People's monarchical initiative in the views of the conservatives of the 1880s (on the history of the Abyssinian expedition of N. I. Ashinov)

The article is focused on the analysis of views of the Russian conservatives who considered “common people” as the main support of autocracy and waited for the manifestation of people’s monarchical initiative in the form of certain enterprise or a concrete direction of public activity. Some conservatives in 1880s perceived the projects of N. I. Ashinov (1856-1902) who planned to create an “Abyssinian Cossack host” on the territory of Ethiopia as a form of such an enterprise. Skillfully playing on the sentiments of a conservative society, Ashinov got support for his plans. The initiative of the “free Cossack”, based on fantastic speculation, ended in failure, but it did not undermine the faith of the conservatives in the people’s monarchical initiative. Since the 1880s, the search for carriers of such an initiative has become constant.