Books in the History of the Ideological and Creative SelfDetermination of the Russian Enlightener Yakov Abramov (Based on Archival Research). Article 2. Social and Philosophical Ideas of European Enlighteners and Socialists in the Reading Reception of Yakov Abramov in the Mid-1870s

Yakov V. Abramov, a theorist and practitioner of the culturalist trend, held a special position in the camp of the reformist populism of the 1880s-1890s. He argued the idea of developing “small deeds” into “great deeds” and justified the need to enlighten people’s consciousness and to change the principle of modern society’s existence peacefully yet fundamentally. Defining his own self-actualisation strategy in socially beneficial activities, he purposefully formed his own circle of reading which reflects the breadth of his interests and represents his integrated approach to the development of scientific knowledge. The materials of archival research show that Abramov actualised the social and educational functions of literature, relating the progressive development of Russia to people’s exposure to education and culture, back in the period of the formation of his ideology and democratic positions. Abramov developed his worldview learning the ideas of European Enlightenment and the theories of utopian socialism. Extracts from the writings of Montesquieu, Charles Fourier, Ferdinand Lassalle, and Louis Blanc testify to the social orientation of the spiritual and moral quests of the future populist ideologist and his critical attitude to the existing social system. While appreciating Montesquieu’s On the Spirit of the Laws as a product of intellectual activity, Abramov emphasised that not all Montesquieu’s ideas responded to the challenges of the new time and gave a clear preference to the works of modern European socialists. In the writings of Fourier, Lassalle, and Blanc, he found thoughts and ideas consonant with his thoughts about the domination of one class over the others established in the world, about the plight of the working masses not only in Russia, but also in other countries of the world. The problem of the “advantages of capital over labour”, the anti-human essence of the “open economy” and the laws of capitalist exploitation became objects of Abramov’s social analysis. In the writings of the utopian socialists, who argued for peaceful revolutions, one can see the genesis of Abramov’s philosophy of social evolutionism that proved the historical productivity of the peaceful “people’s movement forward” by means of developing education, culture, and economy in the name of a radical transformation of society and bringing humans to a higher level. Abramov’s surviving notebooks and diaries of the second half of the 1870s record a high level of sociophilosophical reflection, which largely determined the interpretation of the dialectic of “small and great deeds”, the practice of his real “work among the people”.

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