Correspondence of Anatoly Fedorovich Koni with liberal lawyers as a source on the political sentiments of legalists in 1860–1910

In the Russian Empire, subjects wrote letters to each other daily, in which they poured out their souls, shared their emotions and feelings, were indignant, worried. Separate letters represented samples of Russian literature. One of the most prolific writers was Anatoly Fedorovich Koni. He wrote daily up to 1015 letters. Much of this correspondence has been preserved. Thanks to the letters, we can reveal the psychological makeup of the famous lawyer, establish numerous personal connections in which he was involved and in which he played an important role. Koni was a politician, one of the leaders of the legalist (legal) movement in the late empire. We felt that identifying and analyzing these letters would allow us to better understand the motivations of the leaders of this movement. Accordingly, the subject of our study is the political worldview of the liberal lawyers of the Russian Empire based on the materials of Konis letters and letters to him. Considering the history of correspondence, we chose the chronological approach as the main method, trying to trace the evolution of the legalists views from moderate optimism to deep pessimism. This is the first time such a reconstruction has been carried out in relation to the legalist movement and contributes to our historical knowledge. A number of preliminary conclusions can be formulated. The letters are an important source on the history of the political sentiments of the empires liberal jurists. They not only reflected emotional reactions to the ongoing processes, but also proposed ideas for restructuring the state. Along with the criticism of the state, we fix the naive faith of the followers of B.N. Chicherin into the democratization of an authoritarian state, liberalization, into the Constitution, as a way to solve the main problems, into a God-bearing people, in which some creative forces are dormant. All these dreams are dispelled by the end of the XIX century, and only a deep spiritual decline remains, which means a crisis and collapse of the movement.