Chapter 4 - Liberalism Undone

Summary

Chapter 4 examines the unravelling of Russian liberalism in the years from 1909 to 1917, and explores how and why other ideational currents (for example, religious mysticism) surpassed liberalism in the popular imagination. This chapter considers the reasons for the decline and transformation of Russian liberalisms in the years between 1909 and the First World War, and links them with certain insurmountable contradictions within liberal theory itself. If prior to 1905 a significant portion of Russia’s educated classes was able to put aside some of their most profound intellectual differences because of their shared belief that freedom and self-realization could be achieved following the removal of the autocratic state, diverging views of the significance and ramifications of the revolution now fed more clearly into conflicting political commitments. During this period Russian liberalism seems to lose even the limited degree of cohesion and focus it had displayed earlier.