The interaction of power and society in understanding of the historians of the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries (to the problem of the political culture)

The problem of power acquired special urgency at the moment in Russia. That was due to a change of configuration of state power in conditions of world globalization processes and also internal reasons related to the restructuring of the political system in Russia that began in the late twentieth century and continues to this day. It must be emphasized that its liberalization according to the western model that was carried out by the ruling elite in the early nineties of the last century didn't bring the success to the social policy reforms, but only intensified the polarization of political forces in the modern Russia. This circumstance gave rise to the idea of a crisis of the "liberal project" in Russia, the impossibility to implement the ideas of liberalism and where the relationship between the government and the society which, having been developed according to the formula "boundless power and passive people" were not changed over the centuries. Recognizing largely validity of such assessments it is worth noting that in the renewal of the Russian state along with assimilation of modern methodologies of power it is necessary to rely on the domestic tradition of liberalism in understanding of political institutions and their practical experience in reorganization of it in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Among the nominated options of the reconstruction of the country that time it is necessary to consider the one that was developed by the representativies of the conservative-liberal trend in Russian historiography in the last third of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which was significantly different from the left-liberal projects in deciding the question about the rate of these reforms, the limits of compromise between society and the government. Conservative liberals regarded the state as the sociocultural phenomenon and considered that in the period of reforming the political system, the society should be actively involved in government, to fight poverty, engaging philanthropy without giving up criticizing the authority. They placed special emphasis on historical science the main task of which was the orientation in politics and education the society in the spirit of respect for the values imposed by people from their past. In this case we can say that we are talking about the political culture of interaction between society and government. These ideas are consonant with the modern socio-humanitarian discourse of power, which marked approaches are backbone.

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