The Practice of Russian Conservatism of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries

Abstract

Russian conservatism as a current social thought, consistently turned into political action is formed at the turn of the XVIII-XIX centuries. The goal of its constant aspirations and efforts was creative protection that meant adaptation, modernization, development of the historical Russian autocracy as a response to the liberal-egalitarian challenges of the time. N.M. Karamzin, who went through the accumulation, comprehension and generalization of the empirics of domestic historical experience, developed a system of apology for an autocratic monarchy, which, combined with the atmosphere of the patriotic upsurge of 1812, led to the abolition of the liberal political agenda initiated by Alexander I. The era of Nicholas I was the longest experience of a stable and progressive conservative domestic and foreign policy that ended with the death of her symbol and realizer because of the accumulated contradictions, mistakes and omissions that destroyed her prestige in Russian public opinion. The policy of the liberation reforms of Alexander II in the short term strengthened the autocracy, but in the long term generated social and political dynamism that bore the constant threat of its fall with catastrophic consequences for Russia as a whole. The conservative turn of Alexander III was an imperfect attempt, without losing the prospect of economic progress and the consolidation of the Russian great power in the rapidly changing world of modernity, to take the path of long-term sociopolitical stabilization. After the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which resulted from both the grave strategic mistake of Nicholas II and the uncorrected systemic errors of his predecessors, the discrediting of the autocracy took an avalanche character.