RUSSIAN CONSERVATORS AND THE PEASANT ISSUE AT THE LATE XVIII - FIRST QUARTER OF XIX CENTURIES: STATING OF THE PROBLEM

Abstract

This article is devoted to a rather complex problem, the place of the peasant issue in the mindset and specific actions of conservative thinkers, representatives of the ruling noble class of the Russian empire at the end of the XVIII - first quarter of the XIX centuries. It gives the main characteristics of the most conservative trend in historiography and outlines its features in Russia in this period. The paper also touches on some understudied questions in particular the problem of the proportion of attitudes by representatives of conservatism and the so-called «liberalism» and «noble revolutionaries» to peasant emancipation and easing-off serfdom in Russia. To solve it, we use extensive materials of the noblemen projects of this period for solving the peasant issue, published by one of the authors of the article over the past two decades and only partially used in the literature. The authors come to the conclusion about the similarity of views of a noble ideologues of different directions of these three decades, alike in the pre-reform period, in relation to solutions of the peasant issue as the most important problem of social and political life in Russia.

Keywords

• peasant issue
• serfdom
• conservatism
• liberalism
• autocracy