State school of Russian historiography Kavelin Chicherin. Correlation of political views of K.D.

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Plan:

1.Features of a public school.

2. Biography. K. D. Kavelina.

3. The theory of tribal life K.D. Kavelina.

4. K. D. Kavelin about the community.

5. Formation of the Moscow state, reforms of Ivan IV and Peter I in the light of K.D. Kavelina.

6. K.D. Kavelin on the problem of autocracy. Personality in history.

7. K.D. Kavelin on Russia’s place in world history.

8.. Biography of B. N. Chicherin.

9. B.N. Chicherin about the origin of the state, the stages of its development.

10. The theory of enslavement and emancipation of classes by B.N. Chicherin.

Tests, problematic questions and exercises:

1. Name the characteristic features of a public school.

2. Formulate the main provisions of the theory of tribal life K.D. Kavelina

3. Expand Kavelin’s ideas of world history. What are the features of the development of Russia and Europe, according to Kavelin, and what unites them?

4. How does Kavelin’s attitude towards the community differ from the Slavophile?

5. How does the idea of the objectivity of historical patterns correlate with the idea of individual freedom in Chicherin’s historical concept?

6. What is the role of the state in the historical process according to Chicherin? What does Chicherin understand by the “protective principle” in politics?

7. What is the essence of B.N. Chicherin’s theory of enslavement and emancipation of classes?

8. What is the role of Russia in the world civilizational process, according to Chicherin?

9. Compare the historical concepts of the Slavophiles and representatives of the state school.

Literature:

Gerasimenko G.A. History of Russian historical science (pre-October period). Tutorial. M., 1998;

Iskra L.M. Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin about politics, state, history. Voronezh, 1995.

Historiography of the history of Russia before 1917. T.1.. Ed. M. Yu. Lachaeva. M:, 2003;

Historiography of the history of the USSR. Ed. V.E. Illeritsky and I.A. Kudryavtseva. M., 1971;

Kavelin K.D. Thoughts and notes about Russian history. M., 2010.

Kavelin K.D. Our mental structure: Articles on the philosophy of Russian history and culture. M., 1989.

Naumova G. R., Shiklo L. V. Historiography of the history of Russia M., 2008.

Tsamutali A.N. The struggle of trends in Russian historiography during the period of imperialism: historiographical essays. L.: Nauka, 1985.

Tsamutali A.N. All Russian history is primarily state history: Konstantin

Shapiro A.L. Historiography from ancient times to 1917. M., 1993;

Shapiro A.L. Russian historiography during the period of imperialism. Lecture course. L., 1962;

In “Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature” N.G. Chernyshevsky characterized the mid-40s. XIX century as a time when “we meet the strictly scientific view of a new historical school, the main representatives of which were Messrs. Solovyov and Kavelin: here for the first time the meaning of events and the development of our state life are explained to us.”

In 1844 K.D. Kavelin defended his dissertation “Basic principles of the Russian judicial system and civil proceedings in the period from the Code to the Establishment in

provinces." In 1846 S.M. Soloviev formulated the main provisions of his concept of Russian history in his doctoral dissertation “The History of Relations between the Princes of Rurik’s House,” and in 1851 the first volume of his “History of Russia from Ancient Times” was published. In 1853, he completed work on his dissertation “Regional Institutions in Russia in the 17th Century” by B.N. Chicherin. It is with these names that a new direction in our historical science is associated, behind which the name “state school” was established.

Despite all the peculiarities of each of them’s perception and understanding of the historical process, they were united by a system of views on national history. They showed interest in Hegel's philosophy of history, his dialectical method, and were attracted to varying degrees by the ideas of positivism. In the works of scientists, the need for a theoretical understanding of the past was justified, and they made an attempt to combine historical theory with concrete historical material, formulated a concept of the historical development of Russian statehood, its institutions and legal norms. They considered the state as the subject and engine of historical progress. Recognition of the leading role of the state was reflected in the theory of “enslavement and emancipation of classes”, the characterization of the state as a non-estate and non-class body. Civil history became the main subject of Russian historiography. Public school scholars viewed history as a science of self-knowledge. They were unanimous in affirming the ability of the Russian people to develop and their belonging “to the family of European peoples.” The Russian historical process, with all its features - historical, physical and moral - followed the laws and “principles of life” common to Western Europe.

Both Kavelin, Chicherin, and Solovyov were critical of the Nicholas regime, recognized the need for reforms and were unanimous in the methods of carrying them out.

The individuality of each scientist was manifested both in the perception and transformation of the ideas of the era, the use of certain research methods, and in determining the content and chronological framework of individual periods of Russian history, attitude towards individual events and phenomena.

Kavelin tried to present the history of Russia as a “living whole”, imbued with the same spirit, the same principles. Solovyov's merit is in using the richest factual material and creating a complete, organic concept of Russian history, the history of the formation and development of the state. Chicherin devoted his scientific work to the study of legal norms and legal institutions.

Modern historiography includes V.I. as the second generation of representatives of the state school. Sergeevich, author of works on the role of zemstvo councils, appanage-veche Rus' of the 14th century. and others. The main approaches to the study of Russian history Chicherin were shared by A.D. Gradovsky, known for his work in the field of history and theory of law of Ancient Rus' and European countries. They note the proximity to the public school F.I. Leontovich, who studied the legislation on peasants of the 15th-16th centuries, historians of Russian state law I.E. Andreevsky, A.V. Romanovich-Slavatinsky and others. The main subject of research by these scientists were legal and legal institutions,

legislation of the Russian state. They, unlike their predecessors, practically did not touch upon the history of Russia as a whole. Their works are considered within the framework of the evolution of the public school.

Some aspects of the concept of Russian history, formulated by public school scientists, were developed in the works of many historians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today our contemporaries are turning to them again.

K.D. Kavelin (1818-1885)

In Russian historiography, the name of Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin, a historian-lawyer, public figure, and teacher, is associated with the formation of public schools.

He came from an old, but not rich, noble family. Received home education. To prepare for entering Moscow University, V.G. was invited to him as a teacher. Belinsky, who, as Kavelin wrote in his memoirs, taught poorly, but “had a beneficial effect on me by exciting mental activity, intellectual interests, respect and love for knowledge and moral principles.” Subsequently, Kavelin was a member of Belinsky’s circle, and their friendship was not interrupted until the latter’s death.

Kavelin's time at the university (1835-1839) coincided with the active participation of the university in the social and cultural life of the country. He graduated from the Faculty of Law as a first candidate in law. In 1844, Kavelin defended his master’s thesis “The Basic Principles of the Russian Judicial System and Civil Procedure in the Period from the Code to the Establishment of the Provinces” and was retained as an adjunct at the Department of History of Russian Legislation. In 1848, he left the university due to a conflict with the professor of Roman law N.I. Krylov.

For almost ten years, Kavelin served in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Office of the Committee of Ministers. In 1857, he returned to teaching as a professor of civil law at St. Petersburg University, but a few years later he was forced to resign along with other professors due to student unrest. Later, he taught for some time at Novorossiysk University (Odessa), at the Military Law Academy.

Kavelin is a student of professor of philosophy P.G. Redkin, N.I. Krylov, historian M.P. Pogodin, friend of A.I. Herzen and T.N. Granovsky, A.S. Khomyakov and K.S. Aksakova. Like many of his contemporaries, he was interested in the philosophy of Hegel, and in the last decades of his life he gave preference to scientific positive knowledge. He found himself at the center of disputes between Slavophiles and Westerners about the paths of development of Russia. Kavelin defined himself as a supporter of the Europeanization of Russia, defended the need for its reform, and became one of the leaders of Russian liberalism. Convinced of the need for a strong autocratic government, he nevertheless supported the fight against the despotism of the Nicholas era and the demand for the abolition of serfdom. He worked a lot on projects of peasant reform and restructuring of government institutions. Kavelin deeply believed in the high morality of the Russian people and the greatness of their destiny.

Theory of historical process. In his articles on Russian history “A Look at the Legal Life of Ancient Russia”, “A Brief Look at Russian History”, “Thoughts and Notes on Russian History”, etc. Kavelin repeatedly turned to the historical knowledge of previous eras. He identified several stages in the development of this knowledge, determined by the form of “national consciousness.” Initially, history attracted attention as a “curious tale about antiquity,” then history became a “teaching” and “reference”, and turned into an “archive of old political and state affairs.” Finally, the time for “deep thinking” comes. But, Kavelin came to the conclusion, “our national identity has not yet been established.” A look at Russian history and assessments of historical events turn out to be “baby talk of an immature and unsteady thought.” Time dictates the need to understand “the meaning and significance of our historical existence”, to make historical science “the source and mirror of national self-awareness.”

Kavelin considers it possible to solve this problem only if a theory is developed,

which would present history as a “living whole,” as a developing organism, imbued with “one spirit, one beginning.” The theoretical understanding of the past, the scientist has repeatedly drawn attention to, should be based on an analysis of sources. They create the foundation for research and allow you to approach the subject being studied not abstractly, but historically. However, even studying all historical facts in their chronological sequence will not add anything to existing knowledge. Based on facts, historical science must appear in the form of a theory.

Kavelin’s works, as a rule, are of a theoretical nature, but, recalled B.N., who listened to his lectures. Chicherin, he “based his course on the study of sources, without introducing any preconceived ideas into them. He took the facts as they appeared to his lively and impressionable mind, and presented them in continuous sequence... not limiting himself to general outlines, but gradually following the monuments, pointing to them and teaching students how to use them.”

History for Kavelin is the discovery of the “national spirit”, the character and inclinations, advantages and disadvantages of a person, representing him in a certain existence. In this highest sense, history educates, develops and strengthens the “national spirit”, has

Moral action is not only a story about the past, but also gives an understanding of the present and a prediction of the future.

Kavelin defined the main provisions of his theory of the historical process in the following provisions: the integrity and unity of the historical process, gradual change in the consequences of internal causes, the interconnection of all phenomena and processes. On the basis of this, he tried to create a theory of the history of society and the Russian people, imbued with the same spirit, the same principles. The phenomena of history were understood as various expressions of these principles, “necessarily interconnected, necessarily flowing from one another.”

The content of the historical life of peoples has two main elements - the formation of a social organism and the development of personality. Their development has certain features and direction inherent in them from birth. They change, but not immediately, but gradually under the influence of internal and external circumstances and accidents. Consequently, Kavelin concluded, the key to understanding Russian history “is in ourselves, in our inner life,” in the initial forms of education.

The history of Russia, he wrote, shows from the half of the 9th to the 18th centuries. a change in the forms of state life, the essence of which is the gradual decline of family relations and the development of state, as well as the development of the individual. He attaches particular importance to the formation of state relations as the basis of the entire life of the Russian people. “All Russian history, both ancient and modern, is predominantly state and political, in a special meaning of this word that is unique to us.” All the forces and juices of people's life were concentrated in the state.

All of Kavelin’s work is subordinated to showing the development of Russian statehood, its legal and civil life in Russia.

Formation of the state in Russia. The foundations of statehood - he formulated his main position in the article “A Look at the Legal Life of Ancient Rus'” - lie in the original way of life and the circumstances in which it developed, i.e. in the blood, related life of the “Russian Slavs”. In this everyday life lay the beginnings of his future decomposition. The increase in the number of families, the strengthening of their independence, the concentration on their own interests weakened clan relations, the power of the eldest in the clan, and led to civil strife. The Varangians, called to stop the strife, did not disrupt the overall course of Russian history. Their attempts, which lasted about two centuries, to introduce civil principles were unsuccessful. Yaroslav, a “purely Russian prince,” as Kavelin called him, was the first to plan to establish the state life of Rus' and establish political unity on a tribal basis. It conflicts with family interests. The latter triumph, and the prince turns into a fief. Rus' breaks up into several independent territories. The period of appanages begins.

The Moscow principality, Kavelin continued, is a transitional era in Russian political life. It was an important step in the development of internal life. The Moscow princes began to strengthen their power as great princes, put themselves above the family, and abandoned the blood union in the name of the idea of the state. The appanage system was destroyed, the concept of the state appeared, a new political system, legislation, legal proceedings began to form, and the concept of public service appeared.

Presenting the evolution of patrimonial relations into state ones, Kavelin pays primary attention to internal processes - the gradual, natural disintegration of tribal relations, the entry of the individual “onto the stage of action.” “It is ridiculous to assert,” he wrote, that the Moscow state was created by the Tatars. The desire for unification appeared much earlier and constantly manifested itself under various forms. However, the Tatar-Mongols brought to the fore in their relations with the Russian princes the personal qualities of the latter, rather than family ties, and thereby contributed (“without knowing it”) to the destruction of clan relations and the restoration of political unity, the manifestation of personality. The “gifted, intelligent, intelligent princes of Moscow” took advantage of this.

The Moscow state, according to Kavelin, prepared the ground for a new life. It began with the reign of Ivan IV, and ended with Peter the Great. He saw similarities in the desire and direction of their activities. Both, Kavelin believed, understood the idea of the state and were “its noblest representatives.” Naturally, time and conditions left their mark on their activities.

The main thing for Kavelin in the reforms of Ivan IV was that they strengthened the state, destroying the power of regional rulers. The same objectives were met by the introduction of the oprichnina, the creation of the service nobility, and the adoption of the Code of Law. In place of the blood principle, the tsar replaced the principle of “personal dignity” in public administration. Thus, the second main element was identified public life- personality. But Kavelin believed that the reforms “failed,” since society itself still lacked “elements of a better order of things.” However, the main thing, the idea of the state, has already deeply penetrated life. The events of the Time of Troubles spoke about this, according to the scientist: “Russia itself stood up for its own defense in the name of Faith and Moscow, our then state fatherland.” The new dynasty continued the temporarily interrupted struggle of the tsar with the outdated remnants of pre-state Russia. The era of Peter I completed the process of state formation in all its manifestations.

This is the theory of Russian history proposed by Kavelin. Its essence was the change of clan relations from patrimonial relations to state relations, i.e. transition from natural natural associations to a conscious one - the state. The transition process is a reflection and implementation of the idea of the state, which was originally inherent in Russians.

The fact of the formation of the state for Kavelin is the most important moment in Russian history. This is the result, on the one hand, of the natural, logical course of development of society, on the other, the embodiment of the basic idea of the historical life of the Russian people, the manifestation of their spiritual strength. He repeatedly emphasized that only the Great Russian element, the only one among the Slavic tribes, was able to found a strong state.

The internal structure of Russian society by the 17th century. (up to Peter I) was determined

Kavelin believed that the initial relationships that developed in the Great Russian tribe were a house, a courtyard, consisting of the head of the family and members of the household. The princely court that then appeared repeated the previous structure of relations: the prince is the head of the family, whose members and squad are his servants. The same is true of the basis of the political power of the Moscow state. Only the limits are greater and the development is higher. The king is the unconditional master and hereditary owner of the land. The mass of the people are his slaves and orphans. He is the protector of the people. This is his duty and responsibility. In turn, each member of society is also obliged to serve in favor of the state. Since the 17th century universal serfdom is established, where everyone had to perform a certain duty “until death and hereditarily.” From here Kavelin drew the conclusion that the state was supra-class.

Serfdom. Kavelin came to the conclusion that the basis of social construction was the ancient, Great Russian way of life, including serfdom, which arose from domestic power and developed according to its model. It was neither a strictly legal nor an economic phenomenon. In popular morals and beliefs, serfdom was supported not by violence, but by consciousness. The serfs did not consider themselves slaves, “nor a subject of industrial exploitation, but imperfect, unreasonable, dark people who need to be taught and mentored.” In Ancient Rus', serfdom was power, sometimes harsh and harsh, due to the rudeness of the then morals, but not the right of ownership of a person. By the 19th century it began to express itself in outrageous exploitation. People began to be turned into slaves, and this raised the question of its abolition.

Kavelin did not consider the enslavement of peasants to be an isolated act; he saw its establishment as a general policy. Not only peasants, but gradually all groups of the population became enslaved. Nobles, merchants, artisans, etc. were assigned to the land, department, and institution. Serfdom, Kavelin repeatedly returned to this issue,

was the basis of all social life and, in his opinion, directly flowed from the internal life of the Great Russian home and courtyard.

From the middle of the 18th century. the gradual abolition of serfdom and the granting of civil rights to the Russian people began. This process, like all movements in Russia, took place from top to bottom, from the highest strata of society to the lowest. The nobility, clergy and merchants received civil rights, then heterogeneous layers of middle society, then state-owned peasants and, finally, landowners. As civil rights spread to all states and ranks, a class organization was created, and a communal zemstvo appeared

device. Thus, a new social way of life was formed, a transition was made

"from adolescence to manhood."

Autocracy. The essence of the Russian political system is a strong centralized government, autocracy. It was based on the same patriarchal life - the complete power of the ancestor in his own way. Kavelin considered Andrei Bogolyubsky to be the same autocrat as Vsevolod the Big Nest, like the Moscow princes and tsars. Under Peter, the Great Royal power acquired a new meaning, but it was Peter who expressed the principles of the ancient power much sharper, more definitely and more consciously than his predecessors (excluding Ivan IV). Peter was not only a king, he was the engine and instrument of transformation of Russian society. With his personal life, he gave the autocracy a new character and in this sense, determined the entire subsequent course of our history, forever introducing into our state charter the idea that, first of all, power “is work, feat, service to Russia.” He strengthened the royal power, raised it and gave it high moral and “national significance”. In this, Kavelin saw Peter’s greatest merit.

Personality. Along with the development of internal life and the state, Kavelin also considered another, in his opinion, the most important element of the life of the people - the personal principle. “I take personality,” he wrote, “in the simplest, everyday sense, as a clear consciousness of one’s social position and calling, one’s external rights and external duties, as a reasonable determination of immediate practical goals and the same reasonable and persistent pursuit of them.” If everyday life determines the content social development, then his personality “moves”. The level of its development has a corresponding impact on society itself. He stated with regret that Russian history began with a complete absence of a personal beginning. But, Kavelin argued, “if we are a European people and capable of development, then we should have discovered a desire for individuality, to free ourselves from under its oppressive oppression; Individuality is the basis of all freedom and all development; human life is unthinkable without it.”

The transition from the natural union of people to their conscious formation made the development of personality inevitable. Kavelin associated the first manifestation of thoughts about the dignity of man and the human personality with the adoption of Christianity, which recognized the moral and mental development of man as the goal of life for all peoples. Hence,

The origins of the appearance of personality in Rus' must be attributed to the time of baptism. However, neither family life nor patrimonial relations allowed the individual to express himself. The first beginnings of its manifestation date back only to the time of the Moscow State. But his way of life, in particular the general enslavement, made any individual actions impossible. Therefore, the awakening of the personal principle to the moral and spiritual

development, Kavelin believed, began only in early XVIII V. under the influence of external circumstances and only in the upper strata.

Peter is “the first free Great Russian personality with all the characteristic features: practicality, courage, breadth... and with all the shortcomings.” His private life and state activities are “the first phase of the realization of personality in history.” In his person, she renounced “directly natural, exclusively national definitions,” defeated them and subjugated them to herself. Hence Kavelin’s assessment of the Petrine era as a whole and of the transformer himself, who, acting in all respects in connection with the needs and possibilities of his time, set the development of the beginning of personal freedom as a requirement that must be realized in reality. Russian society solved this problem in the 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. Thus, Kavelin represents Peter as a great sovereign, the creator of a new Russia, its political power and “the organizer of internal life.”

Russia and Western Europe. Having understood for himself the meaning of Russian history, Kavelin also defined his view of Russia’s relationship to world history, in his understanding of the history of Western Europe. The solution to the issue is based on the scientist’s idea of the unity of the historical process, but “presuming differences in its qualitative basis.” It finds its embodiment in the unity of the goals of all peoples, defined by Christianity. This goal is to affirm the dignity of man and his comprehensive development, primarily spiritual. But the ways to achieve these goals are different, just as the nature and historical conditions of life of peoples are diverse. Paths are determined by specific circumstances: their internal, original way of life, geographical conditions, cultural influence of other peoples, etc. Kavelin is not talking about comparison. It is difficult and sometimes even impossible, since the history of each people has its own qualitative characteristics and is at different stages of development. A comparison of events and processes taking place in Europe and Rus' can only show their “complete opposite.” Therefore, Kavelin focused his attention on the qualitative characteristics of those factors under the influence of which the development of the Russian people took place. First of all, as mentioned above, we were talking about internal life. Kavelin, like other scientists, pointed out such a feature of Russians as the adoption of the Christian faith of the Eastern religion. Orthodoxy not only contributed to the development of national identity, but also became “an expression of our state unity.” Faith and the church in Rus' received the character of a state and political institution.

Kavelin saw another feature in the constant settlement of the Great Russians, their colonization of the northern lands, the beginning of which he attributed to the 11th-12th centuries. Over the course of 700 years, vast areas were developed and a state was created.

In addition, a distinctive feature of Russian history was that Russia was not influenced by conquerors. It also did not have at its disposal the heritage of cultural, enlightened peoples. “We were condemned to live by our own wits,” he did

Kavelin's conclusion.

However, all this did not contribute to the rapid achievement of a common goal - the development of personality, the development of norms of civil life. The extreme slowness of this process was a feature of Russian history, and ultimately the Russians and the peoples of Western Europe faced different tasks. The second had to develop personality, and the first had to create. This conclusion revealed the content of Kavelin’s position “about the complete opposite of the history of Russia to the history of Western states.” At the same time, the affirmation of the personal principle in the era of Peter I allowed him to conclude that Russia, “having exhausted all its exclusively national elements, entered into universal life.” Confirming his thesis that the key to Russian history lies in itself, Kavelin warned against the rash transfer of any Western European models of life to Russian soil. “By accepting from Europe, without critical verification, the conclusions it has drawn for itself from its life, observations and experiments, we imagine that we have before us pure, unalloyed scientific truth, universal, objective and unchangeable, and thereby paralyze our own activity at the very root, before it could even begin. Until recently, we treated European institutions and customs in exactly the same way, until, finally, through experience we were convinced that customs and institutions always and everywhere bear the imprint of the country where they were formed, and living traces of its history.”

From these positions, considering Peter’s reforms, Kavelin rejected accusations against him about

the allegedly violent rupture of Russian history into two dissimilar halves. Peter resolved the issues posed in Ancient Rus', and therefore his reforms, the scientist believed, did not separate the old Rus' from the new “by an impenetrable abyss.” He also refuted reproaches against Peter about his commitment to the West, about violating the morals and customs of the Russian people, and depriving them of their “nationality.” Kavelin explained that the people, who are in a “natural state,” are bound into a nationality by the external physical forms of their existence. Therefore, a change in these forms for him means the loss of “nationality”, under

He doesn’t recognize himself by any other appearance. When a people begins to live a spiritual life, then nationality (nationality) manifests itself in “a special folk physiognomy, as something elusive, indefinite, purely spiritual.” In the first sense, “nationality” began to change especially in the upper classes, even before Peter, in the Moscow state. In the second - “we never lost our nationality, we never ceased to be Russians and Slavs.” “We will always be us, and never them, anyone else.” Neither Peter nor Catherine II, he wrote, even in the midst of the invasion of foreign elements into Russia, sacrificed Russian interests and represented the Russian state quite independently. At the same time, Kavelin did not deny that Peter’s transformations took place under European influence. But, he emphasized once again, “we have become European, remaining Russian as before, for when a person and a people takes something, borrows something from another, it does not cease to be what it was before.” All principles, borrowed from foreigners and transplanted onto Russian soil, changed their character.

Kavelin sees the result of Russia's development in the creation of a civil society, the development of soil for the moral development of a free individual. The attention and interests of the state should be focused on mental and social forces. Russia is a “new in history” phenomenon, a state with an original path of development, but within the framework of world civilization. A new period is beginning, what it will bring to Russia, and what it will contribute to the treasury of world history, the future will show, he concluded.

The theory of the historical process, formulated by Kavelin, presents a coherent picture of the development of Russian social life, imbued with a single principle. It was based on the idea of self-development and a decisive influence on the fate of its people.

inner life and personality. Kavelin presented the content of Russian history as a transition from tribal relations to patrimonial (family) and state (personal). Thus, the state was the result of historical development, the highest form of social education, in which conditions were created for the spiritual and moral development of the entire society.

In constructing his theory, Kavelin relied on the achievements of contemporary Western European philosophy of history and the tradition of Russian historical thought. It was based on ideas about development as a necessary sequential transition from one stage of development to another, higher one, about the conditioning of the historical process primarily by internal sources. He affirmed the idea of organicity, smooth development, the gradual growth of the new in the old and the negation of the latter by the former.

Kavelin established in Russian historiography the idea of historical science as a science of self-knowledge, as a necessary condition for the spiritual development of society. His primary task was to study the history of the state, its legal norms and institutions. For the first time, he tried to resolve the issue of the role of the individual, the individual as a subject, the basis for the development of society, and turned to the definition of the concepts of “nationality” and “nationality”.

Kavelin spoke as a supporter of closer ties with Western Europe, but stated that “every thinking person who takes the interests of his homeland to heart cannot help but feel half Slavophile, half Westerner.”

These and other provisions, including characteristics of individual phenomena and events

Russian history, laid the foundation for a new direction in domestic historiography - the state school.

B.N. Chicherin (1828-1904)

Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin is a public school theorist, a famous public figure, and publicist. He came from an old noble family and received a good education at home. In 1849 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. T.N. had a great influence on the formation of his worldview and historical views. Granovsky, I.D. Kavelin. During his student years he met A.S. Khomyakov, K.S. Aksakov, read a lot on history: F. Schlesser, B.G. Niebuhr, G. Evers, S.M. Solovyova. He thoroughly studied Hegelian philosophy and became interested in the “new worldview,” which revealed to him “in amazing harmony the supreme principles of existence.” Acquaintance with ancient monuments taught us to “rummage through sources and see in them the first basis for a serious study of science,” Chicherin wrote in his memoirs.

In 1853, Chicherin submitted his master’s thesis “Regional Institutions in Russia in the 17th Century” for defense. Despite the high praise of her colleagues, including Granovsky, she was not accepted for defense at the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. The dean of the faculty rejected it, saying that it “presented the ancient administration of Russia in too unattractive a way.” The defense took place only in 1857.

In 1858 Chicherin went abroad. There he became acquainted with the socio-economic and political ideas of Western European social thought and science. In 1861, he was elected professor at Moscow University and began lecturing at the department of public law. Chicherin became interested in politics and became the leader of the liberal movement in Russia. "Liberalism! - he wrote in 1855. “This is the slogan of every educated and sensible person in Russia.” His program put forward demands for freedom of conscience, public opinion, freedom of printing,

teaching, publicity of all government actions, transparency of legal proceedings. He considered serfdom to be one of the greatest evils that Russia suffered from. Despite his passion for liberal ideas, Chicherin associated the possibility of achieving them with the “distant future” and preferred “honest autocracy to untenable representation.”

In 1866, Chicherin left the university in protest against the violation of the university charter adopted in 1863, the most liberal in the history of Russia, and in connection with the “unseemly” activities of the Academic Council. From that moment on, he focused his attention on scientific work. At the end of the 70s. Chicherin returned to political activity in the early 80s. was elected Moscow mayor. However, his liberal sentiments displeased the government, and he was forced to resign. Chicherin continued his scientific work, making it the main occupation of his life. In 1893 he was elected an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The combination of scientific and socio-political activities was characteristic feature life and work of Chicherin. Modernity and history walked side by side with him. “Only the study of the past,” he wrote, “gives us the key to understanding the present, and at the same time the opportunity to see the future.”

Chicherin's range of scientific interests is wide. The main place in his work was occupied by works on national history. He paid special attention to issues of the origin and development of the state, the history of legal and social institutions, relationships

state and society, power and law. They received coverage in his dissertation, in the works “Review of the historical development of the rural community in Russia”, “Spiritual and contractual letters of the great and appanage princes”, “Slaves and peasants in Russia before the 16th century”, “On popular representation”, etc. Chicherin was one of the first scientists in Russia who turned to theoretical problems of sociology and politics, which was reflected in his works of the 80-90s: “Property and the State”, “Course of State Science”,

"Philosophy of Law".

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Introduction

Public school: characteristics of the direction, foundations of the worldview concept

State School Representatives:

1. Kavelin

2. Chicherin

3. Solovyov

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

According to the tradition established in Soviet science, historiography was one of the so-called auxiliary historical disciplines. In itself, this definition obviously presupposed the secondary importance of historiography in the general system of historical sciences.

Fortunately, attitudes towards historiography have changed radically in recent years. The crisis experienced by historical science in modern Russia, not only awakened a natural interest in the works of pre-revolutionary and emigrant Russian historians, but also clearly showed that without knowledge of the history of historical science in Russia, without a clear idea of the patterns and stages of its development, the achievements of previous historical schools and individual historians, it is impossible to overcome the existing crisis state , to reach new frontiers of understanding the historical past of Russia, and also to outline a new path for the development of our state and law. Of course, now historiography plays an important role in the system of knowledge, both historical and legal.

In my course work, I would like to touch directly on the State School, as well as the influence it had on the formation Russian legislation XIX century.

According to N.L. Rubinstein , " The state school is the main direction in Russian bourgeois historiography of the 2nd half of the 19th century. Representatives of the State School considered the main force in history to be a supra-class state, supposedly expressing the interests of society as a whole."

The theoretical and philosophical basis of the State School was the reactionary side of Hegel's idealistic philosophy with its defense of the monarchical state. Unlike the historical school of S.M. Solovyov, the State school meant the refusal of liberal-bourgeois historiography from the principle of historical regularity. Its founder, B.N. Chicherin formulated the main provisions:

· establishment of the state as the driving force of Russian history;

· justification of its dominant role in Russian history by the peculiarities of natural conditions;

· the resulting contrast between the history of Russia and the history of other peoples, primarily Western Europe.

It was then that the classic formula of this school about “enslavement and emancipation of classes by the state” was created as a definition of the social content of Russian history. The power of the state was, first of all, explained by natural conditions: the steppe prevented the formation of strong societies; the people seemed to be “solitary, wandering persons”, “lost in a vast, barely populated space.” In turn, this was contrasted by the organizing role of the state, which formed estates and consolidated them in the service of public interests. Chicherin, the founder of this trend in historiography, believed that all transformations could be carried out only by the state, that is, through reforms sanctioned directly by the authorities. This reflected the aspirations of the Russian bourgeoisie for reforms carried out by a strong government that would be able to prevent a democratic revolution in the country. Chicherin’s provisions were accepted by K.D. Kavelin, and by the end of the 60s. V.I. Sergeevich also joined the State School.

The theories were followed by A.D. Gradovsky, Vladimirsky-Budanov, as well as many other bourgeois historians.

Certain provisions of the State School are reflected in the works of S.M. Solovyov, who in the last period of his activity accepted the thesis of “enslavement and emancipation of classes,” however, retained to the end the basic principle of the unity of internal regularity and organic nature of historical development.

Followers of the state school studied in detail and in depth political history, the history of state institutions, as well as law itself, but at the same time rejected the very possibility of the unity of the world historical process. One way or another, the idea of a public school at the beginning of the twentieth century clearly showed the deepening ideological and methodological crisis of Russian bourgeois historiography.

Here I will describe in detail not only the prominent ideological inspirers and representatives of this trend, but also describe in detail the very essence of the State School, its origin and main characteristics. I would like to pay special attention to the contribution this or that scientist made to science.

In my opinion, this topic course work very, very relevant even now, since, unfortunately, during the Soviet Union, the works of most pre-revolutionary historians and jurists were banned, and some were completely destroyed. That is why legal science was at an insufficiently developed level for a very long time. However, now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, we finally have the opportunity to change this situation.

Now, we have access to the colossal content of the works of pre-revolutionary lawyers and legal scholars, as well as historians and scientists, whose works we should study, since they contain many different ideas, opinions, and, of course, this is an unconditional contribution to the development of science, as well as the state and law in general.

The purpose of the course work is a comprehensive analysis of the scientific works of pre-revolutionary representatives of the public school, as well as an understanding of the thoughts and ideas that they defended in their scientific activities.

To achieve the goal of the course work, it is necessary to solve the following problems:

· consideration of the very essence of the state school, as one of the currents of Russian bourgeois historiography.

· studying the works of scientists;

· identifying the features of the theory;

· consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the State School

In the course of my scientific work, I will use methods such as historical, logical, as well as comparative historical and dialectical. The sources of information will be direct historiography, as well as various scientific articles.

The result of this scientific work should be an analysis of the contribution of the State School to the development of Russian legislation of the nineteenth century and science as such.

Public school: characteristics of the direction, basicovs worldview concept

The names of Konstantin Dmitrievich Kavelin, Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin, Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov are associated with a direction in Russian historical science, which later became known as " Public School" . Based on Hegel's dialectical method, scientists made an attempt to combine historical theory with concrete historical material, thereby formulating a concept for the development of Russian statehood, its institutions and legal norms. They considered the state as the subject and engine of the historical process. They considered the Russian people "to the family of European peoples."

If we try to formulate the basic principles of state theory, as they were established in Russian historical science as a result of the activities of Solovyov, Kavelin and Chicherin, then they were as follows:

1. Recognition of the organic, natural development of the Russian people from tribal relations to state relations.

2. Understanding this development purely idealistically as a formal legal change in legal norms: first the law based on consanguinity, then patrimonial, contractual, private law and, finally, public law.

3. The inertia of the people was recognized as a feature of Russian history. The progressive movement consisted of the formation and development of the state and statehood.

4. The state was seen as the driving and only powerful force in the country. In the interests of defense, it enslaved all classes in the 16th-17th centuries, and only in the 18th century did they begin their gradual emancipation. And although not all representatives of the public school adhered to this concept, at its core it turned out to be very tenacious. The formation of the new school was associated with the names of Kavelin and Solovyov, but its approval was directly connected with the name of Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin. All these historians were united not only by a passion for Hegel’s philosophical ideas, but also by an interest in the history of the state, its institutions and legal norms. They were also united by a critical attitude towards the regime of Nikolaev Russia and an awareness of the need for peaceful reforms. An important component of the concept they put forward was the substantiation of the internal regularity of the historical process in general and the Russian historical process in particular. Tracing the development of social relations, Kavelin attached particular importance to the study of the process of formation of social relations. All Russian history, Kavelin believed, is primarily state, political, in a special meaning of this word that is unique to us. Thus, he formulated the main task of identifying the general patterns of the historical development of Russia. At the same time, according to the scientist, primary attention should be paid to the history of the state, state institutions and legal monuments, their formation and evolution.

For Solovyov, “the state is required form for the people,” so he reduced the history of the country to the history of the emergence and development of the state.

Chicherin, Solovyov, Kavelin - it is with these three names that a new direction in our historical and legal science is associated, behind which the name “state school” was established.

Taking into account all the peculiarities of perception and analysis of each of them, the historical progress of scientists was united general system a look at national history. All of them, of course, showed interest in Hegel’s philosophical positions and his dialectical method. The ideas of positivism attracted them to one degree or another. The need for a theoretical understanding of the past was justified precisely in the works of scientists of the state school, and then they made an attempt to combine historical theory with specific historical material, as well as to formulate the concept of historical progress of Russian statehood, its legal norms and social institutions.

Both Kavelin, Chicherin, and Solovyov were quite critical of the Nicholas regime, and, recognizing the need for reforms, were unanimous in the methods of carrying them out, that is, they realized the need to carry out reforms directly emanating from the government, not allowing the possibility of a revolution, which, in their opinion , would have a detrimental effect not only on the development of the state and law, but also on the life of society as a whole.

Kavelin represented the history of Russia as a “living whole.” Solovyov’s merit can be considered the use of the richest practical material and the creation of an entire concept of Russian history, the history of the origin and development of the state.

Chicherin studied not only legal norms, but also legal institutions.

The state, in turn, was considered by them as the subject and engine of historical progress. Recognizing the leading role of the state, it was reflected in the theory of “enslavement and emancipation of classes”, the characterization of the state as a non-estate and non-class body. Civil history became the main subject of Russian historiography. Public school scholars viewed history as a science of learning. They were unanimous in the statement about the ability of the Russian people to develop and in their inclusion “in the family of European peoples.” The Russian historical process, with all its features - historical, physical and moral - followed the laws and “principles of life” common to Western Europe.

Modern historiography includes V.I. as the second generation of representatives of the state school. Sergeevich.

The main approaches to the study of Russian history of Chicherin were shared by A.D. Gradovsky, who is quite famous for his work in the field of history and theory of state and law of Ancient Rus' and European countries. Speaking about representatives of the state school, one cannot fail to note F.I. Leontovich, who studied the legislation on peasants in the 15th-16th centuries, historians of Russian state law I.E. Andreevsky, A.V. Romanovich-Slavatinsky and other ideological inspirers of the state school.

The main subject of research by these scientists was legal and judicial institutions, and, of course, the legislation of the Russian state. They, unlike their predecessors, did not actually touch upon the history of Russia as a whole. Their works are considered within the framework of the evolution of the public school.

Some aspects of the concept of Russian history, formulated by public school scientists, were developed in the works of many historians of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Even today, our contemporaries are turning to them again, since the works of scientists represent invaluable experience that should be taken advantage of.

public school worldview

State School Representatives:

1. Kavelin Konstantin Dmitrievich

Kavelin Konstantin Dmitrievich is a famous thinker, historian, lawyer and public figure. Konstantin Dmitrievich was born in St. Petersburg in 1818. In 1839 he graduated from the Faculty of Law of Moscow University. Initially, Kavelin shared liberal ideas, but later moved away from them and became close to the Slavophiles. Kavelin considered strong autocratic power a necessity. In 1866, he submitted a note to the Tsar “On nihilism and the measures necessary against it.”

In his works “A Look at the Legal Life of Ancient Russia” (1847), “Thoughts and Notes on Russian History” (1866), “A Brief Look at Russian History” (published in 1887), the scientist highlighted main role autocratic state in the life of the people. In his opinion, the Russian state is the highest form of social life in Russia. Autocracy, as Kavelin believed, is a natural form of Russian statehood, generated by the people's ideal. Kavelin supported the theory of “enslavement and emancipation” of classes by the state put forward by B.N. Chicherin.

Kavelin was also one of the creators of the peasant legislation of 1861; he was among the first Russian scientists to study the rural community, proving that its preservation is the basis of the social and economic sustainability of Russia. The destruction of the thousand-year-old customs of the peasant world will lead to the decline of the economy and the fall of the state itself, he believed.

Kavelin saw serfdom as a fairly natural stage in the development of Russian society, as a necessary condition for the existence of a strong central government, without which the Russian state could not withstand the fight against internal enemies. Kavelin admitted that the special role of state power did not allow the “personal principle” to develop. In the 1860s, Kavelin characterized the oprichnina as a policy of preserving the national form of statehood, directed against alien Western Russian and Polish elements introduced by the Lithuanian princes who switched to Russian service.

The scientist was an opponent of private land ownership, arguing that in Russian conditions it would lead to massive impoverishment of peasants. To prevent such a result, he put forward the idea of transferring the land to the peasants for lifelong use with the right of inheritance, but without the possibility of sale. Moreover, the allocation of land should be carried out strictly within the framework of already existing communities, which are, in fact, collective owners of the land.

Kavelin saw the reasons for social inequality in the fact that “people in physical nature, mental and other abilities are not equal to each other from the day they are born.” He pointed out the utopian nature of socialist theories. The abolition of property and inheritance rights, according to Kavelin, is contrary to the “law of freedom.” Kavelin saw the right of property as a guarantee of human freedom. To prevent social unrest, he called on the Russian nobility to abandon class egoism, privileges and isolation. At the same time, the state, according to Kavelin, is obliged to act as a regulator of relations between classes, “to serve as a mediator, to protect and defend the lower classes.” Unlike orthodox Westerners, who saw in the peasant community only an obstacle to economic freedom and progress, Kavelin advocated its preservation, perceiving it as a way to balance private property, the monopoly dominance of which could lead to class enmity and social anarchy.

Recognizing that the reform of 1861 undermined the material well-being of the nobility, Kavelin saw its future not in the artificial preservation of privileges, but in equalizing civil rights with other classes. In the organic and social unity of classes, Kavelin saw the guarantee of “peaceful development through gradual reforms”, making “a revolution of the lower classes against the upper classes impossible.”

In the early 80s, Kavelin came up with a broad reform program that included increasing peasant plots through state subsidies, “allocation of unpopulated state lands,” as well as resettlement policy. In addition to eliminating land shortages, Kavelin considered it necessary to reduce taxes, as well as limit bureaucratic arbitrariness against the peasantry, and end “the illiteracy and helplessness of the village people” by developing public education, which would, in turn, become a support for the educational activities of the state. Kavelin saw the key to Russia’s progress in the joint actions of society and the bureaucracy, in the union of the intelligentsia, which forms the people, and the state, which creates tolerable “external” living conditions for them.

Hoping for the transformative potential of the supreme power, Kavelin also actively advocated the creation of a classless zemstvo, without which, in his opinion, “no good change in the central government of the state” could be expected. Criticizing the arbitrariness of the bureaucracy, Kavelin, however, saw in it also a force that balances various social elements that come into conflict or competition with each other. Kavelin was an ardent opponent of direct government intervention in the economy, since he considered state industry not only unprofitable for the government, but also burdensome for society.

I would also like to note that the originality of the scientist’s political views lay in the fact that, having shown himself to be a supporter of the introduction of the principle of popular representation, however, nevertheless, he tried to give it his own original interpretation, namely to identify the essence and ideas this principle. The goals of popular representation, from the point of view of Konstantin Dmitrievich, were not limited to limiting the power of the autocrat. According to the scientist, conflicts between parliament and the monarch were not at all a necessary consequence of the introduction of elected representation, but simply a concrete experience of European history, which could have been completely avoided.

Konstantin Dmitrievich believed that main function popular representation consists in preventing the dominance of any particular part of state and public life. However, at the same time, Kavelin considered the confrontation between the people (society) and the government unacceptable. They, in his opinion, are just two sides of the same state organism, its two dismembered functions, which in turn should complement each other. It is not the opposition of power to the people, but only their joint action aimed at achieving one goal that will give impetus to the development of the state and law. The interaction of forces, and not their struggle, the differentiation of the functions of the people's body, and not opposing them to each other - this is the task set for all peoples in the future - to achieve interaction between the state and the people. Only when the state and society are in harmony can they embark on a path of development that can bring Russian and other statehood to a fundamentally new level.

According to Kavelin, any changes in the country should occur through peaceful reforms coming from above, and not a revolution destructive for the state and society as a whole, which primarily undermines the natural rights of the individual. Kavelin denied any connection between the revolutionary party in Russia and the genuine, real interests of the people and society as a whole.

2. Chicherin Boris Nikolaevich

I would like to pay attention to one of the theorists and ideological inspirers of the state school, as well as a famous public figure and publicist - Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin. He was born into an old noble family and received a good education at home. In 1849 he graduated from Moscow University with a law degree. T.N. had a fairly large influence on the formation of his worldview and historical views. Granovsky, I.D. Kavelin. During his student years, Chicherin met such people as: A.S. Khomyakov, K.S. Aksakov, read a lot on history: F. Schlesser, B.G. Niebuhr, G. Evers, S.M. Solovyova. Chicherin, like many scientists of that time, thoroughly studied Hegelian philosophy, being carried away by the new worldview, which revealed to him the supreme principles of existence in amazing harmony.

In 1853, Chicherin tried to defend his master's thesis "Regional institutions in Russia in the 17th century." However, despite the high praise of colleagues, including Granovsky, it was not accepted. The dean of the faculty refused the defense, saying that it presented the ancient administration of Russia in too unattractive and negative a manner. Chicherin was able to defend it only in 1857.

In 1861, Boris Nikolaevich was elected professor at Moscow University and began lecturing at the department of public law. It was then that Chicherin became seriously interested in politics and became the leader of the liberal movement in Russia. “Liberalism!” he wrote in 1855. “This is the slogan of every educated and sensible person in Russia.”

His program put forward demands for freedom of conscience, public opinion, freedom of printing, teaching, publicity of all government actions, openness of legal proceedings, since Chicherin saw this as a direct necessity for the development of the state and society.

It was serfdom, according to the scientist, that hampered the development of the Russian state and law.

Despite his passion for liberal ideas, Chicherin associated the possibility of achieving them with the distant future through peaceful reforms and preferred honest autocracy to insolvent representation.

The essence of the state, according to Chicherin, is determined by the following signs and features. According to his concept, the state is “an organization of people’s life, preserved and renewed in a continuous change of generations. The state means a union, a union of an entire people having its own territory, a single law. In it the people become legal entity. It is governed by the supreme power, its goal is the common good." The state is formed as a result of the general will and higher political consciousness of the people, capable of "reasonably and voluntarily submitting to the supreme power and supporting it with all their might." The state does not absorb other unions, but only rises above them as a higher area that dominates the sphere of higher relations.

Boris Nikolaevich considers the essence of a political union in relation to civil society, by which he understands primarily “the set of relations belonging to the private sphere and determined by private law.” The state and civil society are two opposite, but nevertheless “equally necessary elements of human coexistence.”

One way or another, according to the legal concept of the structure of Chicherin’s political union in a state based directly on legal norms arising from human reason, truth and justice, designed to serve as a measure and guide for positive legislation, a person remains free.

Chicherin continued his scientific work, making it the main work of his life. In 1893 he was elected an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. The combination of scientific and socio-political activities was a characteristic feature of Chicherin’s life and work. Modernity and history were interconnected for him and walked next to each other.. “Only the study of the past,” he wrote, “gives us the key to understanding the present, and together with the opportunity to see the future.”

A key place in Chicherin’s professional activity was occupied by works on Russian history. He paid special attention to the issues of the origin and development of the state, the history of legal and social institutions, the relationship between the state and society, power and law. They received coverage in his dissertation, in the works “Review of the historical development of the rural community in Russia”, “Spiritual and contractual letters of the great and appanage princes”, “Slaves and peasants in Russia before the 16th century”, “On popular representation”, etc.

Boris Nikolaevich was one of the first Russian scientists to turn to theoretical problems of politics and sociology.

In understanding the historical process, the scientist primarily relied on the ideas of Hegel’s philosophy of history. The history of humanity for him is the history of the development of the “spirit”, carried out in the individual aspirations of an individual person and in the general norms of social life.

The historian saw the actual historical process as a change of social unions, gradually elevating human society to the establishment of a “moral and legal whole” that reconciles all areas of the spirit—the state. The forms of public unions showed the relationship at one stage or another of the common principle and the personal.

According to Chicherin, three stages in the development of society can be distinguished. The first is patriarchal life. It was based on direct blood relationship.

People were connected by a common origin. With the development of personality, blood ties gradually lost their importance, and social education was destroyed.

The second stage is civil society. It is based on the principles of personal freedom and private law. The patrimonial right of the landowner, or a free contract, or the personal enslavement of one person by another was the basis of social relations. True, “personality in all its contingency, freedom, in all its unbridledness” led “to the dominance of force, inequality, civil strife, anarchy, which undermined the very existence of the union.” This made it necessary to establish a new order - the highest form of social union - the state, which "brings elements striving apart to unity, tames the struggle, puts everyone in his place ... and thus establishes internal peace and order."

“Only in the state can both rational freedom and moral personality develop.”

The third stage is new time.

Chicherin also drew attention to the specifics of natural geographical conditions in the development of Slavic statehood: boundless steppe spaces, the absence of barriers, the monotony of nature, the small population, its dispersion across the plain. It was under the influence of these conditions that the character of the people was formed. Sufficiently favorable living conditions did not cause activity and tension of mental and physical strength, did not contribute to the development of various aspects of the human soul, as well as the development of science and industry. Dispersing in space, the Russian people did not have their own center, which, unfortunately, deprived them of the opportunity to achieve state unity on their own basis.

It is worth noting that the Eastern Slavs did not have such a source of development of legal and civil institutions as Western Europe in the person of Rome. The Slavic people were cut off from ancient civilized society. However, the Russian people, with all the peculiarities of their origin, belonged, Chicherin believed, to the family of European peoples. He was capable of development, of progress.

The scientist argued that significant differences in the history of Western peoples and Russia manifested themselves only in the ways and forms of transition from one historical stage of development to another.

The union of tribes into a union based on their own strengths and activities could not happen among the Slavic people, due to their passive nature Eastern Slavs, as well as an insufficiently developed personal beginning. Property interest was generated by the weakening of family ties. Now each prince sought to increase his power and increase wealth. This, according to Chicherin, is what led to feudal fragmentation and the establishment of the appanage system.

States in both Europe and Russia appeared simultaneously, during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Age. But in Russia this process had its own characteristics, caused by the severity of the contradictions inherent in civil society. Tatar-Mongol yoke Chicherin assigned a key role in the creation of a centralized state. The Golden Horde taught the people obedience and thereby contributed to the establishment of a single, centralized power. As a result, the state was formed from above, and not through the independent efforts of the people.

Chicherin identified three processes in the formation of the state in Rus': bringing the people into a static state, gathering the land and concentrating power in the hands of the prince. Chicherin tracked these processes through various written sources: chronicles, contracts and other documents.

The first, as the scientist argued, were the princes and their squads, then they conquered other nomadic elements. The Moscow princes made a fairly large contribution to this.

The process of collecting lands and changing relations between the princes, which ultimately led to the formation of autocracy and state order, was quite long.

Chicherin, in turn, argued that nowhere, be it in Europe or Asia, and never does the new order appear in life entirely; it gradually breaks through the old norms of life, gradually transforming them.

The formation of state principles in the 15th century. radically changed the community. A “union of people bound by common permanent responsibilities to the state” was created - a state community. Its structure stemmed from “class responsibilities imposed on the landowner... and mainly from strengthening them to places of residence, from the decomposition of taxes per soul.” Thus, Chicherin concluded, the modern community is the fruit of state activity, when “state principles penetrate to the lowest levels of social life.” The community received its modern appearance at the end of the 18th century.

Boris Nikolaevich was one of the first in Russian historiography to consider the development of zemstvo representation in connection with the general course of the historical movement of Russia. His works were highly valued both by his compatriots and abroad. V.O. continued to study the problem. Klyuchevsky. Turning to the current state of these bodies, Chicherin believed that zemstvo councils had disappeared, not due to class strife and fear of monarchs, but simply due to internal insolvency.

Chicherin believed that by uniting the population into strong unions, as well as obliging them to serve the interests of society, the state, in turn, formed the “people” themselves. Only when under the tutelage of the state is an indefinite nationality transformed into a single body, receives a common fatherland, and becomes a people. Both the people and the state each have their own purpose. The people form the basis of the state. The state is the “head and manager”. It evaluates the services rendered by an individual to society and elevates the inner dignity of a person. Only in the state are conditions achieved for the development of reasonable freedom, a moral personality, as well as a society living according to moral standards.

All this, in the end, determined in Chicherin’s concept the special role of the state in Russian life. Strong autocratic power, a guarantee of state unity, was at the top. The state directs social forces, leads the people by the hand, and the people, in turn, blindly obey their guide.

Revealing the laws and general patterns of development and origin of the state, Chicherin pointed out the gradual nature of the processes occurring in history. Having traced the nature of the formation of statehood, he proceeded from the fact that each new stage is a consequence of previous development. With the advent of civil society, blood ties do not disappear completely, but are included in it as one of the constituent elements, only losing their strength and importance over time.

The state, again, does not destroy all elements of civil society.

Chicherin emphasized the complexity and ambiguity of the historical process. The directions change, there are deviations in different directions, but the nature of the movement is the same, because it is based on personal and public interests.

In general, while adhering to the ideas of Hegel’s philosophy of history in his approaches to studying and understanding the past, Chicherin at the same time revealed some of its vulnerable features. This philosophy, he said, has reached the highest limits of speculation, embracing the whole world and all phenomena. She brought them under her point of view, connecting facts with false conclusions determined by the human mind.

So, the main provisions of Chicherin’s historical concept include:

· recognition of the state as the highest form of social development and its defining role in Russian history.

· A feature of the historical development of Russia is the formation of the state from above, its extreme centralization, and the decisive role of the government in the organization of public life.

One way or another, Chicherin gave a theoretical justification and presented a specific development of a number of problems that make up the content of the historical concept of the state school, and this, in turn, influenced the development of historical and legal science as a whole.

3. Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev

Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev - the greatest historian pre-revolutionary Russia. His outstanding contribution to the development of Russian historical ideas was recognized by scientists of various schools and directions. “In the life of a scientist and writer, the main biographical facts are books, the most important events are thoughts. In the history of our science and literature there have been few lives as rich in facts and events as the life of Solovyov,” this is what his student wrote about Solovyov, historian V.O. Klyuchevsky. Indeed, despite his relatively short life, Solovyov left a huge creative legacy - over 300 of his works were published, with a total volume of more than a thousand printed pages. This is a feat of a scientist, which had no equal in Russian historical science either before Solovyov or after his death. His works have firmly entered the treasury of domestic and world historical thought.

The name of Solovyov is known not only to historians, since his 29-volume “History of Russia since Ancient Times” made a great contribution to science. Writing this work was the meaning of the historian’s life. His work remained the subject of study and discussion for a long time, contributing to the development of Russian state theory.

A good friend of V.I. Solovyov. Guerrier wrote: “S.M. Solovyov generally did not like struggle, polemics with false trends in science and public life. Polemics disrupted the correct course of his scientific studies, which became a moral necessity for him.”

Soloviev became widely known among the people in the middle of the 19th century.

Sergei Mikhailovich called the History of the Russian State the greatest poem praising the Slavic state. He emphasized that Karamzin quite accurately reflected the consciousness that “of all the Slavic peoples, the Russian people alone formed a state that not only did not lose its independence, like others, but was enormous, powerful, with a decisive influence on the historical destinies of the world.”

The historian saw the need for scientific history to replace the literary history of the Russian state. This is what prompted him to write a new “History of Russia”, which in turn met all the requirements modern science. Solovyov approached this matter responsibly, fully realizing the importance of this work. However, here he was faced with misunderstanding.

To begin with, he was not satisfied with the lack of a broad philosophical view of history, since he believed that a concept that explains the course of history only by the plans of an individual is not sufficiently substantiated and does not have sufficient grounds to be true.

Analyzing concrete historical material from other positions, Solovyov formulated the anthropological principle of studying and understanding the history of a people: “Science shows us that peoples live, develop according to known laws, pass through certain ages as individual people, like everything living, everything organic...” . Having absorbed the wealth of modern ideas, including Hegel’s “Philosophy of History,” Soloviev came to understand the organic interconnection of historical phenomena.

As a student, Solovyov studied Hegel's philosophical ideas with interest, reflecting on the applicability of this philosophy to Russian history. At that time, Hegel was the idol of Moscow students.

D.L. Kryukov, economist A.I. Chivilev, legal experts P.G. Redky and N.I. Krylov, historian and lawyer K.D. Kavelin, medievalist historian T.N. Granovsky - all of them were ardent admirers of Hegelian philosophy and experts in European historiography.

How then did Hegel’s work influence Sergei Mikhailovich? This question was partly answered by the historian himself: “Of Hegel’s works, I only read the “Philosophy of History”; it made a strong impression on me; for several months I became a Protestant, but things didn’t go further, the religious feeling was rooted too deeply in my soul, and So the idea appeared in me - to study philosophy in order to use its means to establish religion, Christianity, but abstractions were not for me; I was born a historian." This is how a professional choice was made: not philosophy, but science, not the philosophy of history, but the science of history.

Soloviev very soon outgrew his state of enthusiasm for Hegel and his work “Philosophy of History”.

At one time, after reading many works of Western scientists, Solovyov concluded that Western thinkers often neglected Russian history. Moreover, the Russian people were not included among them among the “world-historical” peoples. Solovyov was well aware of the task that at that time faced national Russian thought - the construction of a philosophy of Russian history and thereby the “inclusion” of the philosophy of history in general into its composition. And he has a great influence on the development of Russian history as a science.

Solovyov considered it insufficient to “connect” the Russian people to the number of world-historical people only to identify the significance and specificity of the Russian people in history in comparison with Western European peoples. Another task seemed more important to the historian: explaining the incompleteness and incompleteness of the philosophical and historical view of world history in conditions of ignoring the fate of the Russian and Slavic peoples. He directly saw this as an indispensable condition for successfully understanding the purpose of the history of the Russian people and comparing them with the peoples of Western Europe. The scientist introduced a new element into the philosophy of history, that is, the Russian people themselves.

In 1841, in the seminar of S.P. Shevyrev Solovyov presented his work “A Theosophical View of the History of Russia.” In this early work of his, the most important methodological foundations of the scientist’s historical concept were laid. Many of the thoughts expressed then will be heard in the programmatic works of the mature S.M. Solovyov "Public readings about Peter the Great" (1872) and "Observations on the historical life of peoples" (1868-1876)).

The question of the special quality of the Russian people and the specifics of their historical life among other world-historical peoples in the “Theosophical View” was posed by the scientist within the framework of his idea of two “ages” of national life.

According to Solovyov, any nation has its own religious period - childhood, which is characterized by a low degree of education, unconscious adherence to religious dogmas, as well as blind obedience to spiritual authorities. The second age is the maturity of the people, when science takes the place of religion.

This scientist’s opinion is quite close to the concept of the Slavophiles, which in turn clearly shows us that Solovyov experienced many different influences from different sides. Many years later, the historian, having retained the general structural typology of social development, without abandoning the division of the historical life of the people into two periods, changed only the names of the categories themselves, now calling them “the age of feeling” and “the age of thought.” The dynamic development of the Russian people, according to According to the scientist, Peter the Great caused it.

During a trip abroad in 1842-1844. Solovyov's critical perception of Hegel's work intensified. It was during this period that the historian had the opportunity to become deeply acquainted with the achievements of Western European historical science. At the same time, he basically decided on a methodological point of view. And his initial intuitive feeling turned into a conscious methodological position, the main feature of which is the directly anti-Hegelian orientation of thought.

Soloviev held different views regarding the role of the Russian people in the world-historical process than Hegel.

To substantiate his position, Soloviev compared Russia and Western Europe according to several antitheses:

· "mother nature" for Western Europe - "stepmother nature" for Russia emphasized differences in the specific nature of natural conditions, which explained the difference in the results of ethnogenesis. Unlike the European peoples, the new Asian barbarian peoples were closed and therefore had the opportunity to develop nationality. The East Slavic peoples, unfortunately, did not have such an opportunity.

· In the West, monarchical states were the result of conquest and the forced subjugation of local populations by Germanic tribes. And violence, in accordance with the law of dialectics, gives rise to its opposite - the struggle for freedom and, as a consequence, revolution. Among the Slavs, neither a despotic form of government due to the mixed nature of the population, nor a republic due to the vastness of the territory, nor monarchical power based on conquest could be established. The Slavs themselves came to the idea of the need for power, and, according to Solovyov, this is their merit. As a matter of fact, Russian history, as Solovyov believed, begins with the beginning of Russian statehood, that is, with the establishment of Rurik as a prince among the northern Slavic and Finnish tribes.

Then, having abandoned the Hegelian three-element triad, and in turn put forward a four-element one: East-Antiquity-Western Europe-Russia, Solovyov abandoned the dialectics of the Hegelian form, proposing his own philosophical and historical construction in return.

For Sergei Mikhailovich, peoples have an independent meaning, although different. He saw in the specifics of the historical life of peoples, their religion and forms of statehood a product of real geographical, ethnographic and historical living conditions.

But Soloviev still owes all these thoughts to Hegel. It is obvious that Hegel left a deep mark on the methodological development of Solovyov and in his work.

The exceptional value of the state in the scientist’s views is also referred to Hegel.

The spirit of the Russian people manifested itself in a special attitude towards the state.

The state is a value-significant phenomenon in Russian history, regardless of likes and dislikes. Soloviev believed that the value orientations of the people are not subject to moral condemnation. His task, as a scientist, is to understand them, while in no case allowing modernization.

Nevertheless, Solovyov consciously used the ideas of Hegelian philosophy.

One of these ideas was the concept of Aryan, that is, historical, peoples.

Solovyov pointedly calls the Russian people an Aryan people and classifies them among them; Hegel, in turn, did not support this point of view. Comparing the Slavs with the Germans, Soloviev writes about them as brother tribes of one Indo-European people, defining their position in Europe in Christian times as dominant.

Soloviev considered it incorrect to raise the question of the tribal superiority of any of them. He saw the roots of the differences that occurred as a result of the different directions of movement of the tribes. If the Germans at one time moved from the northeast to the southwest in the region of the Roman Empire, where the foundation of European civilization was already laid at that time, then the Slavs, in turn, on the contrary, began their historical advance to the north-west from the southwest. east into virgin forests, that is, into a space not yet touched by civilization. Therefore, Hegel’s idea about the natural and climatic grounds for excluding countries and peoples in cold or hot climates from the world-historical movement was, of course, rejected by Solovyov and was unacceptable.

Paying attention to the reasons for the differences between Russia and the countries of Western Europe, the historian pointed out that a number of factors, including territories already developed by ancient civilization, stone and mountains, contributed to the rapid establishment in the West of feudal law, private property, rapid settlement, diversity nationalities. Russia, in differences from the West, due to the absence of these same conditions, but having vast spaces, on the contrary, was marked by other signs: Solovyov paid special attention to the reasons for the differences between Russia and the countries of Western Europe, pointing to a number of prerequisites, including territories already developed by ancient civilizations , stone and mountains, which contributed to the rapid establishment of feudal law in the West, the emergence of private property, as well as the rapid settlement and diversity of nationalities. Unlike the West, Russia, due to the absence of these very conditions, despite having vast spaces, took a different path of development, marked by other signs: the mobility of princes, movable property, instability, dispersion of funds, a state of unprecedented size, a squad, perpetual movement.

Solovyov connected the entire course of Russian history with the beginnings of Christianity. From his point of view, moral strength for the people was given by Christianity, the creative role of the state, as well as enlightenment. All the features of Russia's peculiarities named by Solovyov could not, in his opinion, exclude the Russian people from the number of historical ones, or, as following Hegel, he spoke of “Aryan” peoples.

Solovyov’s understanding of law can be characterized not only by a respectful attitude towards the essence of law, but it is also worth highlighting the moral value of law, legal institutions and principles. This position is reflected in his very definition of law in his work “Law and Morality. Essays on Applied Ethics,” according to which law is, first of all, “the lowest limit or some minimum of morality, equally obligatory for everyone.”

For him, natural law is not at all an isolated natural law, historically preceding positive law. Nor does it constitute a moral criterion for the latter, as, for example, with Trubetskoy. Natural law for Solovyov, like Comte, is a formal idea of law, rationally derived from the general principles of philosophy. Natural law and positive law are for him only two different points of view on the same subject.

With all this, natural law embodies the “rational essence of law,” and positive law personifies the historical manifestation of law. The latter is a right obtained in direct dependence on the state of moral consciousness in society and on other historical conditions and aspects. Of course, these conditions predetermine the features of the constant addition of natural law to positive law and vice versa.

Natural law is the algebraic formula into which history substitutes various real values of positive law. Natural law comes down entirely to two factors - freedom and equality, that is, it, in fact, represents the algebraic formula of any law, its rational essence. Moreover, the ethical minimum, which was mentioned earlier, is inherent not only in natural law, but also in positive law.

Thus, in modern Russian historiography, the thesis about the Hegelian character of the philosophical and historical concept of S.M. was first questioned and then began to be revised. Solovyov, established since the withdrawal of M.N. Pokrovsky about the “Hegelian school” in Russian historiography.

Conclusion

After reading and analyzing many works of pre-revolutionary scientists, namely representatives of the State School, as well as familiarizing themselves with biographical data, one can draw some conclusions regarding the political views of thinkers of the 19th century.

Many ideas that were directly promoted by representatives of the State School were reflected not only as scientific works, which are quite useful for study in modern times, but also influenced the formation of Russian statehood and were partially used in Russian legislation.

Using the example of three scientists: Chicherin, Kavelin and Solovyov, as well as their scientific and research activities, we traced what trembled the great minds of the nineteenth century.

I admit that I cannot entirely agree with many aspects of the theoretical views of these representatives of the State School.

However, for a full perception of the history of the Russian state, as well as in order to draw certain conclusions and judgments regarding the state itself and its essence, one should turn to the experience of our predecessors, namely to their works and views, consistently analyzing not only the works themselves, but also without forgetting about historical information. Thus, considering together both the theory and what could or could not get along in practice.

Only in this way is it possible to comprehend everything that the scientists of the past have left for us, as well as to apply all this in practice. Only by turning to the experience of our predecessors will we be able to outline a plan for the development of the state and society as a whole, since their works contain a storehouse of experience and knowledge.

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Introduction

Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin is one of the most powerful and multifaceted Russian thinkers of the second half of the 19th century. He can rightfully be considered the founder of political science in Russia. His “History of Political Doctrines” still remains the most profound study of this issue not only in Russian, but, perhaps, in world science. Chicherin devoted his main works to the development of key ideas of political and philosophical teaching, such as: “On People's Representation”, “Property and the State” in two volumes, and the three-volume “Course of State Science”. Political and philosophical teaching also develops in his research on the history and law of Russia, and it also develops in numerous detailed articles by Chicherin on various issues of current Russian politics.

Both during his life and after his death, the influence of Chicherin’s ideas on Russian society was quite significant, while increased interest in Chicherin and his theoretical heritage invariably arose precisely at turning points in Russian history: this was the case during the era of the Great Reforms of Alexander II, and this was the case on the eve of the 1905 revolution. years, and so it was after the revolutionary events of 1917.

Legacy of B.N. Chicherin is in demand and relevant. This heritage is multifaceted; it becomes the subject of research by specialists from a number of disciplines: history, law, sociology, philosophy, political science and economics. Moreover, even within the same discipline, specialists of very different specializations find their own subject of research. Now Chicherin has begun to be perceived as one of the largest Russian theorists of liberalism, developing the idea of “deep” liberalism, not “superficial”, having very simplified ideas about the nature of society and the state, mainly “economic” with very narrow-minded ideas about man, his values and meanings being.

The basis of the political and philosophical teachings of Boris Chicherin is the idea of the individual, its dignity and its freedom. The entire complex edifice of social sciences, the doctrine of the state, believes Chicherin, should be built on this foundation. The study of his doctrine of the state from this angle today seems extremely important and relevant for both political theory and political practice.

Among the best pre-revolutionary researchers of Chicherin’s work, one should first of all include his closest student and follower I.V. Mikhailovsky. It should also be noted the works of E.N. Trubetskoy, P.I. Novgorodtseva, P.N. Milyukova, B.P. Vysheslavtsev, and after the revolution in emigration, the works of P.B. Struve, G.D. Gurvich, N.O. Lossky, V.V. Zenkovsky. Among domestic researchers, Soviet and Russian, it should be noted V.D. Zorkina, V.A. Kitaeva, R.A. Kireev, G.B. Kieselshteina, V.I. Prilensky, S.S. Sekirinsky, A.N. Medushevsky, V.F. Pustarnakova, V.S. Nersesyants, L.I. Novikov, I.N. Sizemskaya, L.M. Iskra, A.N. Erygina, A.I. Narezhny, A.V. Zakharova, A.V. Polyakova, A.S. Kokoreva, G.S. Krinitsk.

1. The doctrine of “protective liberalism”

Activities of B.N. Chicherin unfolded in the romantic era of the history of Russian liberalism, which he perceived, like many other representatives of the intellectual elite, with great enthusiasm, with faith and hope for deep and radical transformations of the socio-political system of Russia, begun after the Crimean War on the initiative “from above” by the tsar -reformer Alexander II.

Chicherin devoted his entire life to the theoretical justification of the problems of the formation of freedom, the personal principle on Russian soil, in their combination with other eternal principles of social life, with order, with property, with law, with morality, with the state. He plays the role of the founder of the concept of “protective liberalism”, or liberal conservatism, which, in the words of P. Struve, “immediately took on some kind of strong and solid form, harmoniously combining in one person the ideological motives of liberalism and conservatism.”

Freed from the extremes and one-sidedness of liberalism, conservatism and all kinds of socio-political radicalism, “protective liberalism” as a socio-philosophical and political theory should become, according to Chicherin, a banner capable of “uniting around itself people of all spheres, all classes, all directions in solving public problems for the reasonable reform of Russia.”

In almost all his works, Chicherin adheres to the concept of “protective liberalism,” which he never changed, despite a certain evolution of his socio-political views. This concept clearly took shape by the early 60s. He outlined its essence in his work “Different Types of Liberalism” (1862), considering “protective liberalism” in comparison with other varieties of liberalism - street and opposition.

The characteristic features of street liberalism are: unbridled impulses, self-will, intolerance of other people's opinions, personal freedom, indiscriminateness in the choice of means in the fight against one's opponent (lies, slander, violence), irreconcilable hatred of everything that rises above the crowd, intolerance of authorities, equalizing everyone in their ignorance, baseness, vulgarity, etc.

Oppositional liberalism views freedom from purely negative aspects. The pinnacle of his well-being is the abolition of all laws, liberation from all constraints. By denying modernity, he denies the past that produced it. Chicherin considers the main tactical means of oppositional liberalism to be his use of criticism of centralization, bureaucracy, the state, conducting a “smart” argument for the sake of argument, the fight against aristocratic prejudices, a strict division of public life into irreconcilable opposites (poles), preaching - not the slightest contact with power.

Protective liberalism (or liberal conservatism) excludes the extremes of both types of liberalism and represents a synthesis of the principles of freedom with the principles of power and law. In political life his slogan is: “liberal measures and strong power.” The liberal direction, Chicherin explains, “must act by understanding the conditions of power, without becoming systematically hostile towards it, without making unreasonable demands, but preserving and delaying where necessary, and trying to explore the truth through a cool-blooded discussion of issues.”

Chicherin’s doctrine of “protective” liberalism was born not only under the influence of the socio-philosophical thought of D. St. Mill (as V.I. Prilensky points out in his studies), E. Burke, A. Tocqueville and other great liberals and conservatives. The main thing is that it was formed on the basis of the ideas of his early works: “On serfdom” (1856), “On the aristocracy, especially Russian” (1857), “Modern tasks of Russian life” (1857), published in collections of articles " Voices from Russia", published by A.I. Herzen and P.P. Ogarev in London, as well as in the essay “Essays on England and France” (1858). In them, Chicherin not only outlined the essence of his understanding of the program of the new reign, but also substantiated the inseparability of the combination of liberal and conservative principles in it, “understanding the impossibility of changing the image of government in the present, recognizing its goal in the future.”

The liberal principle found its concrete expression in the demands: the abolition of serfdom (the liberation of peasants for a ransom with the land and the establishment of individual rather than communal land ownership); recognition of freedom of human conscience, freedom of individual rights; establishing publicity as a necessary condition for proper development; recognition of public opinion as a spokesman for social needs; non-interference of the state in the economic sphere and free private enterprise; introduction of public proceedings; transition in the future to a limited, representative monarchy.

Chicherin's introduction of the conservative principle into the liberal program was essentially dictated by the conditions of Russian reality itself, the peculiarity of the autocratic system. Since, unlike Western Europe, in Russia there was no strong social base of liberalism, a sufficiently educated society, but the traditional belief in a strong stronghold of state order and enlightened absolutism, capable of leading the people on the path of citizenship and enlightenment, remained, for this reason freedom “cannot be given absolute significance and set as an indispensable condition for any civil development." In other words, in order not to fall into radicalism and resist destructive tendencies that forcefully introduce freedom and new orders, it is necessary, according to Chicherin, to prevent the useless and harmful breakdown of the state and social order, to separate from the narrow reaction that is trying to stop the natural course of things, from striving forward . At the same time, one cannot stubbornly retain what has lost its vitality, but it is necessary to preserve what is a useful element of the social system, for example, religious, moral values or social, political, economic institutions, etc.

In a word, Chicherin, like representatives of the Western European conservative tradition of modern times, starting with E. Burke, de Maistre, A. Tocqueville, considered the “protective” conservative principle to be a serious basis for a social building, especially on Russian soil, which cannot be ignored and destroyed, without falling into “zealous liberalism,” like Herzen’s, “throwing to extremes, furiously pursuing every manifestation of despotism.” Kavelin warned about the need to take into account the importance of the conservative mentality of the Russian public when reforming Russia: “Not being a doctrine,” he wrote, “conservatism is a great force that has to be reckoned with at every step. Our public and people are the greatest inexorable conservatives.”

In the strong conservative element of political power, Chicherin saw the basis of a strong state order, which in turn becomes the most important condition introduction and development of legal freedom. In this understanding of the need for unity of power and legal freedom, according to Chicherin, lies the true meaning of liberalism. In “Essays on England and France,” he wrote: “True liberalism does not consist in denying state principles, its goal should be the establishment of legal freedom in society, in accordance with the conditions of people’s life, and the correct development of freedom is ensured only by the strong development of power.”

Together with Kavelin, he considered the development of absolutism, which established state order, to be a “great and fruitful historical phenomenon,” as was the establishment of free institutions. But unlike them, he not only expressed heartfelt sympathy for freedom and everything that could elevate and ennoble the human personality, but also deeply, comprehensively thought through the ways of establishing freedom and the status of the individual in the social and state structure.

Using state power and its legislative activity as a “rational means” of their establishment, Chicherin determined the extent and boundaries of its strengthening and weakening, taking into account the peculiarities of the Russian autocracy. For example, from the position of “protective” liberalism, Chicherin, if one can call it that, formulated the law of power regulation, i.e. a law that establishes the conditions under which it is necessary to strengthen or weaken power: “The less unity in society, the more difficult it is to connect social elements, the stronger the power should be, and vice versa, the government can relax the reins as society grows stronger, unites and receives ability to act independently."

Concretizing the effect of this socio-political law, Chicherin emphasized that power must be strong in a country with a vast territory, where the differences in estate and class differ in education, position, interests, in the absence of a middle link between them, where parties rush to extremes, where irritability and intolerance dominate, barren consciousness replaces practical activity.

Society especially feels the need for strong power in transitional eras, during periods of heightened passions and fundamental transformations. In such a situation, wrote Chicherin, “the old was collapsing, the new did not have time to get stronger, no one knows what to hold on to. In such times, internal unity, the coordinated action of various social forces is least possible, and therefore there is a need for strong power that could restrain elements drawn apart."

Thus, the combination of two principles (liberal and conservative) in a single doctrine of “protective liberalism”, or liberal conservatism, was carried out for the first time in a theoretically substantiated form by the representative of Russian classical liberalism, Boris Nikolaevich Chicherin. It was in this form that in the 50-60s of the 19th century liberalism was established in its true meaning as a tradition on Russian soil, and conservatism acted as the most important tactical means of its implementation, taking into account the specifics and conditions of Russian statehood and power.

The doctrine of “protective liberalism” was formed during the beginning of the reign of Alexander II, characterized by Chicherin as a new era of “truly human development.” It is connected with the need to reform the autocratic system in order to establish a bourgeois civil society and a hereditary constitutional monarchy in Russia. Therefore, there is every reason to call Chicherin not only a classic of Russian liberalism, but it would be more accurate to indicate his status as a classic of the Russian bourgeois-noble liberal-conservative trend.

In the subsequent years of the second half of the 19th century, Chicherin’s “protective liberalism” and the related problems of personality, property and the state developed and deepened on the basis of the processed vast material of previous socio-philosophical and political thought, the final completion of which was the five-volume “History of Political Doctrines” (1869 -1902) and a number of major philosophical and political works.

2. Chicherin’s doctrine of the state

2.1 The essence of the state

The essence of the state, according to Chicherin, is determined by the following signs and features. According to his concept, the state represents “the organization of people's life, preserved and renewed in a continuous change of generations. The state is a union, a union of an entire people with its own territory, a single law. In it, the people become a legal entity. It is governed by the supreme power, its goal is universal good.” The state is formed as a result of the general will and higher political consciousness of the people, capable of “reasonably and voluntarily submitting to the supreme power and supporting it with all their might.”

The formed union as an organic unity of family, civil, church arises on the basis of natural law connecting personal freedom with human nature. At the same time, freedom is limited to the extent “to what extent it is capable of being combined with an organic principle.” In this sense, the complete coincidence of nationality and statehood cannot necessarily express the law of formation of state life. According to Chicherin, the law of the formation of state life can only be considered innate human rights, which constitute “the ideal of personal freedom, and not the real norm of life,” which is unacceptable for the people.

Therefore, the formation of a state does not coincide with nationality, for “not every people is capable of forming a state out of themselves,” but only those who, firstly, are capable of state life and show respect for the legitimate people, and secondly, who are called to be a historical figure , thirdly, who has acquired independence and has real strength to defend it; fourthly, who has the ability to organize the popular will into a legitimate supreme power.

Chicherin considers the essence of a political union (state) in relation to civil society, by which he understands “the set of relations that belonged to the private sphere and determined by private law.” By contrasting the state with civil society, the liberal Chicherin tries to eliminate all kinds of “foggy ideas” through which some researchers “try to eliminate the independent meaning of a person.”

The state and civil society are two opposite, but “equally necessary elements of human coexistence.” This is a special world of human relations: on the one hand, people are bearers of private relationships, on the other, members of a common spiritual cohabitation, they must always exist without destroying each other. Without the former, independence disappears, and therefore the freedom of the individual; without the latter, unity disappears. The state, as the pinnacle of the social building, based on civil society and dependent on it, reduces all independent individual needs and interests (material, spiritual, scientific) to a higher organic unity.

Chicherin's thoughts about the dependence and support of the state on civil society do not coincide with the Hegelian understanding of the relationship between the state and civil society. According to Hegel, civil society as a sphere of private property and individual interests of corporations, communities, and classes must be subordinated to the interests of the state.

Chicherin, unlike Hegel, is inclined to strengthen the element of the private in the system of these relations, making it, in essence, autonomy, an independent sphere from state power and from political goals. “The true expression of legal principles, without any extraneous admixture, is private or civil law. Here a person is represented as a free, independent person who is assigned a certain area of material relations and who is in certain legal relations with other similar persons. By the very nature of these relations, in this area individualism dominates, here is the main center of human freedom."

This theoretical position of Chicherin was fully consistent general principles liberalism, according to which “the right of the first type (private) was considered the right par excellence.” A. Valitsky drew attention to this feature of the theoretical approach, believing that “the consistent implementation of the principle of logical and axiological priorities of legality over the sphere of politics led Russian liberals to confront any manifestations of legal positivism and, to one degree or another, to the rehabilitation of the basic ideas of natural law. In its essence,” he concludes, “it was something new in the European philosophy of law of that time.”

Thus, according to Chicherin’s legal concept of the structure of a political union, in a state based on legal norms arising from human reason, truth and justice, designed to serve as a measure and guide for positive legislation, a person remains free. Such a state, without transgressing the boundaries of civil society, assumes the responsibilities of ensuring security, protecting the rights and freedoms of the individual and citizen. Its guiding principle public policy there is no desire for the barracks ideals of all-leveling centralization, but for a rationally useful common good. In such a state, suppression of education and associated free-thinking, interference in the area of beliefs, forced assimilation of subject nationalities by the dominant nationality, invasion of property and restriction of the owner’s right to dispose of his property are excluded.

2.2 Evaluation of forms of government

Paying great attention to the characteristics of various forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, mixed form - constitutional monarchy), Chicherin considers their content and direction depending on specific historical conditions and on the state of the people's spirit (consciousness).

When analyzing these forms, Chicherin gives preference to a constitutional monarchy. It was in it, in his opinion, that the ideas of freedom and the ideal of human community were most fully reflected. The mixed form has found its recognition in the history of political thought (Cicero, Machiavelli, Locke, Hegel), therefore Chicherin considered it quite acceptable for Russia, because it best ensures the unity of power and order, it stands outside of private interests, and is more suitable than all forms of government to make major changes. This form arises as a result of a compromise between various political forces in their common desire to limit absolutism, moderate democracy, as the rule of the majority over the minority, and ensure the transition from the class order to the general civil one. By moderating and consolidating various public interests, a constitutional monarchy helps society avoid political cataclysms (revolutions, uprisings, riots).

Characterizing a mixed form of government as the ideal desired for Russia in the future, Chicherin wrote: “The monarchy represents the beginning of power, the people, or their representatives, the beginning of freedom, the aristocratic assembly represents the constancy of law, and all its elements, entering into a common organization, must act in accordance with to achieve a common goal."

Chicherin gives an ambiguous assessment of the democratic form of government. The influence of the ideas of democracy, he believes, is truly enormous; every person in a democratic society is the bearer of a certain share of supreme power, he is politically independent of anyone. In a democracy, space is open to human energy, his mental and physical abilities. Democracy liberates a person: “the servile, the groveling, the cowardly are expelled from the soul.” Participation in government improves the political education of everyone. Pressing problems are discussed by everyone and in the interests of everyone. The government takes care to satisfy all the needs of the people. In a democratic society, “national order” constitutes the “crown of human civil development.” However, democracy, Chicherin believes, only partially expresses the essence of freedom. It manifests itself only in political freedom. Personal freedom is least characteristic of her.

In a democracy, supreme power is given to the least capable section. With the unlimited dominance of political parties, “the state becomes the prey of politicians,” and not of the most educated part of society, removed from power. “Democratic despotism, the unrestrained will of the majority are the result of instability” of all social relations. Such an order, Chicherin concludes, is a fundamental contradiction both with the requirements of the state and with the highest tasks of humanity. Therefore, democracy can nowhere be the ideal of human society... It can only be a transitional stage of historical development.”

In connection with the analysis of the problems of implementing democracy, property rights, freedom, Chicherin also touches on issues of equality and justice. He believed that the very nature of freedom does not provide complete equality; at best, one can demand from it equality of opportunity, to each his own, which in essence presupposes formal equality and actual inequality in material terms, for an equal “material level can only be enjoyed by slaves, and not free people."

Regarding justice, on this issue he follows the Aristotelian formula of distributive and equalizing justice. Justice, although it is associated with the beginning of equality, however, it has its own specificity, reflecting equality in the spirit of God. “What is considered fair,” he writes in “Philosophy of Law,” “is what is equally applied to everyone. This principle follows from the very nature of the human person, all people are rationally free beings, everything is created in the image and likeness of God and, as such, are equal to each other."

Chicherin paid a lot of attention to the problems of realizing political freedom in Russian society by organizing a system of representative government, free institutions, and connecting elected officials with people experienced in public affairs. “Only the development of the organic side of state life,” he wrote, “can give movement to its inorganic elements; political freedom alone can breathe new life into Russian society, fill it with political meaning, eliminate the corrupting influence of newspapers, and finally create an environment in which they can become statesmen."

He proposed to build new system public administration on the following constitutional principles: - reliance on the enlightened aristocratic class - people of higher abilities; - development of state science on a deep theoretical and practical foundation; - increasing the educational level in all spheres of Russian society; - creation of a body for the combined activities of all state forces; - arrangement of judicial and local authorities interacting with public and private activities, with zemstvo institutions; - involving the people in solving public affairs.

Political freedom, according to Chicherin, must have a legal basis and its implementation can only be carried out within the framework of law and justice: “Freedom only becomes a right when it is recognized by law, and the establishment of the law belongs to the state. Therefore, the definition of rights as individuals depends on the state , and the unions included in it. By its nature, it is the supreme union on earth."

Chicherin provides a legal justification for the need for autonomy of the institution of property from the state based on the ideas of natural law, placing legal barriers against the abuse of power by the state in relation to property. He warns that even political revolutions cannot shake society as much as an invasion of its fundamental foundations by the state. Revolutions “touch only the top, leaving unbroken all the countless threads connecting people in their private relationships, but as soon as it comes to property, everything fluctuates...” The owner feels that “they are encroaching on his entire personal world, on his freedom, on his activities, on his past and future. The original elements of social life are disintegrating, all the countless relationships connecting people are being severed at once...” Therefore, Chicherin emphasizes, “the state’s intrusion into the area of property and the restriction of the owner’s right to dispose of his property should always be considered as an evil that, if possible, should be eliminated . An encroachment by the state on the right of property, except in cases of need and for fair compensation, is always violence and untruth." To encroach on the principles of private property "means to undermine freedom at its very root, to destroy the foundations of the great edifice erected by humanity." And since private property is “the ideal of all civil life,” Chicherin draws another conclusion, it “is subject to special protection by the state.”

A great danger to freedom and property, in his opinion, should be expected from socialists, because under socialism these greatest values turn into a ghost, and the state, socializing all means of production (land, capital, enterprises), forcibly suppressing the nature of the individual, “will inevitably cause a negative desire everyone has the maximum use of the public property, that is, to be a dependent. By destroying religious morality, giving rise to the exploitation of the conscientious, the strong by the weak, such a state “turns a person into a voluntary slave of society.”

Every form of government, Chicherin believes, has its advantages and disadvantages, which stem partly from its very form, partly from the way it uses power. However, he completely denies the existence of communism. “Communism,” he writes, “is not capable of becoming not only the final, but even a transitional stage of human society, for the simple reason that a person can never cease to be a free person, that is, an independent center of life and activity. Enslavement of his society is as contrary to his nature as the enslavement of an individual... Communism seems to be a theoretical absurdity, but a practical impossibility. It belongs to the category of private utopias.”

2.4 State and church

Chicherin’s view on the relationship between the state and the church union is interesting. In contrast to Hegel’s interpretation of the state as “the reality of a moral idea,” according to Chicherin, the bearer of morality is the church, and for the state, not being able to influence the conscience of citizens, it is important to have the assistance of the church. Hence the relationship between the state and the church has a “very special character.” The essence of this relationship is twofold. On the one hand, the state promotes the church “as a servant of the interests of the people, and on the other hand, through its assistance, the state enjoys the moral influence of the church on believers. Only with the consent of the church can the state interfere in its internal governance, and not otherwise than through abuse of law.”

3. Evolution of B.N.’s views Chicherina

A careful study of the evolution of B.N.’s views. Chicherin leads to the understanding that common sense, based on a brilliant knowledge of the historical situation and the state of the public spirit of the Russian people, prompted each time the measure of the realization of freedom possible under the given specific historical conditions of Russia. And if we measure by the standards of “more”, “less” or “no” liberalism in the conceptual content of Chicherin’s liberalism, then one can reach the point of absurdity. Chicherin was a strong supporter of reasonable moderation, an opponent of one-sidedness, extremes and momentary rash decisions; he never sought to consider as ripe what was not ripe.

Chicherin understood well that the construction of a new state was fraught with the danger of giving rise to unbridled passions and anarchy of interests, which would immediately lead to the triumph of reaction, “which could destroy not only barely born political freedom, but also young transformations that had not yet had time to take hold in people’s life ". Fortunately, Russia avoided such a crisis, because the “tops” understood this too. According to Chicherin, “the sovereign hand has preserved its own work,” new transformations have become an integral part of people’s life.” In his other works, in particular, in “Property and the State,” he explains the reason for the difficulty of establishing freedom, in comparison with Western Europe, by the fact that in the West the social order is established by itself, but in Russia this is introduced by the state “from above.” Hence, strengthening freedom in a society accustomed only to power, where, moreover, “freedom manifests itself in its first baby babble and takes its first timid steps... is one of the most difficult historical tasks.”

But later, in one of his last works, “Russia on the Eve of the Twentieth Century,” Chicherin, paying great attention to the analysis of the main stages of the development of liberalism in Russia, clearly expressed his constitutionalist position and hostility to autocracy, defining the main task of the twentieth century. He wrote: “Autocratic power has turned into a playground of personal interests of the basest nature... It is not possible to remain with the current short-sighted despotism that paralyzes the national forces... The Russian people must be called to a new life by establishing among them the principles of freedom and rights. Unlimited power, which is the source of all arbitrariness, must give way to a constitutional order based on law... it is necessary that arbitrary power be replaced by power limited by law and furnished with independent institutions. The building erected by Alexander II must be completed; The civil freedom established by him must be consolidated and strengthened by political freedom. Sooner or later, one way or another, this will happen, but it will certainly happen, because it lies in the necessity of things. The force of events will lead irresistibly to this outcome. This is the task of the twentieth century.”

The evolution of Chicherin's views on this and other issues was well known to many adherents and followers of his liberal ideas. In particular, P.B. Struve, who studied Chicherin’s work well. This is what he wrote about him: “At first, a supporter of the overwhelming state power in Russia and its instruments, a defender of autocracy and the class system, at the end of his life he became, at the end of his life, as an idealist finally strengthened in his position and a wise politician, the decisive enemy of the Russian autocracy and class privileges.”

4. Correlation of political views of K.D. Kavelin and B.N. Chicherina

Regardless of various philosophical positions, it is on the problem of the relationship between personality, property and the state that K.D. Kavelin and B.N. Chicherin reveals unity in many ways. For them, the relationship between personality and society, personality and state, law and ethics, social philosophy and politics became the central theme of their research. They solved it deeply from the position of theoretical liberalism.

Despite the fundamental differences in positions on the issue of communal land ownership, both of them are supporters of legal protection, legal regulation, mutual balance of personal and state principles, opposing the anarchic self-will of the individual, on the one hand, and the despotism of the state, on the other. They understood the metaphysical meaning of freedom as the possibility of the spiritual elevation of the individual to an unconditional essence, from the sensual to the supersensible (Chicherin) to the recognition of the decisive role of the individual in human development (Kavelin). Therefore, it is impermissible to treat it as a simple means of comprehension, for any purpose beyond its intended purpose. And if various particular definitions could change depending on theoretical preferences or the political situation, the position about the absolute value of a person always remained its cornerstone.

In defining freedom, Russian liberalism, represented by Kavelin and Chicherin, adopted not only Western ideas, but also supplemented it with the domestic humanistic tradition, which combined the principles of equality and justice, introducing high moral potential into civil society (a society of private interests and equal opportunities).

They educated and prepared the people for political representation, proposing to start reforms with civil society. “Transformations introducing a strong, reasonable and legal order in the country instead of arbitrariness and chaos, by the very essence of the matter, must precede political guarantees,” wrote K.D. Kavelin.

Consistently defending the priority of law, liberals Kavelin and Chicherin associated it with the idea of a strong rule of law state, capable of carrying out the necessary reforms, ensuring order in society. According to their teaching, the state by its nature is a power standing above classes and estates. It is created in order to bring warring forces to agreement, so that the idea of public good prevails over private interests, so that the very pursuit of private interests serves the achievement of public goals.

The state, in their understanding, is the highest form of organization, a kind of “insurance policy” of the nation (Chicherin). But it cannot replace civil society, interfere in the private lives of citizens, or regulate their economic activities. “Like any economic activity, production and accumulation of capital,” Chicherin wrote, “is a private matter, not a state one. As a guardian of law, the state is called upon only to establish conditions for its acquisition that are common to all and to protect from encroachment by others.” So, , the state must guarantee freedom of private property and conditions for entrepreneurial practice, promote the harmonious development of the relationship between the individual, property and the state.

Assessing the present of Russia, Kavelin and Chicherin characterized the government as “autocratic anarchy,” expressing dissatisfaction with the existing order of things, especially the dominance of the centralized bureaucracy. An attempt was made to wrest the monarchy from the “autocratic republic” (Kavelin) from the “corrupting influence of the ruling bureaucracy” (Chicherin).

The conservative element was inherent in the liberal views of Kavelin and Chicherin. It should be borne in mind that Chicherin, for example, connected his main hopes on the path of liberal reforms with the zemstvo movement, with independent work local authorities, and Kavelin, at a certain period, appealed to the self-awareness of the noble class.

Conservatism, as a principle, stands for what exists not in the name of some ideal or principle, but only because there is no better in sight, or it has not become clear how to move to it. The great strength that Kavelin talks about is that the “negative” side of conservatism, being directed at the emerging new, seems to “highlight” this new, thereby contributing to its “clarification and ripening.”

It is interesting that while Chicherin focuses on the protective and strengthening role of conservatism, Kavelin identifies a certain “negative” side in conservatism and directs it towards something “new”, which is thereby not only better understood, but also begins to be perceived as a “need” ". Be that as it may, it is quite obvious that in Russian liberal thought of the 19th century the conservative principle was not only its organic component (which is typical for many similar concepts and which, in the end, is one of the essential features of liberalism in general), but also put forward to one of the most important places in the theory of Russian liberalism. This was especially noticeable at the beginning of the 20th century in the social and philosophical concepts of representatives of the “new liberalism”.

Conclusion

B.N. Chicherin paid much attention in his research to the socio-philosophical and political analysis of the supreme political union - the state, forms of government, problems of the relationship between the state and society, and the implementation of political freedom. Chicherin's philosophical views are original and interesting to study. They are not exclusively “Western” either. The most important aspects of Chicherin’s teaching about religion and morality, their relationship and social significance, about the state as a whole, express the national traditions of Russian philosophy. Cross-cutting in the ethical and legal teachings of B.N. Chicherin's problem of freedom. As a fundamental one, it includes the idea of a person as a bearer of free and creative power, possessing free will.

For a long time B.N. Chicherin was the only prominent Russian scientist who defended the idea of natural law in science. He developed an original natural law concept at the European level. The originality of Chicherin’s concept lies primarily in the systemic interconnectedness of all its elements, and therefore the contradictions between positive and ideal law are eliminated. Civil freedom and political freedom were considered by him as two different, but interdependent forms of individual freedom, and political freedom was assessed by him as a necessary factor in ensuring individual freedom.

In general, the political and legal doctrine of Chicherin, supported by another bourgeois liberal KD. Kavelin, is a specific type of conservative liberalism, the features of which, in contrast to the views of Western European liberals, is the recognition of the historical and moral role of the state in the development and provision of individual freedom. To summarize, we can derive a number of the most important features characterizing Russian liberalism of the 19th century. This:

his lack of a strong social base;

anti-democratic character;

the principle of monarchism;

a strong and pronounced conservative principle - liberalism advocated the preservation of old institutions that have not lost their value and importance to serve society;

confidence in the solid strength of state power;

the absence in the initial period of civil liberties in Russian society, moderate protection of individual rights;

blurring the lines between liberalism and socialism, combining liberalism with democracy by the end of the 19th century.

The features listed above, however, do not exhaust all the differences that were characteristic of Russian liberal thought before the beginning of the 20th century.

Theoretical sources:

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Sections

State school of Russian historiography Kavelin Chicherin. Correlation of political views of K.D.

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Similar documents

Introduction

1. The doctrine of “protective liberalism”

2. Chicherin’s doctrine of the state

2.1 The essence of the state

2.2 Evaluation of forms of government

2.4 State and church

3. Evolution of B.N.’s views Chicherina

4. Correlation of political views of K.D. Kavelin and B.N. Chicherina

Conclusion