Principles of instrumentalization of the "history of concepts" methodology in the studies of public thought i n Russia in the 18th - first quarter of the 19th centuries

The paper deals with the important issues of implementation of methods of the history of concepts in the historical studies of public thought. The aim of the paper is to establish the principles of conducting a study of public thought with the use of methodological approaches of German and Cambridge schools of 'history of concepts' and Bakhtin's theory of speech genres. The paper also formulates the principles of contextuality, of system approach, of combining texts of public communication with specified and unspecified addressee, of thematic and genre variety of sources of historical study. The practical approbation of the aforementioned principles was based upon the study of a polemic in Russian periodicals of the early 19th century around N. I. Turgenev's "Experience in the Theory of Taxes:: a review of an anonymous author and Turgenev's response published in Syn Otechestva and Dukh zhurnalov in 1820. The central point of the polemic was the question about the ability of elective bodies of class representation, which were also seen as the essence of 'constitutional government', to provide adequate protection of civil rights. Turgenev, using England as an example, argued in favor of the elective system to increase personal freedom and property of citizens, while his anonymous opponent insisted that any elective bodies would be merely tools of bureaucratic deception chasing their own purposes. The comparison of interpretations, logical arguments and interconnections the participants of the discussion used while talking of 'liberty', 'law', 'constitution' and 'property' allows to discover the most important contexts of their practical use. The author shows that the anonymous critic of Turgenev's work envisaged 'law' and 'liberty' in a broader moral, religious and legal context, including the well-known rhetorical tricks, like the counterposing of the negative French revolutionary experience to the positive Russian monarchical stability. Meanwhile, Turgenev, responding to the attack, emphasized the importance of legal protection of rights of elected representatives to participate in the discussion of issues of taxation and property. These functions of parliament, according to Turge-nev, reflected the very essence of constitutional governance. The author makes a conclusion about the existence of strong connections between the concepts 'law', 'property', 'liberty' and 'constitution' in the Russian public thought of the early 19th century; such a connection could be used either to argue in favor of parliamentary innovations in Russian political practice, or to criticize them fiercely. The author also stresses that the proposed set of methodological principles of 'history of concepts' could be used rather productively to study the public discussion about the purposes and character of political modernization of the Modern Age.

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