Russian Liberalism in the 19th century: an Attractive Course of Development or a Road to National Tragedy

Liberal ideas and values have attracted a lot of followers in political circles and society at large, which proves the importance of the topic selected for our study and reveals the need for comparing the values of the 19-th century Russian liberals and their ideological successors. The subject of this work is the development of liberal ideas in the post-reform Russia. Intelligentsia were the stalwart proponents of liberal views. Most of them shared Western-European values and strived to adapt them to the Russian environment. The analysis of the views of the main representatives of the liberal movement allowed us to understand their position regarding some essential social and political issues. These views on the main problems, for instance, the future of the peasant community in the post-reform Russia, differed radically, which led to a lack of unity among the liberals. We analyse the reason why liberalism failed to play a decisive role in the movement of Russia towards democratic reforms. The lack of unity of views among the proponents of liberalism, their inability to come to an agreement with the government and meet the advocates of other political trends halfway prevented them from increasing their influence in society and reduced the number of their supporters. The article also discusses the role of liberal press and its most vivid representatives in shaping the public opinion. Our comparison of the views of Russian liberal intelligentsia and Siberian liberals led us to the conclusion that both groups had common views on the main issues of social and economic development of the country. However, the specific nature of the development of Siberia was a reason for certain peculiarities in the views of its inhabitants.