Socio-philosophical ideas in the policy documents of Northern and Southern Societies of the Decembrists

Abstract

The article analyzes the program documents of the Northern and Southern Societies of Decembrists which were structurally organized forms of the protest movement in the Russian empire of the first quarter of the 19th century. The text of “Constitution” by Nikita Muravyov had been repeatedly discussed by the members of the Northern Society but in spite of this it was not approved as the program document of the society. As to Pavel Pestel’s “Russian Pravda”, it was officially accepted by the Southern Society as its program. It is noted in the article that both texts are close to each other first of all by their basic statements aimed at proving the necessity of serfdom abolition in the country and changing the form of political power. At the same time the program documents of the Northern and Southern Societies differ greatly in their formal (their volume, methods of argumentation, etc.) and substantial (goals declared and ways of their achievement, focus on concrete issues and problems, conclusions offered, etc.) characteristics. The author studies a wide range of social and philosophical ideas presented in the documents of the Decembrists, such as their understanding of society as an integral organism, the specifiсity of interpretation of the essence of a civil society and citizenship, the identification of the reasons for the emergence and existence of power and state, the analysis of the social and ethnic structures of Russian society and possible ways of their progressive transformation, the importance of freedom and social equality for the development of the country, the question of the status of religion and church in the society, etc. It is concluded that the ideas of N. Muravyov’s “Constitution” and P. Pestel’s “Russian Pravda” are still relevant.