 363-364, 362, 364, 139). In Gajiev’s opinion, the liberal ideology in Russia became rooted only in the late 19th-early 20th century. 29

Naturally enough, the debates on the periods of Russian liberalism also extend to the question of its types, which also provokes a diversity of opinions and judgments. Along with the traditional typology: old (aristocratic), zemstvo-related, new (connected with the intelligentsia), bourgeois, etc., Russian liberalism is subdivided into classical, post-classical, governmental, communal and even autocratic. There is still no system of criteria and priorities for dividing Russian liberalism into either periods or types. When creating such a system the following considerations would have to be taken into account.

First, countries with the catching-up development model may demonstrate a different sequence of phases (stages) and a leap from a lower stage to a higher one bypassing several intermediate steps. Since in Russia, liberalism was long “stuck” at the intellectual development phase (stage), such leaps at the level of theory are easily explicable. It is no chance that some philosophers believe that Russian liberalism has “skipped” the classical stage and began to take a “post-classical” shape right from the start. I cannot agree with this. In the West, the process of formation of liberal ideas was adequate to the environment or, to be more precise, was produced and adjusted by it, while Russian liberals had to borrow an already established system of liberal values in their mediated form and transform them into a value system of their own on the basis of Russian realities.

Second, liberal ideas might have been shared by czars, bureaucrats, advocates of religious renewal and individual representatives of various social strata, but this does not mean that they were able and prepared to accept the liberal value system as a whole. What is more, taken by themselves liberal ideas can be (and were) used to feed and support the traditional system. In this sense, liberal ideas can perform functions that are not natural to them.

Third, discussing the development stages of Russian liberalism, one should remember that its vehicles were constituted, not by representatives of different social strata but by representatives of different generations of the intellectual elite. In essence, Russian liberalism has never been class-based. It was a trend of Russian social thought. According to the most optimistic estimates (N. Pirumova and K. Shatsillo), in the late 19th and early 20th century, Russia had, respectively, 300 and 1500 persons who shared the liberal system of values. Since the establishment of proto-party and then party structures, liberalism began to turn from an intellectual trend into a sociopolitical movement, which also failed to sprout deep roots in the environment. Neither the soil (environment) nor the seed itself (liberalism) were favorable for the growth of a tree with strong roots (liberal values) that would be able to produce abundant fruit.

Fourth, Russian liberalism evolved into a value system only in the beginning of the 20th century thanks, first of all, to the powerful intellectual efforts of the new generation of the Russian intelligentsia. It is this group that created a rational theoretical model of modern liberalism, which for a number of parameters (described above) may have been superior to the Western models. Some ideas advanced by the Russian intelligentsia in the early 20th century were far ahead of their time and were implemented in the developed West European states only after the Second World War. So Russian liberal intellectuals not only introduced Russian liberalism into the “extended family of liberalism” as a new member but also enriched this family with new creative ideas that had intransient importance for the advancement of the science of Man, his inalienable rights and freedoms.

Fifth, unlike the West, where the development of liberalism at the intellectual stage was constantly adjusted by daily liberal practice, Russian liberals, who got delayed at the intellectual stage, failed to practically implement these ideas. Russian liberalism was a type of thinking for an extremely narrow range of intellectuals but never became a mode of action for those large social and political groups whose interests they tried to represent on the political scene. That was not only the drama but also the tragedy of Russian liberalism.

Thus, the typology used in the study of Western European liberalism is hardly adaptable to Russian liberalism. The latter was neither classical nor post-classical. It was a special type of intellectual liberalism, which came into being and evolved mostly at theoretical level in an unfavorable environment. A better one was yet to be built by Russian liberals. Naturally enough, they supported the steps of the authoritarian regime objectively directed at the construction of elements of such environment. The logic of historical development obliged the authoritarian regime to rise to the challenges of the time, to solve the pressing social development problems and introduce, for the sake of self-preservation, both structural and systemic reforms, which were to consolidate the existing political system. Needless to say, contrary to their authors’ original intentions, these reforms created factors that generated a new environment, which in a measure resembled the liberal one or an environment ready to assimilate liberal ideas. But, of course, the authors of these reforms, representatives of the authoritarian regime, can hardly be regarded as liberals in the proper sense of the word. Historical experience has shown that genuine and not para-, quasi-, and pseudo-liberal ideas are formed and evolve into a liberal value system in a different environment, and their vehicles pose and solve different problems. Liberals advocated the establishment of a different ideological system, a different assimilating environment (civil society) as the basis of a different political system, different institutions, structures and mechanisms of society’s organization. The liberal system of values is, as it were, an enzyme that helps shape a different type of thinking, social organization and way of life. For all the high value of the reforms undertaken by Russian czars, government officials and religious renewalists, these people can hardly be considered liberals.

Liberalism as an idea and then a value system can be generated and evolve in the mind of an internally free person capable of intellectual creative endeavor, for whom the freedom of personality is a value in its own right and realization of personality’s potential is an axiom. In this sense, liberalism cannot be separated from democracy: this is litmus paper for distinguishing between a genuine and a para-quasi-pseudo liberal. It is to the credit of the Russian liberal intellectuals of the early 20th century that they made a successful attempt to fuse liberalism and democracy. What is more, at theoretical level they recognized the urgent need for “legal socialism” as the next stage of social development. In fact, Russian liberal intellectuals built an open theoretical model for the future open civil society and rule-of-law state, which enable personality to adequately use its potential.

Social scientists are undertaking attempts to identify the causes that account for the defeat of Russian liberalism in the early 20th century and to forecast its future in modern Russia. According to Pantin, the main reasons were the cultural split of the upper and lower classes and the limitations (spatial and temporal) of new European civilization in a situation when a plebeian-peasant revolution was ripening. 30 He probably put his finger on the primary causes that determined the defeat of Russian liberalism. But there were also other causes.

First, Russian liberal intellectuals designed their theoretical model of Russia’s transformation proceeding mainly from the desirable, that which, in their view, reflected the leading trend of social progress. But the gap between the ideal and reality proved so wide that their model failed to suit the historical assimilating environment.

Second, Russian liberalism was split even at theoretical level. In fact, the liberal theoretical model of Russia’s social transformation was a synthesis of several sub-models developed in the programs of various liberal parties. As a result, the split of liberalism at theoretical level led to a split at program and organizational levels. In place of a single liberal party, Russia acquired several, and this could not but affect the consolidation of the liberal opposition and the formation and implementation of its strategy and tactics.

Third, unlike Western European liberalism, which enjoyed solid support among the middle class, Russian liberalism did not have such a broad social base. Being of the intellectual variety, it only dreamed that in the foreseeable future (while implementing its program), it would manage to build an adequate social base. Designing its theoretical model, liberal intellectuals were hoping that sooner or later, with support from the rule-of-law state, they would succeed in obtaining a broad social base for civil society, legal institutions and a market economy in Russia.

Fourth, Russian liberalism found itself without an adequate assimilating environment not only at the level of socium but at political level as well. The liberal model was not acceptable to the authoritarian regime, even one that metamorphosed into the June 3 political system. Getting neither understanding nor support from that regime, the liberals found themselves in a complicated situation, having lost the state institutions and instruments they had been hoping to use to implement their model. After the February 1917 revolution, the liberals’ attempts to do it were blocked by forces that were diametrically opposite to the former authoritarian regime, the left-radical socialist-type parties, which saw the liberals as the bourgeoisie who also intended to exploit the toiling masses, albeit in a more subtle, civilized way. The liberals’ attempt to change traditional mass consciousness into constitutional and legal consciousness also failed. The polarity of the social structure of Russian society, which was the foundation of the cultural split, placed the upper and the lower strata at the opposite sides of the political barricades. In such a situation there was no chance to persuade them to become political or, even less, social partners. Those who stood between the two hostile sociopolitical camps and tried to impose their own solutions of all the problems were doomed. The liberals were ground between these two millstones.

Despite their defeat, they made an important contribution to philosophical and sociopolitical thought. Russian liberal intellectuals managed to create a rationalist ideological system based on universal human values. But one must not forget that even the best theoretical models may (and do) find no demand and may even be rejected by the historical environment if the latter is not ready to assimilate them. In this sense, the ideas of Russian liberals of the early 20th century were far ahead of their time.

It would seem that present-day Russian liberals would profit by the experience of their predecessors. However, they prefer to draw on Western liberalism. In this connection, the scholars and politicians’ ideas regarding the prospects of liberalism in modern postcommunist Russia are worthy of notice.

Social scientists and politicians can be tentatively divided into two groups. The first one, the “optimists”, comprises persons, liberals for the main part, who actively promoted reforms and are taking a direct part in the drafting and practical implementation of the political course. 31 Typically, they identify themselves not with Russian but with Western (American) classical liberalism. They do not agree that Russia has a development way of its own and that its cultural tradition and the majority’s mentality have specific features. “The Russians’ historical experience indicates that a Russian is not a collective commune- and community-oriented person but a normal Homo sapiens, social enough, individualist enough, collectivist enough, liberal enough. A Russian values freedom no less than the others, and no one would be able to chase him into the political and economic zone, or reservation, of non-freedom. This is, in fact, the essence of Russian liberalism.” 32

Refusing to consider the tragic experience of Russian liberalism of the early 20th century, the modern theorists of liberalism insist that Russia is developing within the boundaries of Western civilization and that therefore, the only thing that needs to be done is to remove the obstacles which hamper the objectively necessary changes. Subject to demolition are, first, “the traditions of an Oriental state” which, to use Yegor Gaidar’s figurative expression, should be “tamed”, and, second, “the foundations of a plan- and distribution-based economic system”. The “Oriental state” is to be replaced by a “minimized” rule-of-law state, and the plan-based system by a capitalist market economy which, in Ulyukaev’s words, will become the basis of liberalism. The politicians’ goal, Ulyukaev continues, is to “fuse liberalism, the reform ideology with bourgeois entrepreneurship”. 33

Modern liberal theorists and politicians realize that the social basis of liberalism in Russia is narrow and are trying to impose it “from above” using anti-popular measures (price liberalization, monetary reform, privatization) and promoting the “help yourself” principle. In Ulyukaev’s view, the center of practical liberalism is shifting from America to Russia, owing to which its ideology, God likes those who work hard and get richer, not those who are poor and wretched, “is taking root in Russia and will soon move to a position of leadership here”. Indulging in wishful thinking, Ulyukaev concludes that “the liberals have a good chance to assume ideological leadership in modern Russia.” 34

The second group (the “pessimists”) are more critical about the chances of modern Russian liberalism. Rohrmoser writes that in modern Russia, liberalism is unfeasible either as a method or as a therapy. In the view of Urnov, in the foreseeable future liberalism in Russia is doomed to remain mainly economic in nature. In his preface to a thematic issue of the journal Politicheskie issledovaniya (Polis), its editor-in-chief I. Pantin made the following statement: “As in the past, vulgar Marxism was forcibly disseminated in Russia, so a grossly oversimplified version of liberalism is now being grafted upon the country.” 35

A fruitful attempt to analyze the current state of the ideology and practice of liberalism in post-communist Russia was recently made by V. Sogrin. In his opinion, the main reason of the crisis phenomena in modern liberalism is that it had no chance to mature philosophically and ideologically and that the Russian pre-revolutionary liberal tradition is being completely ignored. “Reviewing the ideology of modern Russian politicians,” he writes, “one gets an impression that they were unfamiliar not only with the ideas but even with the names of Chicherin, Kavelin, Milyukov and other outstanding liberals of pre-revolutionary Russia, whose evolution could teach one many important lessons, help our contemporaries to avoid mistakes and pass the apprenticeship with fewer losses.”

Analyzing the theoretical prerequisites and programs of modern liberalism, Sogrin concludes that one of the reasons for their failure is its followers’ conviction that “modernization in Russia can copy only Western experience”. “By their feeble imitation and utopianism”, modern liberals have quickly (in less than 10 years) brought liberalism “to the state of deep crisis, combating which would be a big problem.” 36

Neglect of historical, cultural, ethnic and religious traditions and the specifics of mentality has already brought more than one tragedy upon Russia, which continues to look for a national development way of its own.

The vast material dealing with Russian liberalism requires analysis and interpretation. It is obvious that a historical study of Russian liberalism, its tragic destiny and its prospects is possible only in the overall context of Russian development. It is also obvious that Russian liberalism is a special type of liberalism, which has a place of its own in the “extended family of liberalism”, and that its history is part of the overall history of this “family”. The experience of historiosophic and historiographic research convinces one that a study of liberalism, especially its Russian variety, needs a concerted effort of social scientists working in different fields, since new results would be difficult if not impossible to achieve within the framework of one discipline.

Translated by Natalia Belskaya

 

Endnotes

Note 1: A.A. Alafaev, Russian Liberalism in the late 1870s-early 1880s, Moscow, 1991; A. Valitsky, Slavophilism–Westernism, Moscow, 1992; M.G. Vandalkovskaya, P.N. Milyukov and A.A. Kizevetter, Moscow, 1992; N.G. Dumova, A Liberal in Russia, P. 1, Moscow, 1993; S.S. Sekirinsky and T.A. Filippova, The Genealogy of Russian Freedom, Moscow, 1993; E. Wisniewski, Liberal Opposition in Russia Before the First World War, Moscow, 1993; K.M. Kuntsevich, Liberalism: Essence, Sources, Prospects, Minsk, 1993; M.A. Davydov, His Majesty’s Opposition, Moscow, 1994; S.S. Sekirinsky and V.V. Shelokhaev, Liberalism in Russia, Moscow, 1995; I.D. Osipov, The Philosophy of Russian Liberalism of the 19th–early 20th Century, SPb, 1996; B.P. Vysheslavtsev, Industrial Culture Crisis, Moscow, 1996; A. Gogolevsky, Essays on Russian Liberalism of the 19th–early 20th Century, SPb, 1996; D.I. Oleinikov, Classical Russian Westernism, Moscow, 1996 (in Russian). Back.

Note 2: Liberalism in Russia, Moscow, 1993; A Liberal Model of Social Transformation in Russia in the late 19th–early 20th Century, Moscow, 1994; Russian Liberals: Constitutional Democrats and Octobrists, Moscow, 1996; The Experience of Russian Liberalism. An Anthology, Moscow, 1997 (in Russian). Back.

Note 3: Liberalism in Russia, Moscow, 1996. Prepared by the RAS Institute of Philosophy (in Russian). All references to the pages are given in the text in parentheses. Back.

Note 4: N. Gabidullina, “Liberalism in Russia (Historical-Philosophical Analysis)”, Vestnik vysshei shkoly, 1992, No. 7; P.P. Gaidenko, “Under the Sign of Measure”, Voprosy filosofii, 1992, No. 12; Yu.V. Perov, “Liberal Humanism and Mythologems of Russian History”, Vestnik S.-Peterburgskogo universiteta, 1993, Series 6, Issue 4; L.I. Novikova and I.N. Sizemskaya, “Ideological Sources of Russian Liberalism”, Obshchestvennye nauki i sovremennost, 1993, No. 3; I.N. Sizemskaya and L.I. Novikova, “New Liberalism in Russia”, Ibid., 1993, No. 5; B.G. Kapustin and I.M. Klyamkin, “Liberal Values in the Russians’ Consciousness”, Polis, 1994, Nos. 1-2; A.N. Medushevsky, “Constitutional Projects and Russian Liberalism and Its Political Strategy”, Voprosy istorii, 1996, No. 9; and others (in Russian). Back.

Note 5: Minutes of the Constitutional-Democratic Party Central Committee and Groups Abroad. In six volumes. Vols 1, 2, 4, 5, Moscow, 1996-1997; Congresses and Conferences of the Constitutional-Democratic Party, in three volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1997; “17th October Union” Party, in two volumes, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1998 (in Russian). Back.

Note 6: P.I. Novgorodtsev, Apropos the Social Ideal, Moscow, 1991; F.A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Chicago, 1944; S.L. Frank, Spiritual Foundations of Society, Moscow, 1992; J. Habermas, Democracy. Reason. Morality, Moscow, 1992; E.N. Trubetskoi, V.S. Solovyov’s World Outlook, in two volumes, Moscow, 1995; and others (in Russian). Back.

Note 7: In 1992-1996, Moscow was the venue of theoretical conferences at the Economic Freedom Foundation on the subject “Russia: Does Liberalism Have a Chance?” (December 1992); at the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy on issues of modern Russian liberalism (March 1993); at the International Foundation for Socioeconomic and Political Studies (Gorbachev Foundation) on the subject “The Modern Social Concept: The Liberal View”; at the State Public Historical Library on the subject “Liberalism in Russia” (February 1995). Back.

Note 8: Otkrytaya politika, 1995, Nos. 2-4, 7; 1996, No. 9/10. Back.

Note 9: N.G. Dumova, “Russian Liberalism in Modern Anglo-American Historiography”, in: History of the USSR in Modern Western Non-Marxist Historiography, Moscow, 1990; A.N. Medushevsky, “Liberalism as a Subject of Modern Western Historiography” Voprosy istorii, 1992, Nos. 8-9; R.L. Arslanov, “Early Russian Liberalism in the Works of French Historians”, Vestnik Rossiiskogo universiteta Druzhby narodov, History and Philosophy Series, 1993, No. 1; I.V. Narsky, “Russian Liberalism in the European and National Context”, in: A History of National Political Parties in Russia, Moscow, 1997 (in Russian). Back.

Note 10: K.S. Gajiev, Political Science, Moscow, 1994, p. 263 (in Russian). Back.

Note 11: Ibid., p. 266. Back.

Note 12: See: A.N. Zagorodnikov, Western Liberalism: Past and Present, Moscow, 1993 (in Russian). Back.

Note 13: Herbert L. Samuel, Liberalism: Principles and Proposals, London, 1902. Back.

Note 14: G. Rohrmoser, “Routes of Liberalism in Russia”, Polis, 1993, No. 1, p. 34. Back.

Note 15: B.G. Kapustin, “Three Deliberations on Liberalism and Liberalisms”, Polis, 1994, No. 3. Back.

Note 16: G. Rohrmoser, op. cit., p. 33. Back.

Note 17: L. Novikova and I. Sizemskaya, “Liberal Traditions in Russia’s Cultural-Historical Experience”, Svobodnaya mysl, 1993, No. 15, p. 68; A. Walicki, “Morality and Right in the Theories of Russian Liberals of the late 19th-early 20th Century”, Voprosy filosofii, 1991, No. 8, p. 37. Back.

Note 18: See: L.V. Selezneva, Western Democracy through the Eyes of Russian Liberals of the early 20th Century, Rostov-on-Don, 1995, p. 173 (in Russian). Back.

Note 19: B.G. Kapustin, “The Beginning of Russian Liberalism as an Issue of Political Philosophy”, Polis, 1994, No. 5, p. 30. Back.

Note 20: I.D. Osipov, op. cit., p. 31. Back.

Note 21: I.K. Pantin, “The Drama of Confrontation ”, Polis, 1994, No. 3, p. 77. Back.

Note 22: I.D. Osipov, op. cit., pp. 35, 49. Back.

Note 23: See: A. Walicki, Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism, London, 1992, p. 5; L.I. Novikova and I.N Sizemskaya, op. cit., p. 72. Back.

Note 24: I.D. Osipov, op. cit., p. 12. Back.

Note 25: I.K. Pantin, op. cit., p. 79. Back.

Note 26: Ibid., p. 87. Back.

Note 27: A.N. Medushevsky, A History of Russian Sociology, Moscow, 1993, p. 110; A.V. Gogolevsky, Essays on the History of Russian Liberalism of the late 19th-early 20th Century, SPb, 1996, p. 151 (in Russian). Back.

Note 28: L.I. Novikova and I.N. Sizemskaya, op. cit., pp. 69-73; A.V. Gogolevsky, Essays on the History of Russian Liberalism of the 19th-early 20th Century, SPb, 1996, p. 151 (in Russian). Back.

Note 29: K.S. Gajiev, op. cit., pp. 263-264. Back.

Note 30: I.K. Pantin, op. cit., p. 82. Back.

Note 31: See: Ye. Gaidar, The State and Evolution, Moscow, 1995; Anomalies of Economic Growth, Moscow, 1997; A. Ulyukaev, Liberalism and the Politics of the Transition Period in Modern Russia, Moscow, 1995; Idem. Russia on the Road of Reforms, Moscow, 1995; Reforms for the Majority, Moscow, 1995 (in Russian). Back.

Note 32: A. Ulyukaev, Liberalism and Politics, p. 75. Back.

Note 33: Ye. Gaidar, The State and Evolution, pp. 41, 54; A. Ulyukaev, Russia on the Road of Reforms, pp. 35-38, 47. Back.

Note 34: A. Ulyukaev, op. cit., pp. 72-73, 74. Back.

Note 35: G. Rohrmoser, op. cit., p. 33; Liberalism in Russia, Moscow, 1993, p. 93; Polis, 1994, No. 3, p. 4. Back.

Note 36: V.V. Sogrin, “The Second Coming of Liberalism to Russia”, Otechestvennaya istoriya, 1997, No. 1, pp. III-112, 116. Back.