Невыученные уроки истории сквозь призму биографии Валериана Осинского – человека и революционера

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The article is a review of the monograph by historian O.A. Milevsky on the ideology of Russian political terror by revolutionary populist Valerian Andreevich Osinsky. Based on a thorough historiographical analysis, it is shown that the book is the first special comprehensive study of the life path of Valerian Osinsky in world historical science. The non-trivial title of the monograph, "Steps to the Scaffold", and the competent structural composition of the book are emphasized. The methodological basis of the monographic research is analyzed and its interdisciplinary nature is shown. Special attention is paid to the productivity of the psychohistorical concepts of Eric Erickson and Lloyd De Moze. Using the example of the hero of the monograph in four chapters-"steps", the author consistently analyzes the typical and specific ways of formation of the Russian youth of the 1870s, which turn it into an irreconcilable opposition to the autocratic regime. The main attention is paid to the generational conflict between the "fathers", the highest personification of which was the state, and the "children", that is, the radical youth. This conflict is shown as a reflection of the contradictions of two eras: the outgoing and the upcoming. The new data presented in the monograph once again emphasize the fact of uncompromising confrontation between the government and society in post-reform Russia. Attention is drawn to the fact that in Osinsky's life, as if in a mirror, the moral problems of the correlation of the purpose and means of political action were reflected in the absence of dialogue between the warring parties. When studying the activities of the Executive Committee of the Russian Social Revolutionary Party created by Valerian Osinsky, it is noted that the author raised a fundamental and urgent question about the permissibility of political violence in the struggle against the authorities in the absence of legal opportunities for citizens to protect human rights against administrative arbitrariness. Based on the biography of Osinsky presented in the monograph, the cruel lessons of history that have not yet been learned by Russian society are formulated.