Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex multifaced and indeed controversial
phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated
with Western liberalism¿such as individual freedom property rights or the rule of law¿have
often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and
combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed and liberal
projects have been shaped by local circumstances evolved in response to secular challenges and
developed within often rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This third
volume of the Reset DOC ¿Russia Workshop¿ collects a selection of the Dimensions and Challenges
of Russian Liberalism conference proceedings providing a broad set of insights into the
Russian liberal experience through a dialogue between past and present and intellectual and
empirical contextualization involving historians jurists political scientists and theorists.
The first part focuses on the Imperial period analyzing the political philosophy and
peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism its relations with the rule of law
(Pravovoe Gosudarstvo) and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party
(Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times when liberal undercurrents emerged under the
surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin¿s death the ¿thaw
intelligentsiä of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal
dimension in late Soviet history while the reforms of Gorbachev¿s ¿New Thinking¿ became a
substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR. The third part focuses on the ¿time
of troubles¿ under the Yeltsin presidency and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics
the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change and the paradoxes of liberal reforms
during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Despite Russian liberals having begun to draw
lessons from previous failures their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir
Putin. Hence the fourth part focuses on the 2000s when the liberal alternative in Russian
politics confronted the ascendance of Putin surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the
mindset of technocrats and ¿system liberals¿. Today however the Russian liberal project faces
the limits of reform cycles of public administration suffers from a lack of federalist
attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks
us to consider: what is the likelihood of a ¿reboot¿ of Russian liberalism?
