Problems of formation of a civil society in the liberal discourse of Russia at the beginning of the XX th century(from the intellectual heritage of TSU professors)

The necessity to definecommon logical fundamentals in the constructing of a liberal model of a civil and political system as well as a role and place of a civil societyconcept in the system of ideological coordinates of home liberalism at the beginning of the XX th century dictates that we should studythe intellectual heritage of TSU liberally-minded professors. Liberals perceived civil society as a synthesis of individual freedom and commonwealth based on the recognition of the self-value and priority of a human personality. Possessing a high moral potential civil society, inliberals' opinion, should provide necessary conditions for a person to realize his abilities and creative potential. Law which is a basic tool torealize a state power was to play a role of an interaction regulator between personality and society. This is a law that was to provide a personalitywith freedom and the possibility to develop without any handicaps while giving at the same time guarantees of a stable order of acommunal life. In this connection liberals paid special attention to a reforming of a Court on the base of independence. Understanding thecontrast between Russian reality at the beginning of the XX th century and a liberal ideal of social order made an issue of necessary prerequisitesand conditions for constructing the civil society especially urgent. In this connection political reforms designed to form legal society, onthe one hand, and measures designed to increase in population's cultural level as well as development of social self-consciousness to providesocial environment adequate to ideas of civil society, on the other hand, were considered to be main directions of liberal strategy. This strategydefinitely assured orientation at evolutionary methods of solution to social problems. Reforms of social and political system based onprinciples of civil and political freedom and designed to provide a stable legal order, in the liberals' opinion, were supposed to open additionalpossibilities of a peaceful cultural work and create conditions for an all-round harmonic development of a personality. Analysis ofTSU professors' ideas about perspective directions of social and political reconstructing of the Motherland at the beginning of the XX thcentury reveals the fact that they had a logically strict conception of a civil society that had not only a full characteristic of its fundamentalprinciples and norms but also clear suggestions of how to form a civil society in Russia.

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