Ideas for Transforming the State Structure of the Russian Empire During the Reign of Alexander I (Dedicated to the 200th Anniversary of the Decembrist Revolt of 1825)

Russian society associated the beginning of the reign of Alexander I with political, economic and social reforms in the state. Serfdom, restrictions of civil liberties, the need for structural changes in the state administration, the formation of constitutionalism and popular representation – all these issues were acute and needed to be addressed. However, the hopes for fundamental changes in the state were not met. The ideas of natural law of the Enlightenment, the Great French Revolution, and Russia’s victory in the Patriotic War of 1812 contributed to the emergence of secret organizations, the most famous of which were the Southern and Northern Societies. The main concepts of the transformation of the Russian Empire were set out in the program documents of the leaders of these societies – “Russkaya Pravda” (“Russian Truth”) by P. Pestel and “Constitution” by N. Muravyov. They proposed two variants of political structure: republic (P. Pestel) and constitutional monarchy (N. Muravyov). Purpose: to analyze the ideas of “revolution from above”, reform proposals for the modernization of the country at different stages of the reign of Alexander I as factors that largely predetermined the ideas of the Decembrists and their followers. Methods: theoretical (dialectical logic), empirical (comparisons, descriptions), specific scientific (historical-legal). Results: the study identifies two directions of political and legal thought during the reign of Alexander I: governmental (“revolution from above”) and non-governmental (noble-liberal, revolutionary-noble).