Modification of the Principles of Freedom and Equality in Early Twentieth-Century Russian Liberal Thought

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the change in interpretation of the principles of freedom and equality in liberal thought in Russian in the early twentieth century. From the classical negative understanding of freedom as noninterference of the state in a person’s private life, the new liberalism transitioned to a positive interpretation of freedom as the state’s ensuring of conditions for citizens to enjoy equal freedom. The classical liberal interpretation of equality as the absence of various social privileges and restrictions was supplemented by the idea of equality of opportunity. Thus, formal-legal equality was balanced with social equality. With that in mind, this article devotes special attention to the new liberals’ defense of the right to a decent living as a complex of personal social rights, as a rights claim that allows every citizen to demand a minimum of social benefits from the state. This article shows that early-twentieth-century liberals proposed a qualitatively new interpretation of the relationship between the state and the individual, one that affirmed the mutual rights and obligations of the individual and the state and entailed the expansion of the latter’s social functions. The author concludes that early-twentieth-century liberalism substantiated the idea of a legal social state for which implementation has proven the most important task of the current stage of social development.