Liberalism in Russia
Douglas, William O.
Liberalism in Russia Russian Liberalism, by George Fischer. Harvard University Press. 240 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by William O. Douglas This book is a worthy member of a distinguished list of...
...The Czar was to have the veto power on legislation, full control over the Army and Navy, and the right to dissolve the parliament...
...It called for a limited monarchy of the German, not British, type...
...Russia took those ideas and adapted them to Russian circumstances...
...The intelligentsia, like the gentry, talked always of reform, not revolution...
...The denunciation by Nicholas II of that address and of its "senseless dreams" led to no great upswing in the liberal movement...
...The book treats the development of middle-class influence in Russian reform—a middle class made up of the professions...
...The latter gave the liberals qualified support...
...There are many forces at work...
...Russian socialists developed Utopias that had great impact abroad...
...Banquets were held and resolutions adopted...
...others more insistent...
...The most striking character was the constitutionalist, Pe-trunkevich, who wanted a charter of freedom drafted by a constituent assembly, not imposed from above...
...By and large the intelligentsia took over from the gentry, the latter retreating to apathy or a pro-government position...
...Their strongholds were the universities...
...The Tver Address of 1894 put in familiar terms the liberals' hope of reform granted from above...
...The analysis of the liberal dilemma is clear and striking...
...But the record which Fischer has discovered is a stirring one...
...and the gentry were on the decline...
...Liberalism did not become dynamic or militant...
...But the liberals during the war healed their most serious breaches and united in a demand for a constitution...
...By the fall of 1904, programs for open demands for constitutional reforms were under way...
...The zemstvo service became a medium of political expression for the intelligentsia...
...The span of the book is from the 1860s to the 1905 Revolution...
...The Japanese-Russian War of 1904 divided the liberals...
...Student revolts and their management produced future participants of revolutionary terror...
...Reviewed by William O. Douglas This book is a worthy member of a distinguished list of scholarly works on Russia, all sponsored by the Russian Research Center of Harvard...
...others wished for Russian victory...
...In Russia the socialist movement tended to MAIL THIS COUPON TODAY ! harden...
...In the West, socialist movements were softened by parliamentary concessions...
...Moreover, local self-government, which had been timidly allowed to advance, provided jobs for thousands of the intelligentsia...
...They demanded specific reforms, not total seizure of power...
...It states the problem which still confronts many underdeveloped countries...
...The liberals after 1905 became more powerful than the moderates or the revolutionaries...
...The impact of European socialist thought and action on the Russian mind was great...
...Freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association were demanded...
...The evolution of the Socialists was marked by several deviations from orthodox revolution...
...Appeals were made to Nicholas II, proposing that the reforms emanate from him...
...So was the removal of all class, national, and religious restrictions...
...They were the intelligentsia...
...Vast reforms from the villages on up through the bureaucracy were proposed...
...Here are ideas to ponder before we talk glibly about the power struggle between Communism and liberal forces in other areas of the world...
...In those decades Russian liberalism was in the hands of the gentry...
...But his call was not answered...
...Yet they admired the revolutionary sects and preferred socialism to liberalism...
...The reasons for the decline or subsidence of Russian liberalism are concisely and dramatically related...
...The story is about the rise and fall of liberalism in Russia...
...The manner in which the lower intelligentsia became a Third Force between revolutionary socialism and liberalism is skillfully told...
...Other proposals for reforms were made by the liberals, including universal suffrage and separation of church and state...
...and they performed much the role of reform as the business middle class did in parts of the West...
...The lower intelligentsia that were prosperous were gradualists...
...Professional associations formed by doctors and lawyers became the haven of the intelligentsia...
...The liberals' diagnosis of the ills of the autocracy is an interesting part of the book...
...They became the headquarters for opposition to the government and debates on current issues...
...Their cause went down with them...
...parliamentary politics were not open to it...
...There was the ever-present line between liberals and the lower intelligentsia represented by Lenin and the Bolsheviks...
...The book is more than an autopsy of Russian constitutional government...
...Many became convinced that revolution was the only road to salvation...
...Other congresses followed...
...It had no labor element in it...
...Some demands were tepid...
...Lawyers, economists, doctors, teachers, agronomists, engineers made up this middle class...
...The zemstvo congress convened in November, 1904...
...The liberals of the gentry were thus left to the process of trying to cajole concessions out of an autocratic state...
...The liberals drafted a constitution...
...Some hoped for the decisive defeat of Russia...
Vol. 22 • May 1958 • No. 5
