Studying the History of Political and Legal Doctrines in Russian Jurisprudence in the 19th — Early 20th Century: Traditions, Directions, and Stages

Abstract

The paper attempts to reflect the origin of a specific branch of scientific knowledge — the history of political and legal doctrines. The subject field of this science and discipline includes many problems, the main of which, no doubt, is the understanding of the phenomenon of law and the state, which are closely related to other institutions. Nevertheless, it is the state and law that ultimately determine their character. This is a kind of tradition laid down by Western legal science that was strongly influenced by pre-revolutionary jurisprudence. Russian lawyers, many of whom continued their studies at Western universities as part of the "preparation for professorship" procedure, mostly followed the approaches developed there. This concerned both ontological and epistemological aspects.The author shows the difference between political and legal doctrines of the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the century. The 1860s reforms served as a kind of impetus for their development. In addition, in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century pre-revolutionary legal science moved to a new, fundamentally different scientific level of studying political and legal institutions.There is another significant point. The problem is that, in fact, the historiography of this discipline and science has remained outside the framework of the history of political and legal doctrines. This paper is an attempt to fill this gap to some extent.The author notes that the relevance of the history of political and legal doctrines arises during a period of intense political life, when stable social groups (strata, classes) with different political, social and legal ideals are formed. This situation developed in Russia in the early 20th century.