Alexandr Druzhinin, a hardworking esthete and a “Book mouse”

The paper explores the intellectual heritage and biography of Alexander Druzhinin as a representative of early Russian liberalism. The author identifies the features of initial Russian liberal concept through studying how the liberals perceived the role of aesthetic views in social construction. Druzhinin was one of the creators of the early liberal concept formed in the second half of the 1850s and in the 1860s. He made the greatest contribution to the elaboration of aesthetic part of early liberal program by creating the domestic version of «pure art» theory. He repeatedly advocated the assimilation of its main provisions as a precondition for positive reception of European liberal experience in Russia.