The liberal legal thought and the “white” lawyers

Introduction: the ideas of liberal democracy played an enormous role in the development of Russian legal science of the late XIX - early XX century, legal concepts based on these ideas were laid into the foundation of post-soviet law schools, and therefore the author's goal is to identify the main directions of development liberal democratic legal thought among anti-Bolshevik jurists. Methods: the methodological basis of this study is a set of methods of scientific knowledge, among which the main place is occupied by the methods of historicism, comparison, analysis, and comparative-legal. Results: in the course of the work, the author touched upon the legal views of representatives of liberal democracy, such as P. Vinogradov, G. Novotorzhsky, F. Kokoshkin, who allowed assessing the dynamics and trends of development of legal thought at different stages: pre-revolutionary (until 1917), post-revolutionary (period of the Civil War), emigration (after 1920). At the same time, the author focuses on the two most important areas in liberal democratic legal thought in Russia: the forging of the legal foundations of individualism among the masses and the balance of ideas between the rule of law and legal state. Conclusions: as a result of the study, ideas of representatives of liberal-democratic legal thought were identified for the development of Russian statehood, whose implementation was interrupted after the October Revolution of 1917, and Russian jurisprudence was able to return to these ideas only from the 1990s, borrowing many legal concepts to become modern statehood and legal system.