Features of Party Genesis in the Russian Empire Late 19th — Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

The paper analyzes the primary factors that influenced the formation of political parties in the Russian Empire, determines the conditions and features of political life under which they were born, traces the dynamics of socio-political thought at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The research presents a review of the major literature on the history of political parties at different stages of the development of social sciences. Based on the use of general historical and special historical methods, the authors analyze how the internal policy of the tsarist administration stimulated the formation and development of political views of certain segments of the population, as well as parties of a different spectrum: conservative, liberal and socialist. The study’s result has become the identification of three key features of the process of party genesis in Russia, the origins of which lay in the features of its economic, social and political development in the specified historical period.