for the "fathers." It seemed to the "children" that the Oblomov disease was the outcome of this liberalism, and they regarded their liberal "fathers" as belonging to the category of "superfluous men." Pisarev compared the liberal to the cow which wished to play the part of cavalry charger. Conservative opponents, on the other hand, looked upon liberalism with contempt. Dostoevskii represented the devil as a liberal bourgeois.
Liberalism could point in exculpation to the prolonged operation of tsarist absolutism, forcibly restraining men from public activities and delivering them over to irresponsible inertia.
But some regarded liberalism as a manifestation of the irresponsibility and inertia which, said these persons are inborn in the Russians.
The revolution of 1905 and the inauguration of the duma compelled all the political parties, and especially the liberals, to reexamine the principles upon which their respective programs were based. The first point to be considered was the relationship of liberalism to socialism and to revolutionism. In the liberal camp, even before the revolution, particular attention had been devoted to the attitude towards the state and towards the problem of revolution. The discussion concerning the differences between the Marxists and the social revolutionaries, the practical efforts to secure progressive unity in the League of Deliverance (Struve), and a personal desire to clarify his views upon the crisis in Russian affairs, induced Miljukov to debate these problems. Miljukov, who is now the intellectual leader of the cadets, has had ample political experience, and as historian and philosopher of history he is exceptionally well qualified to give an opinion upon such matters.
Miljukov's idea is that the role of liberalism is to mediate between the revolution and governmental circles. He holds that the liberal opposition has peculiar competence as mediator, inasmuch as it is in opposition without being revolutionary.[1] As recently as 1909, at a banquet given by the lord mayor of London in honour of the Russian deputation, Miljukov reiterated the old saying that as long as Russia possessed a legislative chamber which controlled the budget, the Russian opposition
- ↑ Miljukov, Russia and its Crisis, 1905, p. 517. (The text was composed in the year 1903.)
