Russian Liberalism and the Problem of Imperial Diversity

P. 67–89.

Semyonov A.

The chapter traces the history of evolution of Russian liberal thought in the span of the 19th century and explores how Russian liberals conceptualized the phenomenon of imperial diversity and related to the context of empire in thinking about potentialities of progressive Russian politics. The author explores the history of importation of blueprints of liberal universalism in Russian liberal thought and the development of the paradigm of national liberalism in reposnse to the challenges of the modern empire. The author argues that the idiom of national liberalism was not the only one. A different paradigm was in existence that may be called imperial liberalism. The chapter finds out how this alternative paradigm helped Russian liberals assume a significant place in public politics in the late imperial period, when the odds of mass politics were against classical liberalism. The chapter introduces the author’s finding of the transnational genealogy of Petr Struve’s program of “Greater Russia.”

Keywords: история права, история России, история социологии, история империи, Russian history history of empire, history of Russian liberalism, national liberalism, imperial diversity, history of sociology, history of legal thought, Boris Chicherin, Alexander Gradovsky, Maksim Kovalevsky, Petr Struve, John Robert Seeley, Mikhail Dragomanov, история российского либерализма, национальный либерализм, имперское разнообразие, Б.Н. Чичерин, А.Д. Градовский, М.М. Ковалевский, П.Б. Струве, Джон Сили, М.П. Драгоманов

In book

Liberal Imperialism in Europe

Бейсингсток: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.