Liberalism and nationalism in Russia. Boris Chicherin as a modernist nationalist

Abstract

This article investigates the link between nationalism and liberalism in Russia by looking at the way the leading spokesman of early Russian liberalism, Boris Chicherin, combined liberal ideas with notions of nation‐building and the idea of the nation as a modernising phenomenon. The article argues that the young Chicherin, at least in the formative years of the 1850s, had an instrumental approach to liberalism. Liberalism served a specific purpose – to integrate the people and shape a community of active citizens so that Russia could modernise. Chicherin was concerned with the formation of a modern nation‐state rather than the establishment of popular rule or political rights. In this sense, his thinking fits well into what, in the context of the Ottoman Empire, has been called modernist nationalism.

Redefining the Russian Empire: The turn to liberal imperialism through the letters of Prince Nikolay A. Orlov at the height of the Great Reforms

“…However, in their view, political rights were a more distant goal in the liberal balance between liberty and stability. Despite Nikolay’s assertion that a central parliament ‘would only do harm’ at the time of the Great Reforms, it does not seem that he agreed that the Russian people were not ready for democracy (Rabow-Edling, 2012) but rather that his notion of representative institutions was not that of a centralised parliament. Prince Orlov’s views on constitutionalism are clarified in a letter to Grand Duke Nicholas on 16 February 1865, in which he revealed the preference for a wider representative order.…”