“The Old Russian Party” and “People’s Policy” in the 1860s–1880s

Abstract. In the post-reform period, Russian conservative nationalists (Slavophiles, “Katkov’s nestlings”, publicists of the Suvorin circle) together with patriotically minded
liberals formed the so-called “old Russian party”. The latter was not a party in the modern sense of the word, but represented a part of society that advocated “people’s policy”: a program of national and state unity of Russia, and in essence — its transformation from an estate state into a national one. In the formation of this “ideological camp” not only the traditionally mentioned Polish uprising of 1863 played a role, but also the most important European political events of that time. In addition to the publications of M.N. Katkov and I.S. Aksakov, its main theses and programmatic theses were voiced by the liberal “Golos”, which consistently spoke out against the revolutionary and class-aristocratic “parties”, as well as against the mouthpieces of the latter: “Vest’” and “Novoe Vremya”. From the second half of the 1870s, the balance of power changed: “Novoe Vremya” passed into the hands of A.S. Suvorin and became the mouthpiece of the “national party”; the liberal “Golos” criticized the “people’s policy”. But even later, the publications and publicists of the “Russian party”, despite the established clichés about their “reactionary nature”, retained elements of post-reform democratism in their views.

Keywords: conservatism, nationalism, Slavophilism, journalism, Russian party, Katkov, Aksakov, Suvorin, Samarin.