Liberalism in Russia

8 Key excerpts on "Liberalism in Russia"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  Russian Liberalism

  • Paul Robinson(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Northern Illinois University Press

    (Publisher)

  Several features unite these various groups through time. The first, as Gaut notes, is a lack of clearly defined commercial interests. With certain important exceptions, this has often induced liberals to prioritize cultural and political concerns over economic ones. Second, Russian liberalism has been a decidedly elite phenomenon with few connections with the mass of the Russian people. As such it has very much reflected the culture of that elite.

  This culture has been oriented toward the West. It has also tended to be positivist and rationalist in outlook. As this book shows, this outlook has produced a view of human society as driven by scientifically determinable rules, and of history as an inexorable process toward a known end—a liberal society in line with Western models.

  Consequently, Russian liberalism has been, and still is, as much a cultural as a political or socioeconomic phenomenon. Its aim is to culturally transform Russia to make it what is often called a “normal” country, by which is meant a Western one. Liberalism in a Russian context is closely associated with the concept of Westernization. It is a common liberal theme that Russia is deficient compared to the West (however defined) and needs to reform itself to more closely emulate the Western ideal. “The Russian liberal is a thoughtless fly buzzing in the ray of the sun; that sun is the sun of the West,” said Pyotr Chaadaev (1794–1856) in the early nineteenth century.73 Similar criticisms can be heard today.

  The idea that the West represents an ideal whose norms all other civilizations should adopt is reinforced by a historical determinism which regards Westernization as an inevitable process. As Miliukov puts it, “The Europeanization of Russia is not a product of adoption but an inevitable consequence of inner evolution, which is basically the same in Europe and in Russia.”74 “National self-consciousness clings to particular features of national existence, such as dress, dwelling, social habits, political institutions, and old forms of the popular creed. But in the long run these features cannot be preserved.”75

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Demise of Marxism-Leninism in Russia

  • A. Brown(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Despite these drawbacks, however, by 1991 the Russian liberals were able to elaborate their diverse positions without the need to conform to an overarching state ideology. Uncertain prospects: the legacy of Perestroika for post-Soviet Russian liberalism During the period of slightly less than seven years when Gorbachev was at the helm of the Soviet state, Russian liberal thought underwent a process of dramatic transformation from an overall subservience to the Marxist–Leninist ideology in 1985 to its decisive renunciation and an embrace of the notions of Western liberal thought by 1991. The initial concerns of perestroika-era liberalism, as it began to re- emerge in 1985, were the issues of individual freedom, professional autonomy, the improvement of economic performance, and the creation of an economic framework that would best reconcile individual creativity with the interests of society. Although these concerns dealt with similar issues to those which have confronted Western liberal thought, many Russian liberals preferred to present their notions as either a rediscovery of the original ideas of Leninism (in the case of reformist Communists) or as a contribution to the broader goal of the spiritual and cultural development of Russia (in the case of liberal nationalists). Both of these intellectual traditions – reform-Communism and liberal nationalism – had distinctly illiberal origins, insofar as they limited individual freedom by its subordina- tion to a particular pre-defined purpose, whether it be a furtherance of socialist or of nationalist ideals. During the next stage of perestroika (1987–1989), Russian liberals began to broaden the scope of ideological discourse and conceptual innovation, seeking to introduce and to legitimise such typical liberal notions as civil society, private property, the law-based state and the multi-party system.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Liberal Ideas in Tsarist Russia

  From Catherine the Great to the Russian Revolution

  • Vanessa Rampton(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Bruce Baum and Robert Nichols (New York: Routledge, ). Western Theories  interference and the stifling potential of majority opinion, Russian liberal- ism – in the words of one of its foremost historians – ‘generally emphasized the importance of legality in government, the state’s positive role as a guarantor of civil liberty, and the gradual achievement of social justice through reform’.  The practice of liberalism, meanwhile, offers multiple instances demonstrating that different concepts of freedom are not wholly compatible, and thereby has created a powerful intellectual legacy of its own. The notion that there can be a practical conflict between the rights and freedoms that liberals value has come to be seen as a constant feature of life in a liberal regime, and is increasingly acknowledged in both domestic legislation and international declarations of rights.  As I shall argue here, there is much to be learned by examining Russian liberals in the light of their engagements with day-to-day politics. . Western Practices Various events, including the French Revolution and the expansion of democracy in the nineteenth century, convinced Russian thinkers both of liberalism’s historical dimension, as well as introduced them to some of its normative and practical dilemmas. The French Revolution is important for the history of liberalism for many reasons, not least because its leaders sought to portray it as the moment when liberalism ceased to exist merely on a theoretical level and came of age as a concrete historical phenomenon.  The revolutionaries’ belief in the emancipatory powers of the natural rights of man and the universalist assumptions of the Enlightenment are embodied in its foundational document, the Declar- ation of Rights of Man and Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen, ).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Political Ideas And Institutions In Imperial Russia

  • Marc Raeff(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  all attacks (e.g. Dostoevsky, Maklakov, Struve). Finally, Russian history can do little with a relativistic, historicist definition as it would deprive the concept of any definite meaning; liberal would then be always whatever decreases the power of the state at a given moment. This may be a useful approach for political polemics, but it is hardly adequate for historical analysis.

  Discarding the relativistic, historicist definitions of liberalism, some writers define liberalism in terms of legality, the juridical guarantee of individual and property rights. Here, liberalism is equated with the establishment and preservation of a Rechtsstaat. As a starting point for an analysis of Russian liberalism this approach has great merit and can be very valuable.11 Yet it also raises serious difficulties. The legalistic notion of liberalism as developed in the West (at least since Montesquieu's time), implies the preservation, reinvigoration, or expansion of a certain set of accepted and well-established norms and legal practices. Legalistic liberalism (to coin a phrase) made sense in a traditional political framework that accepted a priori, or on historical grounds, such fundamental legal norms as respect of individual rights, sanctity of property, etc. It was, fundamentally, an extension—and adjustment to the economic and social conditions created by the scientific and industrial revolutions—of traditional medieval legal notions of proprietas and potestas, of feudal concepts of contract and authority, of Christian justice and kingship.12 But what sense could such notions make in Russia? The Russian reality and historical heritage were those of arbitrary autocracy and bureaucratic tyranny; introduction of real legality could only mean the overthrow of the existing regime, the abolition of traditional state power and political authority. Advocacy of such a course right away led to the blurring of the line between radicalism and liberalism, while a refusal to follow such an extreme course implied the preservation of the existing order, hence conservatism (however much it might be tempered by administrative reforms).13 How difficult it was to remain a consistent legalistic liberal without being drawn into radical opposition to a government that refused to give way to a true Rechtsstaat be seen from the career of V. A. Maklakov, the sincerest as well as most far-sighted spokesman for legalistic liberalism.14

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Liberty and the Search for Identity

  • Ivan Zoltan Denes, Iván Zoltán Dénes(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Central European University Press

    (Publisher)

  It must also be noted that discourse had been changing throughout the nineteenth century, responding to new challenges in Russian life and following intellectual novelties coming from Western Europe. In the words of Miliukov, one of the liberal leaders: “The term liberalism is worn out in Russia. This is, of course, not because the liberal program is already realized. Far from being so, this program presents now the first step to be attained … But, of course, this first step is not acknowledged to be the only one: free-dom and individual liberty no longer seem to be the absolute good … In the eyes of subsequent generations [after the French Revolution], lib-eralism was rather discredited as a sort of class policy, that of the ‘third estate,’ and thus anti-democratic.” (Miliukov, 1962, p. 168) By analyzing liberal references to history, it is possible to designate, in broad terms, the major intellectual pillars of their doctrine. Undoubt-edly, the first is the legacy of the Enlightenment. This tradition was brought to Russia largely by the autocracy and was closely associated with its reformist policies. In the wake of the reforms of Peter the Great this tradition also had connotations of Europeanization. The reception of this tradition brought about the first discussion of collective identity at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in the 335 16 For a description of the debate, see Karpovich, 1955. This conservative turn is also visible in Leontovich, 1995. 17 The great Russian historian Sergei Solovyov pinpoints the “mirror effect” as the main determinant of the Russian liberal tradition. He contended that Russian liberals lacked an internal profile and designated their program according to the current policy of the autocracy, which intermittently switched from reform to reaction and back again; see Solovyov, 1992.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Europecentric Historiography of Russia

  An Analysis of the Contribution by Russian Emigre Historians in the USA, 1925–1955, Concerning 19th Century Russian History

  • Elizabeth Beyerly(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  74 EUROPECENTRIC HISTORIOGRAPHY OF RUSSIA A. Schelting, R. W. Seton-Watson, E. J. Simmons, K. Stahlin, B. H. Sumner, K. A. Wittfogel, E. M. Zhukov et al. (for complete citations and further titles see Chapter Ill/notes, pp. 123-). If the general assumption of political history revolves around man's love as well as fear of power, in internal politics, from Acton to Aron 8 the belief persists that individual freedom limits power and thus con-tributes to social equilibrium. Part of this belief in democracy centers on the forces conceived of as endangering democracy. Within the 19th century comparative historical context this juxtaposition assumes the form of European liberalism vs. Russian autocracy. It must be noted at the outset that the way in which 20th century liberal Europecentrism conceives of Russia alternately as a state (in the sense of international law) and as a nation (in the sense of a national/ideological entity) 9 entails a certain interpretational confusion of power vs. ideology tenets (cf. Chapter I, pp. 52-). In ideological terms liberal Europecentrism is interested in establish-ing the premise that (western) Europe inherently 10 has been inclined towards individual freedom, political liberalism and ultimately demo-cracy. 11 In practical (or power) terms, this idealization of the 'absence of external coercion' and of the 'condition of being able to choose and carry out purposes', 12 i.e. the glorification of individual rights, neces-sarily entails the need to define the limits of the power that would encroach upon freedom. 13 It has been the contention of liberal Europe-centrism that the concept of freedom was formulated by the middle class 14 and in practice, the members of this class have successfully circumscribed the state power, 15 mainly through obtaining state con-cessions guaranteeing and gradually enlarging individual rights.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Liberal Imperialism in Europe

  • M. Fitzpatrick(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Together with the optimistic mindset of liberal reformism, this conception of collective identity provided the possi- bility of holding in check the nationalizing impulses of liberal politics and of renewing the engagement of liberal politics with the question of imperial diversity. Russian Liberalism and the Problem of Imperial Diversity ● 83 Acknowledgments I would like to thank Matthew Fitzpatrick, Ilya Gerasimov , Marina Mogilner, Olga Maiorova, and Ronald Suny for their comments on the draft of this chapter. Notes 1. Niall Ferguson, Empire. The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York: Basic Books, 2002), xxii. 2. The history of development of the connection between Russia’s symbolic posi- tion outside of Europe’s and Russia’s backwardness, on the one hand, and Russian illiberal politics, on the other, has been treated among others by the following: Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civiliza- tion on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994) and Martin Malia, Russia Under the Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999). 3. Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917–1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954); Ronald Suny, “The Empire Strikes Out! Imperial Russia, ‘National’ Identity, and Theories of Empire,” Ronald Suny and Terry Martin (eds.), A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 23–66. 4. Dominic Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (London: John Murray, 2000). 5. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Political Ideologies in Contemporary Russia

  • Elena Chebankova(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • McGill-Queen's University Press

    (Publisher)

  Western liberalism is increasingly leaning towards deliberative aspects of democracy, advanced by Bruce Ackerman (1998), Jurgen Habermas (1989), and their numerous intellectual allies (Nino 1996; Held 1988; Guttman and Thompson 2004), and the left. The latter gains prominence with the evolution of post-modernist trends and the increasing political significance of new social movements that represent subaltern and disadvantaged segments of societal periphery. This aspect creates a dividing line between Western left-leaning liberalism and the Russian liberal trend that, by following the intellectual chain from Aristotle to the Renaissance and reiterating the fears of early constitutionalists, gravitates towards the right side of the political spectrum. Indeed, many Russian liberals (Pivovarov 2011, in Tretyakov 2011; Kara-Murza 2008, in Tretyakov 2008; 2011, in Tretyakov 2011) admit the conservative overtones of their thought and often include the supposedly conservative early-nineteenth-century Slavophiles movement in Russia’s liberal tradition. Pivovarov (2011, in Tretyakov 2011) claims that, while disagreeing with many of its premises, he admires Russian conservatism. Conservatism, in his mind, also has a strong tradition and raises questions of immediate philosophical and political significance to Russia.

  In this light, we have to examine the attitudes of Russia’s liberals towards both the state and society. To capture the nerve of pluralist thought on society we must turn to the classical modernist idea of progressivism (Giddens 1990; Wagner 1994). The speeches and texts of Russia’s pluralist liberals are permeated with echoes of J.S. Mill, who claimed that liberalism, and the Doctrine of Liberty, can only be applied to a culturally mature society – a society where an individual understands that rights come with responsibilities, that liberty can and should be deployed for the purpose of human self-flourishing, for pursuing meaningful goals and tasks, for choosing between varying alternative life-styles, which would help reflect and realize a person’s talents to the best possible degree (Gray 1996, 85 and 120; Inozemtsev 2013, 36). This also resembles Huntington’s (1996, 5) concern that the ‘equality of political participation’ must be matched by the ‘art of associating together’ – that is, that freedom of participation must be practised within a particular institutional context.

  Mature communities, Russia’s pluralist-liberals (Kara-Murza 1994; Kara-Murza 1995, 415; Kara-Murza 1999) argue, could sustain their stability by deploying the Lockean recipe of state and civil society (Taylor 1995; Keane 1988; Ehrenberg 1999; Cohen and Arato 1992). Here, society is pre-political and it builds up the state from below.

  5 Yet they stress that to achieve such a result we must be dealing with a particular type

  of society. Building on the claim that not all societies that merely assure individual autonomy can be called civil, these thinkers argue against the premature imposition of the liberal idea upon a nation which is not ready to embrace this social paradigm. Kara-Murza (1994; see also Inozemtsev 2013, 33) states that ‘archaic society built on the principles of normative redistribution does not require liberalism, or democracy and freedom as such.’ He proceeds to argue that ‘liberalism which was imposed “from outside” of its indigenous and organic context into the context, in which it is not required, could quickly digress to the destructive atomisation of society and the ensuing social chaos.’

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book