A. A. Kireev as a Social Analyst

The article examines the legacy of A. A. Kireev as a social analyst, primarily on the issue of the need to create a national representative body. A. A. Kireev proposed an alternative (Slavophile) project for reforming the political and social system of the Russian Empire — not by artificially borrowing Western institutions that destroyed the state and corrupted the people, making inevitable revolution under the leadership of agents of the West, but by returning to the pre- Petrine “people’s monarchy”, which could have really prevented this. This project could not be implemented, even despite the actual support of the Sovereign, due to the total blocking of the then “political class”, the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia. It is shown that A. A. Kireev himself, as the bearer of this project, also shared some obvious flaws of intellectual thinking, which did not contribute to the success of its implementation.