THE LIBERAL CONCEPT OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Abstract

Historical science in Russia was formed and developed under the influence of European socio-political thought, in which liberalism was understood as an ideology, socio-political movement, a set of democratic institutions, procedures and principles of governance. Liberal historians searched for interrelations between socio-political and economic aspects of historical development, and paid attention to the need to study state, political and cultural history. In line with the liberal paradigm, the stages of human history are considered from the position of priority of personal development, ensuring its individual freedoms, and Russia, as a potentially European country, with a catch-up type of development. A liberal view of history presupposes the presence of intellectual polyphony, competition of conceptual explanations. To represent the liberal version of Russian history, the article uses the cognitive capabilities of several concepts existing in the modern historiographic space: «patrimonial state», «totalitarianism», «socio-cultural split», «Russian system», «distribution economy», «catching up development, backwardness», «servile and contractual Russia», «non-modern country». Based on them, a liberal interpretation of the content of various stages of Russian history is presented.