The Historical Change Of Russian Modern Liberalism

Liberalism, as a school of thought and a social ideational campaign, is a Europeanizing phenomenon from middle ages to modern times. But Russian liberalism existed and played its role as a variance of European liberalism——"have-not" liberalism. At the beginning of 18th century, the reform of Peter the Great provided the soil for the western culture permeating through Russia. As the legitimate bourgeois culture, the liberalism was considered that it be the best embodiment of the western unreligious civilization. Because it hoped intently to be Europeanized, Russia would inevitably be impacted in these tidal waves.In the moment of the French Revolution, Western Europe's liberalism permeated eastwardly through Russia, and launched the Russia Enlightenment, and had the quite tremendous influence on the home policies of the tsarist regime. Under the impulseof CatherineⅡand Alexander, the liberalism idea had been closed with an official, aristocrat's tinct, and "the government liberalism" gradually turned into among the Russian politics tradition henceforth. At the same time, the liberalism theory and elementary spirit was widely disseminated in the Russian aristocrat societies. Between 30～40's in 19th century, a group of the liberal intellectual encircled about Slav school and Western school, and from then it has established two wings of the Russia liberalism conservative and the radical pattern. Before the Great reform, a Russian formal liberalism faction that Chicherin was a representative was shaped indeed. In the reforms of Russian serfdom in 1861, Russia liberalists took the local self-government institution as a center, and carried out the liberalism idea. After AlexanderⅡwas assassinated, the liberalism movement transitorily passed through dormant, then got gradually much more radical, and set up own political parties in the turn of the century, and the constitutionalism went into active highly, and the Russia liberalism had also realized the transformation from "old" to "new". After the Constitutional Democratic Party was established, the Russia liberalism as political party's ideology positively attached itself to the political struggle, and then the Russia liberalism movement entered gold time in its history. After the February revolution, the liberal political party held shortly the Russian political power, thus the Russia liberalism movement would pushed to the high tide.On January 5, 1918, the constitutional conferences that liberalism had more than centuries struggle to be finally convened, but it was very unfortunate that the conference merely survived one day. On January 6, Bolshevik announced to dismiss the constitutional conference. Regardless of a political activity or a kind of thought school, the Russian modern liberalism moved towards the end.The author of this paper, with a modern perspective, regards the appearance and development of liberalism in Russian as a special cultural and social phenomenon after a collision of westernization and localization, and studies the history of liberal development and the evolvement in different stages.In this paper, the author tries to display a full view of the development of modern liberalism in Russia. Based on the research findings of the others, the author focuses on analyzing the core of the theory of Russian liberalism, and provides systematic analysis on some matters which are important to the study of Russian liberalism but Researchers haven't attach enough attention to, for example, the definition, type and different stages of Russian liberalism, the unscrambling of it, the relationship between classic liberalism and new liberalism, the causes and effects of the failure of Russian liberalism, etc. The author holds the view that the emerging of Russian liberalism is a product of Russia's reaction to western world and domestic change; that the core of Russian liberalism is constitutionalism; that it started from the queen CatherineⅡ's governmental liberalism and ended in January of 1918 when the constitutional meeting was dissolved; that it experienced six stages——embryonic stage, expanding stage, expanding stage, maturity stage, transitional stage, and new liberalism; that new liberalism and classic liberalism are as close as flesh and blood, though there were some differences and variance existing owing to the influence of socialist ideology and campaign. If Chicherin who was a great Russia's classical liberalism master has not been separated from the fence of the Western Europe liberalism, Russia's new liberalism definitely was regarded to keep pace with Western Europe's liberalism at the same time. The constitutional Democrats in that Miliukov and Struve were treated as their representative were identified with Russia's new liberalism, and their achieved theories and political practices had had the profound influence to Russia's future, although the person of the day didn't fully realize this point.The congenitally deficient of Russia liberalism was an objective reason which causes it to be defeated, but it is perhaps better for the liberalism and its schools to engaging their subjective faults in introspection. Being established in the short interval, the influence of Russian modern liberalism mainly manifested in the form, not in the content, but from a long-range interval of view that, as the product of Russian modernization, the liberalism moved forward along with the Russian modernization, and gradually melted into the Russian societies, and has become an important part of the Russian modem political culture tradition, and has been affecting Russia's historical development in influencing subtly, and it is constituting an important historical origin of Russia liberalism ideological trends now.