L.N. Tolstoy and V.S. Solovyov as the Inspirers of the New Generation of Russian Liberals at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

Abstract

Abstract. On the basis of the publications, correspondence and memoirs of Russian liberals at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, the author of the article examines the problem of the ideological infl uence of Leo Tolstoy and Vladimir Solovyov on the younger generation of politicians who played a decisive role in the transformation and overthrow of the “old order”. He comes to the conclusion that the idea of the possibility of creating a new world, so characteristic of the Silver Age, was also fully manifested in the political sphere. At that, the Russian forerunners of this perception were precisely L.N. Tolstoy and V.S. Solovyov. The young liberal politicians of the turn of the century countered the offi cial ideology with the ideas of panmoralism and individual rights, borrowed in the works of these two thinkers. Tolstoy’s teaching inspired primarily with the call to overthrow offi cial idols. V.S. Solovyov was interesting for them due to his idea of equal value and interconnection of an individual and society. Though Solovyov was not an ideologue of social liberalism, the infl uence of Solovyov’s thought on the liberation movement turned out to be very serious.