Konstantin Kavelin

Born Nov. 4 (16), 1818, in St. Petersburg; died May 3 (15), 1885, in St. Petersburg. Russian historian, lawyer, sociologist. Bourgeois liberal publicist. Member of the dvorianstvo (nobility or gentry).

Kavelin graduated from the law department of Moscow University in 1839. He was a professor at the University of St. Petersburg from 1857 to 1861. Close to T. N. Granovskii and A. I. Herzen, Kavelin was a Westernizer during the 1840’s. In 1855 he composed and distributed copies of his Notes proposing the state-aided emancipation of the peasants with land in return for a redemption fee paid to the landlords. The Notes were published by A. I. Herzen in Voices From Russia (1857, book 3) and N. G. Chernyshevskii in Sovremennik (1858, book 4). As a result, Kavelin was dismissed from his position as lecturer in history and law to the heir to the throne.

During the preparation and implementation of the peasant reforms of 1861, Kavelin supported the government’s undertakings from a liberal standpoint. However, by the end of 1861, Kavelin’s moderate liberalism became transformed into outright opposition to revolutionary democratic forces. In his pamphlet The Nobility and the Emancipation of the Peasants (1862), Kavelin opposed the idea of a constitution and defended strong autocratic power. Beginning in the late 1850’s he moved closer to the point of view of the Slavophiles. In 1866 he presented the profoundly conservative notes On Nihilism and the Essential Measures to Be Taken Against It to the tsar. From the 1860’s through the 1880’s he opposed the materialist approach in questions of psychology and ethics.

The historical views of Kavelin, who, along with B. N. Chicherin, became a founder of the “state school,” were formulated most clearly in A Look at the Legal Life of Old Russia (1847), A Brief Look at Russian History (1887), and Thoughts and Notes on Russian History (1866). Kavelin developed the notion of the crucial role of the state in the life of the people. According to Kavelin the state was the highest form of social life in the history of Russia. In his works, Kavelin characteristically dealt with the general questions of history through the prism of legal relations, an approach that tended to give his analyses (which took a publicistic form) a highly political nature.