THE CONCEPT OF “REPUBLIC” IN PUBLIC SPACE OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE 19TH CENTURY

Abstract

On the basis of the comparative and contextual analysis of publications in the Russian periodicals of the first quarter of the 19th century the article reconstructs the methods of argumentation used in the course of public discussion of ideals and practice of republicanism. Theoretical approaches of the modern history of concepts are used as methodological tools to reveal the ideas of contemporaries about the essence of the republic, the reasons for its emergence and decline, the nature of the relationship between citizens and the state. The intellectual context of Russia’s republican discourse was built on the basis of combination of two space-time prospects — historical experience of the republics of the ancient world and the description of options of the embodiment of the republican idea in France, the modern small states, and “the Republic of the Connected American Areas”. In public space of Russia of the first quarter of the 19th century the republicanism remained an important element of a discourse “about the best form of communal life” which starting point was a statement about the paramount importance of moral qualities of subjects/citizens and the monarch for steady functioning of power institutes. Such interpretation of the republican idea in Russia caused a shift from a question of the institutional embodiment of the republic to reflections about a possibility of combination of republicanism as the ideas of joint action of patriotic citizens, their partnership in “common cause” with historically developed monarchic form of government.