Intellectual Constructs and Political Issues

Abstract

essays in this section introduce us to three authors of liberal persuasion whose works touch on Russia's political development and, at least by implication, on meaning of citizenship in Politics, however, was not their central concern: for Vladimir Gessen, it was law and legal theory; for Evgenii Trubetskoi, spiritual renewal; and for Boris Nolde, law and functioning and history of Russian state. One is struck by diversity of their interests, subject matter, and temperament. Indeed, on basis of these articles, it seems as if they are inhabiting different countries and intellectual worlds. question of citizenship is central only to writings of Gessen. It is peripheral to major themes elaborated by Trubetskoi and Nolde. Randall Poole's analysis of thought of Evgenii Trubetskoi contains only one mention of word citizen, toward end (233), where it has somewhat pejorative connotations. evolution of Boris Nolde's political ideas, traced by Peter Holquist, reveals no special interest in subject, though Holquist discusses implications for citizenship of Nolde's ideas of human and federalism. Nonetheless, all three articles reflect on question of citizenship, if only by omission. Trubetskoi's progressive theology and Nolde's progressive statism overshadow question of citizenship. They envision transformations in Russian institutions and political culture that might enable liberal norms to prevail, but questions of individual do not detain them. Both Gessen and Trubetskoi suggest a utopianism and reliance on philosophical schemes characteristic of Russian intelligentsia, though both reject violent solutions and positivism characteristic of intelligentsia. Nolde advances idealized conception of an enlightened bureaucracy that had motivated Russian reformers since reign of Nicholas I (1825-55). All three viewpoints find grounds for hope in intellectual constructs that have little basis in institutional realities of early 20th-century Russia, and it is this absence in writings of thinkers of extraordinary intelligence and erudition that lends their thought both an evocative power and an air of pathos. This pathos comes out with special force in Eric Lohr's article, The Ideal Citizen and Real Subject in Late Imperial Russia. Lohr begins by providing an astute and helpful discussion of principal concepts of citizenship in recent historical writings on prerevolutionary first of these--elaborated by Dov Iaroshevski, Mikhail Dolbilov, and Yanni Kotsonis--bases citizenship primarily on obligations citizen owes to and is expressed by term grazhdanstvennost'. Liberals, in contrast, entertained a vision of citizenship as universalized and extended and immunities from state (177), and this was conception that Vladimir Gessen formulated in his work of 1909. But Gessen did not reject existing laws or institutions. He was torn ... between seemingly antagonistic aims: promotion of rule of existing law, and promotion of his idealistic variant of citizenship rights (183). Gessen's respect for existing law derived from works of positivist jurists, especially N. M. Korkunov, and their promotion of the consistency of law and acceptance of legal order by subjects of state (183). Russian had evolved as a legal entity encouraging respect for law, a view set forth in Gessen's Administrativnoe pravo, published in 1903. But Gessen and other liberals also criticized Korkunov's theory for its validation of power of autocrat over his subjects. He sought basis for a critical legal posture in Kant's conception of universal and transcendent grounds of natural rights. From works of Leon Petrazycki, he derived notion that citizens would develop an internal consciousness of natural right. …