Chapter 5 - Conversations with Western Ideas I

Summary

Chapter 5 discusses the work of two important neo-idealist theorists, Pavel Novgorodtsev and Bogdan Kistiakovskii, who stand out for their concern with the ongoing tensions within liberal history and theory, and their desire to place the experiences of Russia’s liberal movement in a broader historical context. In the aftermath of 1905, Novgorodtsev wrote two book-length studies explicitly concerned with the history of liberalism, while a number of Kistiakovskii’s long articles, including ‘In Defense of Law’ (1909), demonstrate the fluidity of the concept of liberalism. In the period under consideration, these thinkers, who had been intimately involved in elaborating a legal philosophy applicable to Russia, now distanced themselves from an optimistic theory of historical change, in favour of a much more nuanced view. Their respective intellectual trajectories demonstrate the value of their attempt to learn from Western liberal history, while simultaneously illustrating some of the difficulties they had in using its lessons for Russia.