Liberalism in Russia: history of the genesis of national liberal tradition

The article examines the stages of formation of Russian liberal tradition from the late 18th century to the 1850s and 1860s. The author defends the «political» version of the genesis of Russian liberalism not only as an intellectual phenomenon, but also as a complex program of adaptation of classical liberal values to the adverse conditions of autocratic Russia. Kavelin and Chicherin were the recognized leaders and founders of national liberal tradition. However, there was also a second line of early Russian liberals such as Annenkov, Babst, Botkin, Druzhinin, Korsch, who formulated political, economic and socio-cultural postulates of the initial liberal doctrine in Russia. The phenomenon of early Russian liberalism includes not only an apology of classical liberal values, such as freedom, individualism, and property, but also elements of conservative axiology - monarchism, elitism, etatism, connected with the adaptation of well-known European ideas to Russia's political conditions of the mid-19* century. The author considers early Russian liberalism as a specific historical narrative, in which self-sufficient academic interpretive models are constructed.