On the concept of the people in the texts of Yu. F. Samarin

Yuriy Fedorovich Samarin is one of the key figures in the history of Slavophile political thought. In turn, for Slavophilism, one of the key concepts is the concept of people. This article analyzes the semantic content of the concept “people” in Samarin’s texts dated 1840-1860s i.e, in correspondence, draft notes and articles published during his life. The concept “people” is very controversial due to a number of circumstances. Firstly, the general intertwining of the “substantial” and empirical understanding of the people. Secondly, attempts to combine the understanding of the people in the mainstream of political theory as the bearer of sovereignty and “people” in the meaning of “ordinary people”, along with “other classes”, thereby being excluded from the “political body”. Moreover, contradictions of the theoretical plan are also found at the level of the political interpretation of the “people” / “society” dichotomy, where the latter is understood as “people” taken in the aspect of “self-awareness”, while “society”, as consisting of “personalities”, is together with the “people” the bearer of the “nationality”, but it is not the “people” and, therefore, within the framework of the problem of “national sovereignty” it is conceptually problematic to be able to form a “national body”, speaking more likely as its representative and giving rise to the duality of the representatives, represented by the “king” and “society”. At the same time, it is demonstrated that the combination of the substantialist and empirical interpretations of the “people” makes Samarin sensitive to the objectivizing, enlightening discourse and provides a resource for interpreting the empirical “people” in the categories of subjectivity.