I call death, I can't look anymore, How a worthy husband perishes in poverty, And the villain lives in beauty and beauty;
How the trust of pure souls tramples on;
How chastity is threatened with shame, How honors are given to scoundrels, As power falls before the insolent gaze, How the rogue triumphs everywhere in life;
How arbitrariness mocks at art, How thoughtlessness rules the mind, How agonizingly languishes in the clutches of evil
Everything that we call good …
W. Shakespeare. Sonnet 66th
History of Russian liberalism. There were two articles devoted to the history of Russian liberalism. There will be nothing about antiquity and everything Western in this cycle, although one cannot do without some explanatory references. The material will be written according to the plan, according to the stages of development of the historical process in Russia. We will not get ahead of ourselves. Therefore, statements about the liberals of Dostoevsky and "Lenin on liberalism" - all this is still ahead. Will you get a large volume? Yes! But what can you do … Although the material is presented in an extremely chewed form, as the comments show, for the perception of a number of VO readers it turned out to be rather difficult. Some of the commentators on liberalism have denied even the right to be called an ideology, that's how! Therefore, let's once again remember that haste is good only when catching insects (we will leave the rest of the life examples suggested to the author by the readers of VO in the comments for one-on-one conversations), and we will just read on.
Let us recall that the "Declaration of Natural, Civil and Political Human Rights" (adopted by the deputies of the States General on August 24, 1789) stated that "the purpose of any association of people in society is to protect the natural, civil and political rights of man; these rights are at the heart of the social contract; their recognition and proclamation must precede the constitution, which guarantees their implementation …”And then the following was written:
Article 1.
People are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social differences can only be based on the common good.
Article 2.
The goal of any political union is to ensure the natural and inalienable human rights. These are freedom, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
Article 3.
The nation is the source of sovereign power. No institution, no individual can wield power that does not explicitly come from the nation.
Article 4.
Freedom consists in the ability to do everything that does not harm another: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each person is limited only by those limits that ensure other members of society enjoy the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.
Article 5.
The law has the right to prohibit only actions harmful to society. Anything that is not prohibited by law is permissible, and no one can be forced to do what is not prescribed by law.
Article 6.
The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to participate personally or through their representatives in its creation. It should be the same for everyone, whether it guards or punishes. All citizens are equal before him and therefore have equal access to all posts, public offices and occupations according to their abilities and without any other distinctions, except those due to their virtues and abilities.
Article 7.
No one can be charged, detained or imprisoned other than in the cases provided for by the law and in the forms prescribed by it. Anyone who asks for, gives, executes, or compels to carry out arbitrary orders is subject to punishment; but every citizen, summoned or detained by virtue of the law, must obey implicitly: in case of resistance, he is responsible.
Article 8.
The law should only establish penalties that are strictly and indisputably necessary; no one can be punished otherwise than by virtue of a law adopted and promulgated before the commission of an offense and duly applied.
Article 9.
Since everyone is presumed innocent until his guilt is established, in cases where it is deemed necessary to arrest a person, any unnecessarily harsh measures that are not necessary must be strictly suppressed by law.
Article 10.
No one should be oppressed for their views, even religious ones, provided that their expression does not violate the public order established by law.
Article 11.
Free expression of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious human rights; therefore, every citizen can freely express himself, write, publish, being responsible only for the abuse of this freedom in cases stipulated by law.
Article 12.
State power is needed to guarantee human and civil rights; it is created in the interests of all, and not for the personal benefit of those to whom it is entrusted.
Article 13.
General contributions are required for the upkeep of the military and for management costs; they should be equally distributed among all citizens according to their capabilities.
Article 14.
All citizens have the right to establish themselves or through their representatives the need for state taxation, voluntarily agree to its collection, monitor its spending and determine its share, the basis, procedure and duration of collection.
Article 15.
The company has the right to demand from any official a report on its activities.
Article 16.
A society where rights are not guaranteed and where there is no separation of powers has no constitution.
Article 17.
Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one can be deprived of it except in the case of a clear social necessity established by law and subject to just and prior compensation.
And what is this, if not a clearly formulated and structured ideology, moreover, also declared by the people's representatives?
By the way, someone wrote in the comments that the revolution preserved the slavery of blacks in France. In fact, it was abolished in 1794 (David B. Gaspar, David P. Geggus, A Turbulent time: the French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, 1997, p. 60) both in the country and in all its overseas possessions * … By the way, in Russia in 1797, the "Manifesto on the three-day corvee" of April 5, 1797 of Emperor Paul I, for the first time since the establishment of the institution of serfdom in Russia, legally limited peasant labor in favor of the court and the state, as well as the landowners, by three days a week and strictly forbade landlords to force peasants to work on Sunday. That is, the global trend towards softening of morals is obvious in this case as well.
It is clear that the "Manifesto" had an important religious and, above all, socio-economic significance, as it contributed to the development of the peasant economy. After all, it directly emphasized that the peasants should not idle around for the three remaining working days, but work for their own interests. By the way, this was another reason for the dislike of the subjects of Pavel: he climbed into the pocket of his subjects, but who would like it?
Well, the provisions of the "Declaration …" became the basis for all liberals of that era, including, of course, the provisions of the previously adopted US Constitution of 1787.
However, the horrors of Thermidor, and then the dictatorship of Napoleon, showed the Russian nobility that the road to hell was laid out with good intentions, and very often after the declaration of freedom, rivers of blood first spill, and then everything returns to normal.
And, of course, the young emperor Alexander I, who succeeded his murdered father on the throne, also read the "Declaration …". Nevertheless, his heart was by no means hardened, it is not for nothing that his reign is rightfully considered the period of the greatest flowering of the ideas of liberalism among the Russian nobility.
It's funny that, being the first nobleman of Russia, Emperor Alexander was at the same time a fully convinced supporter of all the basic principles of liberalism. And all because his educator was a citizen of the republican Switzerland F. S. Lagarpe, who managed to prove to his student that the era of monarchs endowed with absolute power was over. Laharpe convinced the young heir to the throne that Russia could well avoid the bloody chaos that the French Revolution brought to Europe, only if the initiative to carry out two major reforms, that is, the abolition of serfdom and the granting of a constitution to the country, would be in the hands of an enlightened and a liberal-minded monarch. But at the same time, Laharpe warned Alexander that he should not expect that all the Russian nobility would support him on the path of reforms. The majority, he said, would not accept the abolition of serfdom, since they would defend their economic well-being. Therefore, one should rely on a minority - like-minded people close to the throne of the sovereign. And also not to give up autocratic rule in any way, but on the contrary, to use all its power to reform the country, starting with the enlightenment of the people, because the dark and illiterate people are afraid of everything new.
Having become emperor, Alexander Pavlovich did just that: he surrounded the throne with his associates. Already in 1801, practically all the top government posts were occupied by supporters of British constitutionalism, including Chancellor A. R. Vorontsov, then his brother, who had been ambassador to London for many years, S. R. Vorontsov; the famous admirals N. S. Mordvinov and P. V. Chichagov; and, of course, M. M. Speransky, who held the post of Secretary of State. Although many of them made their careers under Catherine II, their worldview was greatly changed by the French Revolution. They began to fear that similar shocks may well befall Russia. After all, we had a Pugachev revolt under the same Catherine? And they were supporters of reforms, but at the same time they rejected the revolution as a means of changing society, believing that it leads to anarchy, and ultimately to the establishment of a dictatorship. So, for example, the same S. R. Vorontsov wrote about the reign of Emperor Paul I, who seemed to him a real tyrant:
Who does not wish that the terrible tyranny of the past reign could never be restored in our country? But one cannot just jump straight from slavery to freedom without falling into anarchy, which is worse than slavery.
NS Mordvinov was a “noteworthy admiral”. He studied naval business in England, and, as the biographer wrote about him, "was imbued there … with respect for the institutions of this country." He was a supporter of Adam Smith and his doctrine of economic freedom. In 1810, he took up the high post of chairman of the Department of State Economy in the State Council and first of all began to fight for the freedom of private enterprise in Russia. He wrote to the emperor that property "is the first stone", without which and without the rights protecting it, "there is no need for anybody either in laws, or in the fatherland, or in the state."
In his opinion, the introduction of the constitution should have been preceded by the abolition of serfdom, since the people who have lived for centuries without civil freedom, having received it at the will of the ruler, will not be able to use it for themselves and society for the good, that it is possible to grant freedom by decree,but one cannot teach freedom by decree.
All doubts, the shadow of the murdered father stood behind the back of Alexander I and he could not help but be afraid to share his fate. Therefore, reform projects were developed in a narrow circle of confidants and secretly from the bulk of the nobility, so that contemporaries even gave him the name of the Secret Committee. However, the beginning of the reforms was prevented by the war with Napoleon, which began in 1805. Another factor was the resistance of the top of the nobility, who in every possible way opposed the novelty.
Meanwhile, Russia had only one step left before the adoption of the constitution. M. M. Speransky developed a plan for constitutional reform and presented to the emperor already in 1809, and a year later the State Council was established, which, according to Speransky's plan, was to become the upper chamber in the Russian parliament. But the conservatives at the throne, and there were a lot of them there too, frightened Alexander with a conspiracy, Speransky was credited with espionage in favor of Napoleon, and the whole "reform" ended with the emperor sending his secretary-reformer into exile until better times, which, however, did not did not come until 1825.
What is the main reason for such an inconsistent behavior of Emperor Alexander I? And the fact is that both he and his associates sacredly observed the most important position of liberalism, which consisted in respect for any private property. It turned out that if the land of the nobles is their property, and the peasants are attached to this land, then even by the will of the emperor, it is, in fact, impossible to take the land away from them, because to do so would mean encroaching on the economic foundation of liberalism itself! It was a contradiction, which they never managed to get out of.
