>Not for nothing was the leading liberal party of the late Imperial era, the Kadet party, known as a “party of professors.” Outside urban professionals, the party had almost no support, especially among workers and peasants, who showed little interest in liberalism.
>As previously noted, universalism and progress are often regarded as core liberal principles. Kavelin’s statement highlights their relevance in a Russian context. Russian liberalism has long contained a strong element of historical determinism that views history as following universally applicable rules of progress, which in the long term will cause all nations to converge on a single model of political and economic life. As Miliukov [said](https://archive.org/details/russiaitscrisis00mili), “Civilization makes nations, as it makes individuals, more alike.”
Liberals have helped create this impression by adopting a sometimes contemptuous attitude towards the Russian people, who have often been portrayed as a dark mass of uneducated reactionaries unfit for self-government. As one of the founders of nineteenth century Russian liberalism, Timofei Granovsky, put it, “The victory of the masses would bring about the destruction of the best fruits of civilization.” The Russian revolution accentuated this attitude. For instance, Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, the one woman in the Kadet party central committee, [denounced](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691656779/liberals-in-the-russian-revolution) “the wild beast which is called the people.”
Generalizing somewhat, one might say that Russian liberals have tended to reflect the prevailing attitude of the intelligentsia, viewing themselves as standing above classes, and assigning themselves the role of educating and leading the masses until such time as they are able to reach the same level of enlightenment as the intelligentsia themselves.
>Liberalism’s social base has remained equally narrow in modern times. In so far as there was a Soviet liberalism during the communist era, it was to be found among intellectuals and so-called “ITRs” (*inzhenerno-tekhnicheskie rabotniki* – engineering technical workers). Nowadays, the core of liberalism’s support is to be found in the “creative classes,” [described](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/507811) by Mark Lipovetsky as “a strange unity of software engineers, intellectuals, scholars/scientists, architects, designers, university professors, people of art – in a word, those selling the product of their creative activity.” Prior to the 1917 revolution, Kadet party leader **Pavel Miliukov** [commented](https://archive.org/details/russiaitscrisis00mili) that “Russian liberalism was not bourgeois but intellectual.” This remains largely true today.
Something that I find very scary/interesting is the end-of-history-esque perception of the 20th century Russian liberals and their intellectual elitism. Because these are defiantly sins other liberals are indulging in.
Also **Pavel Milyukov** is a fascinating liberal politician to learn about.
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>Not for nothing was the leading liberal party of the late Imperial era, the Kadet party, known as a “party of professors.” Outside urban professionals, the party had almost no support, especially among workers and peasants, who showed little interest in liberalism.
>As previously noted, universalism and progress are often regarded as core liberal principles. Kavelin’s statement highlights their relevance in a Russian context. Russian liberalism has long contained a strong element of historical determinism that views history as following universally applicable rules of progress, which in the long term will cause all nations to converge on a single model of political and economic life. As Miliukov [said](https://archive.org/details/russiaitscrisis00mili), “Civilization makes nations, as it makes individuals, more alike.”
Liberals have helped create this impression by adopting a sometimes contemptuous attitude towards the Russian people, who have often been portrayed as a dark mass of uneducated reactionaries unfit for self-government. As one of the founders of nineteenth century Russian liberalism, Timofei Granovsky, put it, “The victory of the masses would bring about the destruction of the best fruits of civilization.” The Russian revolution accentuated this attitude. For instance, Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams, the one woman in the Kadet party central committee, [denounced](https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691656779/liberals-in-the-russian-revolution) “the wild beast which is called the people.”
Generalizing somewhat, one might say that Russian liberals have tended to reflect the prevailing attitude of the intelligentsia, viewing themselves as standing above classes, and assigning themselves the role of educating and leading the masses until such time as they are able to reach the same level of enlightenment as the intelligentsia themselves.
>Liberalism’s social base has remained equally narrow in modern times. In so far as there was a Soviet liberalism during the communist era, it was to be found among intellectuals and so-called “ITRs” (*inzhenerno-tekhnicheskie rabotniki* – engineering technical workers). Nowadays, the core of liberalism’s support is to be found in the “creative classes,” [described](https://muse.jhu.edu/article/507811) by Mark Lipovetsky as “a strange unity of software engineers, intellectuals, scholars/scientists, architects, designers, university professors, people of art – in a word, those selling the product of their creative activity.” Prior to the 1917 revolution, Kadet party leader **Pavel Miliukov** [commented](https://archive.org/details/russiaitscrisis00mili) that “Russian liberalism was not bourgeois but intellectual.” This remains largely true today.
Something that I find very scary/interesting is the end-of-history-esque perception of the 20th century Russian liberals and their intellectual elitism. Because these are defiantly sins other liberals are indulging in.
Also **Pavel Milyukov** is a fascinating liberal politician to learn about.