Link here.

By John Hudson, Washington Post, 9/7/22

SOUTHERN UKRAINE — In dimly lit hospital rooms in southern Ukraine, soldiers with severed limbs, shrapnel wounds, mangled hands and shattered joints recounted the lopsided disadvantages their units faced in the early days of a new offensive to expel Russian forces from the strategic city of Kherson.

The soldiers said they lacked the artillery needed to dislodge Russia’s entrenched forces and described a yawning technology gap with their better-equipped adversaries. The interviews provided some of the first direct accounts of a push to retake captured territory that is so sensitive, Ukrainian military commanders have barred reporters from visiting the front lines.

“They used everything on us,” said Denys, a 33-year-old Ukrainian soldier whose unit fell back from a Russian-held village after a lengthy barrage of cluster bombs, phosphorous munitions and mortars. “Who can survive an attack for five hours like that?” he said.

Denys and eight other Ukrainian soldiers from seven different units provided rare descriptions of the Kherson counteroffensive in the south, the most ambitious military operation by Kyiv since the expulsion of Russian forces at the perimeter of the capital in the spring. As in the battle for Kyiv, Ukraine’s success is hardly assured and the soldiers’ accounts signaled that a long fight, and many more casualties, lie ahead.

“We lost five people for every one they did,” said Ihor, a 30-year-old platoon commander who injured his back when the tank he was riding in crashed into a ditch.

Ihor had no military experience before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. He made a living selling animal feed to pig and cow farms. His replacement as platoon commander also has no previous military experience, he said.

The soldiers were interviewed on gurneys and in wheelchairs as they recovered from injuries sustained in the offensive. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid disciplinary action. Others, like Denys and Ihor, agreed to reveal only their first names. But most spoke plainly about the disadvantages they faced.

Continue reading here.

By Prof. Paul Robinson, Russia Post, 8/15/22

In a 2019 interview, Russian president Vladimir Putin remarked that, “The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”
While liberalism undoubtedly faces severe troubles in Russia, some may doubt the conclusion that it is obsolete. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to examine whether there are any realistic prospects for a liberal revival in Russia.

Do Russians care about liberal values?

One argument in favor of a liberal recovery rests on the belief that while Russians have turned their back on liberalism as a political movement they haven’t turned their back on liberal values. In other words, Russians dislike liberals while not disliking liberalism. Valery Solovey, for instance, writes that: “The main values and ideas of political liberalism – such as checks and balances, an independent judiciary, competitive elections, a multiparty system, civil rights and liberties, and the like – are valued highly by Russians … Russians appear to reject the forms of liberalism while endorsing its political and economic content.”

Opinion polls partly bear this out, but only partly. Surveys on democratic values indicate that two-thirds of Russians consider law and order and just courts to be very important. Fifty-two percent consider free elections very important, 42 percent – freedom of speech, 36 percent – an independent press, 30 percent – minority rights, and 26 percent – political opposition.

This indicates some support for liberal principles, although the lack of interest in political opposition suggests some limitations to this support. This conclusion is backed up by a 2017 survey, in which Russians stated that the things that most concerned them were their health, their family, their personal security, and social infrastructure, such as roads, shops, and healthcare. Only eight percent deemed “participation in social and political life” to be important.

Only seven percent Russians share the idea that “the state should interfere in the life and economic activity of citizens as little as possible”, 2021. Source: Wiki Commons

In a 2020 poll, 60 percent of respondents supported the idea that the state had a duty to provide citizens with what they need for a dignified life; 49 percent the statement that “Our people always needs a ‘strong hand’;” 31 percent the idea that the state should merely “establish the rules of the game;” and only seven percent the idea that “the state should interfere in the life and economic activity of citizens as little as possible.”

In a 2021 survey, 49 percent said that they preferred the “Soviet system as it was until the 1990s,” 18 percent the “current system,” and only 16 percent “democracy according to the model of Western countries.” As regards economic models, 67 percent favored “a system based on state planning and distribution,” and only 24 percent a system “founded on private property and market relations.” And as far as minority rights are concerned, a 2020 poll concluded that in recent years Russians had become more tolerant of sexual minorities but less tolerant of religious sects. Young Russians were in general more tolerant than older ones.

Laying expectations on the young

This last point raises the possibility that Russia may become more liberal as the current younger generation grows up. The evidence for this is somewhat mixed. A 2020 poll of 1,500 Russians aged 14 to 29 asked them to identify the values that were most important to them. The top response (78 percent) was human rights, followed by security (57 percent), employment (52 percent), economic welfare of citizens (37 percent), equality (31 percent), and democracy (18 percent). However, young Russians’ understanding of human rights had a socialist tint to it, with the rights to life and medical care coming top, followed by the right to a fair trial, right to social security, right to education, and the right to free speech, in that order. Of those surveyed, only 12 percent declared themselves “liberals,” with 28 percent considering themselves “social democrats” and 16 percent “nationalists.” Meanwhile, 58 percent disagreed with the statement that “Russia is a European country,” and 80 percent responded that it would be a “bad” thing if a homosexual individual or couple moved into their neighbourhood.

Liberalism has its limits even among youth. None of this means that liberalism in Russia is doomed. It is not impossible that economic stress due to the Ukrainian war or some other unexpected event could unleash processes that provoke mass protests that in due course topple the government and pave the way for a liberal revival. At present, though, this looks rather unlikely.

While a few radicals, particularly Alexei Navalny and his followers, have hoped to further their cause by means of mass street protests, they have had little success and their radicalism has been rejected even by many in the liberal opposition. As the Yabloko party’s former president Sergei Mitrokhin put it: “The revolutionary scenario is unacceptable for Russia because Russia is the biggest country in the world, with the longest borders, and large ethnic and confessional diversity … Any revolution could lead to our country’s disintegration.”

In this regard, a comparison with 1917 is useful. Back then, there was an enthusiasm for revolution in Russia which is almost entirely absent today. Furthermore, liberals were able to take power following the Tsar’s abdication in March 1917 because they had a powerful presence within the Russian parliament, where they had formed a coalition with moderate conservatives. This is not the case today. Moreover, after taking power in 1917 liberals soon lost it, in large part due to the fact that they lacked strong roots in the Russian population. Power shifted to organizations that did have such roots and who were able to speak to people in a language they understood. In this regard, liberals are even worse placed than they were 100 years ago. As in 1917 so too today there is little reason to suppose that the beneficiaries of regime collapse in Russia would be liberals.

Alexey Gennadievich Nechayev, chairman of the New People political party, 2021. Source: Wiki Commons

Lacking organizational base

Bottom-up liberalization requires some organizational base. At present this is lacking, with the older liberal parties, notably Yabloko, having no realistic prospects of future success. The only semi-liberal group to have significant parliamentary representation is the party New People, which in 2021 won just over 5% of the national vote. The party’s founder Alexei Nechayev says that “We aren’t liberals [but] democratic values are close to us”. The decision to eschew the liberal label may reflect an understanding of its unpopularity more than a rejection of liberal values. The party program adopts relatively liberal political and economic policies, calling for the decentralization of power, “political diversity … and competition,” “freeing entrepreneurs” from the pressure of the state, and so on.

But the party specifically states that it aims to work within the political system not to overthrow it. It also avoids overt Westernism and emphasizes that its focus is on local affairs. In this way it stays within the boundaries of what the central authorities will tolerate. Given this, it possibly represents a mechanism through which liberalism can regain a small foothold in Russian politics. It remains to be seen, though, what will become of it.

Overall, the prospects of liberalization driven from the bottom up seem slim. Historically, reform in Russia has rarely come that way. Rather it has been driven from the top down. In particular, liberal reforms have largely been the product of what one might call “enlightened bureaucrats.” These have promoted change not so much out of respect for liberal ideas as out of a recognition that the state would benefit from some degree of liberalization. This was the case during the Great Reforms of the 1860s and in the era of perestroika in the 1980s. In both instances, change came from within the system.

Modern-day equivalents of the enlightened bureaucrats of the past do exist, and a handful still retain relatively high office, particularly in the economic sphere. Their numbers, however, have shrivelled over the past 20 years. At present, it is hard to see them being able to amass the influence required to successfully promote a reform agenda.

Defeat in war could perhaps change this calculus, and provide the necessary impetus for reform, as in the aftermath of the Crimean War in the mid-nineteenth century. If the country’s elites decide that drastic liberalization is the only way of preserving their own privileges, of saving the state from collapse, or of preventing revolution, then change is possible.

There is, however, a crucial difference between the situation today and in previous eras of reform. In the 1860s, Russia was at peace. Similarly, perestroika coincided with a period of improved international relations – indeed, Gorbachev and his advisors brought the Cold War to an end precisely because they believed that peace was a prerequisite of successful reform. Today, by contrast, Russia is at war. Moreover, there is little to no chance of Russia’s relations with the West improving significantly in the foreseeable future. Among other reasons, the conditions set by the West for the normalization of relations include demands that no Russian government, of whatever political hue, could ever satisfy (the return of Crimea to Ukraine being the most obvious example). It could be that the invasion of Ukraine marked a decisive historical turning point at which Russia and the West separated themselves from each other once and for all. There may be no turning back – or at least not for a very, very long time. The balance of world power is shifting to the East.

In these circumstances, Russia’s elites have little option but to rally around the flag (even in 1917 they defected not because they were opposed to Russia’s war with Germany but because they felt that the Tsar was losing it and that they could fight it better without him).

This is not just because any form of Westernism will bear the taint of treason. In recent years, the West has lost much of its moral authority, in part as a result of its own crimes and misdemeanors, such as the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, the balance of world power is shifting to the East. As noted in Part 1 of this series, Russian liberalism has long rested on a form of historical determinism that sees the West as the model towards which history is inevitably marching. But the rise of China and the shifting balance of global power pose a serious challenge to this concept. The allure of the West is not what it was.

How Russian liberalism will respond to these challenges is as yet unclear. But if it is to have any hopes of future success, it will need to recognize that the world has changed. In particular, it will have to find a way to adapt to a new global context in which talk of a “return to Western civilization” has become largely redundant. Russian liberalism has been defeated before and yet come back to life. The same may happen again, but as in the twentieth century the wait may be long.

By Prof. Paul Robinson, Russia Post, 8/8/22

In January 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberalism’s victory in Russia seemed complete. Under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, the country embarked on a period of rapid economic and political reform, which promised to turn Russia into a Western-style free market liberal democracy. Liberal politicians held key positions in government, and liberal political organizations enjoyed a considerable degree of public support. Thirty years on, under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, this is no longer the case. Liberalism’s prospects look very bleak. This article seeks to explain why.

Causes of the liberals’ decline

To some extent, liberals were a victim of their own success. In the 1990s, reformers turned the communist system into something that somewhat resembled a market economy. The cost, however, was high. The 1990s witnessed hyperinflation, skyrocketing crime rates, and plummeting life expectancy. For many Russians, liberalism was to blame. In her book The Red Mirror, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova argues that the “collective trauma” of the 1990s underpins the legitimacy of Putin’s government. Russians, she claims, will only be able to move towards a liberal future if they adopt a more positive view of those years. This seems most unlikely.

Another explanation for liberalism’s difficulties is that it is a victim of state policies designed to keep it on the political margins. Since the state secured control of Russia’s most popular TV stations in the early 2000s, liberals’ access to the mass media has declined significantly. Liberal political parties have also experienced considerable difficulties in registering candidates for elections, with electoral commissions regularly rejecting attempts to register candidates on dubious grounds. Since 2012, media outlets and Non-Governmental Organizations have been obliged to register as “foreign agents” if they receive any foreign funding, and in some cases have also been branded as “extremist,” in effect banning them. The Russian state has made it extremely difficult for liberal organizations to function effectively.

That said, liberal candidates have continued to appear on electoral ballots and Russians have retained the option to vote for them. Yet very few do so. Even if one blames state propaganda for blackening liberals’ reputations, one still has to explain why that propaganda resonates so strongly in Russian minds. Answering this question requires us to turn to the actions of liberals themselves.

In a recent study of the topic, Guillaume Sauvé notes that while Russian liberals called themselves “democrats,” their definition of democracy wasn’t so much the rule of the people as a country governed by “democrats,” i.e. people like themselves. They were thus less democratic than they imagined themselves to be. Even before the collapse of the Soviet Union, would-be reformers were pointing out that dismantling communism would produce severe economic pain which would stimulate popular resistance. Overcoming this resistance would require authoritarian measures, they argued. Thus in 1990, the Association of Social-Economic Sciences, headed by future deputy prime minister Anatoly Chubais, issued a report noting that:

The biggest problem for democrats … is the need to express the necessity during reforms of the government’s anti-democratic measures (such as banning strikes, control of information, etc.). … There is a fundamental contradiction between the aims of reform … and the means of their achievement, including measures of an anti-democratic nature.

As Chubais had predicted, once economic reform began in January 1992, political resistance soon emerged. The centre of this resistance was the Russian parliament, which sought to slow down the “shock therapy” introduced by Russia’s first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin. The dispute between parliament and president ended in violence, with a pro-parliamentary crowd attacking the main TV station in Moscow, after which, on 4 October 1993, the president sent tanks to blast the legislature into submission. Many liberal intellectuals applauded Yeltsin’s moves. At a meeting with Yeltsin just prior to the attack on parliament, a delegation of Russian writers urged the president to take firm action. As one participant, writer Andrei Nuikin, told Yeltsin: “We urge you, Boris Nikolaevich, not to become obsessed solely with constitutional matters in the search for a legitimate solution. … It seems that the very idea of giving top priority to legitimacy has been skillfully imposed on us by those who themselves spit on it.”

Following the events of October 1993 Russia acquired a new constitution that created what some call a “super-presidential” system. Putin didn’t so much create this system as inherit it. As former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, one of the key liberal figures of the Yeltsin era, noted:

It immediately became clear that the first casualty [of the attack on parliament] was democracy itself. On the morning of October 3, President Yeltsin was still only one of many players on the Russian scene. … On the morning of October 5, all the power in the country was in his hands. We had leapt from the gelatinous dvoevlastie [dual power] into a de facto authoritarian regime.

Part 1 in this series noted how Russian liberalism’s social base has tended to be found in the intelligentsia, which has had often adopted a rather contemptuous view of the Russian people. The liberalism of the post-Soviet era has reflected this phenomenon, with many intellectuals viewing Russia as divided into two parts – the reactionary masses and the enlightened intelligentsia. As one time deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov wrote:

The Russian people, for the most part, is divided into two uneven groups. One part is the descendants of serfs, people with a slavish consciousness. There are very many of them and their leader is V. V. Putin. The other (smaller) part is born free, proud and independent. It does not have a leader but needs one.

“Homo Sovieticus” Sharikov performed by actor Vladimir Tolokonnikov, 1988. Source Wiki Commons

The Homo Sovieticus label

In the eyes of many liberal intellectuals, the archetype of the Russian masses is “homo sovieticus” (Soviet man), described by sociologist Lev Gudkov as “incapable of understanding more complex moral/ethical views and relationships.” For Sergei Medvedev, author of the prize-winning book Return of the Russian Leviathan, Russians exhibit the “morals of slaves.” The Russian “mass consciousness,” he says, is “embittered, alienated and provincial,” “undeveloped,” archaic and superstitious.” Similar comments by others abound.

One of the primary failures of Russian liberals has been their inability to overcome the gulf separating them from ordinary Russians. Rather than seeking the support of a population that they tend to despise, they have largely limited themselves to maximizing their own group’s support within liberal circles. In a book studying Russia’s leading liberal party, Yabloko, David White comments that the party’s “electoral programmes have never been specifically designed with the intention of catching the mood of the Russian voter.” Political failure has been the inevitable result.

Liberal politics has also been marred by bitter in-fighting. At the start of the 2000s, there were two main liberal parties – Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces (URF). The two regularly exchanged barbs. Boris Nemtsov, a leading member of the URF, denounced Yabloko as “a party of the impoverished intelligentsia,” while Yavlinsky in turn stated that the URF “falls into the category of totalitarian and pro-fascist.” Yavlinsky has used similar language about imprisoned opposition activist Alexei Navalny, writing that “Navalny’s political direction is populism and nationalism. If the mob follows Navalny, the country can expect fascism.” In return, Navalny has sharply criticized Yabloko. The party’s candidates, he told an interviewer, were “unpleasant people.”

Some Russian liberals object to this complaint, and contrast what they call their own “true” patriotism with the “false” patriotism of the Russian state and much of the public, this “true” patriotism being defined by “a critical attitude to the state and a consequent defense of social and individual citizens against the state’s infringements of their rights and freedoms.” In practice, though, a “critical attitude to the state” often appears to the public not as patriotism but the opposite. Tatyana Felgengauer of the now-banned liberal Ekho Moskvy (Echo of Moscow) radio station notes that, “The average Russian does not like Radio Echo of Moscow. They constantly blame us: claiming that we are the Echo of the US State Department, that we are not patriots, that we have sold ourselves to the Americans, that we are against Russia.”

This helps explain their respective political fates. As tensions between Russia and the West have grown, it has become increasingly easy for the Russian government and its supporters to equate Westernism with anti-Russianism. While unfair, this charge is politically very effective, helping to delegitimize liberals regardless of their individual beliefs and actions.

Liberals’ reaction to the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine has added to the problem. As detailed in Part I of this study, the desire to “return to civilization” (i.e. to Europe, or the West more generally) has become a defining feature of Russian liberalism. To many liberals, the Maidan protestors’ pro-European stance made their revolution “an effort to join European civilization,” and as such exactly what Russian liberals hoped to see in their own country. The Russian state’s reaction to Maidan, including the annexation of Crimea, was regarded as an anti-European, and thus negative, phenomenon. As Yavlinsky complained, “The main consequence of the current policy towards Ukraine is the strengthening of Russia’s course as a non-European country.”

This attitude pushed Russian liberals to oppose the annexation of Crimea, with Yabloko issuing a declaration stating that the annexation demonstrated the government’s hatred of the West. Given the popularity of the annexation, such statements arguably dealt a death blow to Russian liberalism as an organized political force. As a member of Yabloko’s political committee, Anatoly Rodionov, told his colleagues during a party debate on the subject of Crimea:

Russian society has said “No, Crimea is ours, and Yabloko is not ours.” You understand, this is what has happened. We shouldn’t fool ourselves. We have crossed a red line separating society’s understanding … from society’s hostility. … I think there’s been a sort of ethical glitch. We’ve taken the enemy’s side.

Memories of the 1990s, government repression, and liberals’ own political actions have all contributed to Russian liberalism’s decline. However, an argument can be made that while Russians may dislike liberals, they are not opposed to core liberal values and institutions such as liberty, autonomy, and democracy. If this is the case, then there is still a chance for liberalism’s resurrection as a political movement. Whether this is possible will be the subject of the essay that follows.

By Prof. Paul Robinson, Russia Post, 8/4/22

In 1935 George Dangerfield published a famous book entitled The Strange Death of Liberal England­, charting the downfall of the once mighty British Liberal Party. One might consider a similar title suitable elsewhere: The Strange Death of Liberal Russia. Back in 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberalism appeared triumphant in Russia. Liberal reformers manned the highest offices of state, and ideas of democracy, free markets, and human rights had gained broad acceptance. Russia had an advanced economic infrastructure, an educated population, and a large liberal intelligentsia. Most of what one might call the social-economic substructure of a liberal system was in place. There were good grounds for considering it likely that Russia’s future was a liberal one.

Reality proved otherwise. Over the years, Russian liberalism gradually declined as a political force, to the point where nowadays it is almost extinct. Meanwhile, liberal ideas have become increasingly discredited in the popular imagination. What happened? And is there any possibility of a Russian liberal revival in the foreseeable future?

This is the first of several articles devoted to answering those questions. It will look at issues of liberal theory and at the historical background of Russian liberalism. Ensuing articles will examine the rise and fall of Russian liberalism following the collapse of the Soviet Union and discuss liberalism’s prospects in Russia in the near to medium future. It must be noted that the limitations of a short article inevitably lead to a degree of generalization. More detailed analysis will reveal exceptions to much of what is written below. Nonetheless, if one views the ideas outlined in the article as tendencies rather than as absolutes, they are still of value.
Liberalism is a contested concept

Any discussion of liberalism first confronts a definitional problem, namely that liberalism itself is a contested concept. Indeed, many scholars argue that one cannot speak of “liberalism,” merely of a “broad family” of “liberalisms,” some of which appear contradictory. In an article entitled “What is Liberalism?” Duncan Bell argues that these contradictions are so great that one will search in vain for a common core among the various liberalisms. The most one can say is that liberalism is whatever people who have considered themselves liberals have said it is at any time and place. Bell’s position is, however, problematic from a Russian point of view, as Russians who hold apparently liberal views have generally eschewed the liberal label. In the late Soviet and early post-Soviet eras, they preferred to call themselves “democrats.” And in the Imperial era they preferred the term “constitutionalists,” a word that found expression in the name of the leading liberal party of the era, the Constitutional Democratic Party (often known as the “Kadets” due its Russian initials – KD).

Liberalism can refer to an ideology or to a political movement or to a set of political and socio-economic practices. As a general rule, philosophers consider its core feature to be that it is centered on the individual or person, but this feature is hardly unique to it, and in any case begs the question of how to define the individual or person.

Whatever the answer, though, a person was seen as something more than an individual, and the purpose of a liberal order was precisely that it enabled people to develop themselves and achieve “personhood.”

Again, this is not a uniquely liberal perspective, but where liberalism differs from other ideologies is in how it believes that this process of achieving personhood is achieved. In Western liberal thought, this process relies first on certain abstract principles and second on certain institutions that give these principles expression.
Scholars differ in their assessment of what these principles and institutions are, but roughly speaking the former include ideas such as liberty, autonomy, equality, pluralism, universalism, progress and reason, while the latter include institutions such as private property, free markets, democracy, the rule of law, and legally-enshrined human rights.

Elements of all of these can be found in the history of Russian liberalism, but with a specifically national twist. In Western Europe, liberal ideas developed in tandem with the creation of a bourgeois class, and largely represented that class’s material interests. In Russia, the ideas arrived from the West prior to the establishment of a large bourgeois class. Moreover, when such a class came into being, it tended to be quite conservative, in large part because the Russian economic system tied private industry and the state closely together. Liberalism instead became the purview of that part of the noble estate known as the intelligentsia. Its proponents were academics, lawyers, journalists and the like. Not for nothing was the leading liberal party of the late Imperial era, the Kadet party, known as a “party of professors.” Outside urban professionals, the party had almost no support, especially among workers and peasants, who showed little interest in liberalism.

Liberalism’s social base has remained equally narrow in modern times. In so far as there was a Soviet liberalism during the communist era, it was to be found among intellectuals and so-called “ITRs” (inzhenerno-tekhnicheskie rabotniki – engineering technical workers). Nowadays, the core of liberalism’s support is to be found in the “creative classes,” described by Mark Lipovetsky as “a strange unity of software engineers, intellectuals, scholars/scientists, architects, designers, university professors, people of art – in a word, those selling the product of their creative activity.” Prior to the 1917 revolution, Kadet party leader Pavel Miliukov commented that “Russian liberalism was not bourgeois but intellectual.” This remains largely true today.

An elitist group

Historians have noted a number of consequences of this phenomenon. These include a tendency towards abstraction and even on occasion dogmatism, as well as a tendency to concentrate on issues that deeply concern intellectuals but have little relevance to the lives of ordinary people. These are of course generalizations, but they contain a germ of truth.

Liberals have helped create this impression by adopting a sometimes contemptuous attitude towards the Russian people, who have often been portrayed as a dark mass of uneducated reactionaries unfit for self-government. As one of the founders of nineteenth century Russian liberalism, Timofei Granovsky, put it, “The victory of the masses would bring about the destruction of the best fruits of civilization.” The Russian revolution accentuated this attitude. For instance, Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, the one woman in the Kadet party central committee, denounced “the wild beast which is called the people.”

Generalizing somewhat, one might say that Russian liberals have tended to reflect the prevailing attitude of the intelligentsia, viewing themselves as standing above classes, and assigning themselves the role of educating and leading the masses until such time as they are able to reach the same level of enlightenment as the intelligentsia themselves. This attitude re-emerged in post-Stalin Soviet times. Dissident Grigory Pomerants, for instance, wrote that proletarian culture was without value. By contrast, he said, “those engaged in creative intellectual labour are the chosen people of the twentieth century.”

Fear of the mob has produced a rather contradictory attitude towards the institutional framework traditionally associated with liberalism. On the one hand, liberals have been fervent advocates of the rule of law and civil rights (free speech and so on). On the other hand, they have been rather less sure about the benefits of democracy, which Tyrkova-Williams in a moment of post-revolutionary zeal called “a fraud, which politicians have foisted upon us.”

Liberals have often demanded democratic reform, insisting that the state should share power with “society” (obshchestvo). But they have tended to equate “society” with themselves. When the people are given their freedom but instead choose other leaders, the result has been disillusionment.

Furthermore, there has also been a statist trend within Russian liberalism. This trend views the state as the primary mover of reform and regards representative institutions with suspicion as being likely to act as barriers in the way of necessary change. In this vision of the world, liberalism is something best left to what one might call “enlightened bureaucrats,” able to govern for the benefit of all and to resist the influence of individual or class interests. The result is a peculiarly Russian brand of liberal authoritarianism or what nineteenth century Russian thinker Boris Chicherin called “okhranitel’nyi” liberalism, a curious term that is normally translated as “conservative” liberalism but has other connotations not easily rendered into English (okhrana was the name of the Imperial secret police). Okhranitel’nyi liberalism, wrote Chicherin, meant “liberal measures and strong government.”

This thinking to some extent reflected the influence of Hegel. Another Hegelian was Chicherin’s colleague Konstantin Kavelin, who viewed history as a process leading towards the development of personhood. For Kavelin, the creation of the modern state was a crucial step in this process, with the state playing the role of enabling people to overcome the bonds of family and clan and thereby become persons. Western Europe had led the way in this process, but the inexorable laws of history meant that Russia was bound to follow. As Kavelin wrote, “The difference [between Russia and the West] lies solely in the preceding historical facts; the aim, the tasks, the aspirations, the way forward are one and the same.”

As previously noted, universalism and progress are often regarded as core liberal principles. Kavelin’s statement highlights their relevance in a Russian context. Russian liberalism has long contained a strong element of historical determinism that views history as following universally applicable rules of progress, which in the long term will cause all nations to converge on a single model of political and economic life. As Miliukov said, “Civilization makes nations, as it makes individuals, more alike.”

Miliukov and others turned this “is” into an “ought.” Because, in their opinion, it was an observable fact that nations all developed in the same way, they determined that Russia ought to reform itself to head in the same direction. Confronted by the complaint that foreign models did not suit Russian realities, Miliukov replied that Russia had to obey “the laws of political biology.”

Liberals were not alone in believing in the laws of political biology. But whereas socialists believed that these laws led inevitably towards socialism, even communism, liberals felt that they led to Western European liberal democracy. The West (however defined) was in their eyes the most “advanced” part of the world. It was therefore what Russia was fated in due course to become. From an early stage, therefore, Russian liberalism has been closely bound up with Westernism. Perhaps the most profound belief of Russian liberals is, and always has been, that the West represents “normality,” from which Russia has by some quirk of history been diverted and to which it must return.

“We must return to the highroad of modern civilization”

In contrast to Eurasianist thought, which regards the world as divided up into multiple distinct civilizations, Russian liberalism has generally tended to the view that there is only one “civilization” and its home is the West. This idea played a key role in the thinking of liberal-minded intellectuals in the late Soviet era. For instance, Georgian philosopher Merab Mamardashvili expressed the idea that the USSR had at some point after the revolution “jumped out of history” – in other words, it had been shunted from the inevitable path of historical progress that led towards Europe and put instead on another, incorrect, track. It was necessary, wrote Mamardashvili, “to jump to a new track altogether” and there by “go back to our European house.”

Similarly, historian Leonid Batkin commented that the West “is the general definition of the economic, scientific-technical and structural-democratic level without which it is impossible for any really modern society to exist. … We have dropped out of world history … We must … return to the highroad of modern civilization.” This aspiration remains at the centre of the liberal worldview to this day.

There are, of course, many other strands of Russian liberalism, which require a much longer analysis than is possible here. These strands have waxed and waned over the years and they are not all compatible with each other. But the discussion above reveals, in very broad and generalized terms, two characteristics of Russian liberalism that have remained remarkably consistent over time. The first is liberalism’s narrow social base, resting largely on intellectuals. The second is its tendency towards historical determinism and from that towards Westernism. How these characteristics have affected its fate in the post-Soviet era will be discussed in Part II.