Миссия либерала: какова она?

Круглый стол под таким названием прошел в Фонде «Либеральная миссия в конце 2010 г. Он был приурочен к годовщинам со дня кончины двух известных русских либералов разных эпох - Тимофея Николаевича Грановского (1813-1855) и Сергея Андреевича Муромцева (1850-1910). Вспоминая этих выдающихся исторических деятелей, участники дискуссии размышляли о том, какова миссия российского либерала сегодня, в каких формах она мо- жет и должна выражаться. В чем ее сходство и в чем отличие от миссии либералов в другие эпохи отечественной истории? Чем поучителен для нас опыт предшественни- ков? В обсуждении приняли участие А.А. Кара-Мурза, М.А. Краснов, Б.И. Макаренко, В.А. Рыжков, О.В. Крыштановская, Л.С. Васильев, Б.Б. Надеждин, Л.М. Баткин, И.Б. Чубайс, Ю.Н. Афанасьев, Е.Г. Ясин, П.С. Филиппов, И.В. Стариков, А.С. Мадатов, В.В. Кизилов. Вел разговор вице-президент Фонда «Либеральная миссия» И.М. Клямкин.

The Liberals Mission: What is it?

The article is a reflection of the eponymous round table discussion, which took place at the Liberal Mission Foundation in the end of 2010. It has been timed to coincide with the dates of passing of two famous Russian liberals - Timofey Granovskiy (1813-1855) and Sergey Mouromtsev (1850-1910). By remembering these outstanding historical figures, the participants of discussion have been trying to outline the liberal's mission today: what should it be and how must it be expressed? What does it have in common and how it is different from liberals' missions in previous historical ages? How could this previous experience prove useful today? The author suggests that the liberal's mission today is to provide one's own solutions to the problems that Russia faces today. The major problem, however, is the archaic state system and its inability to provide the development of country. Thus, an alternative to this system has to be put forward, but no such alternative has been suggested yet. It has not been developed on an intellectual and expert level, which is why it looks rather vague and uncertain in political programs an declarations. There are constant calls to economic and political competition, honest elections, independent justice and mass media. However, there is no doubt that even in such a fantastic situation, when liberals somehow seize power, they will not know what to do with it. There are serious reasons to suggest that the archaic system will not change, it would only lead to the respective change within elites. To replace personal power with power of democratic and legal institutions we have to have a better idea of how the latter actually work. There are various civilization standards for those, which are usually referred to as European. However, in Russia they have not yet been appropriately introduced to the public. How precisely should the system of justice work? How should the state apparatus be organized? How can corruption be reduced? There are simply no answer to such questions. The Russian culture, including its liberal segment, has an inherent feature of an institutional carelessness. In his own years the famous monarchist Lev Tikhomirov wrote that the weakness of Russian autocracy results from the fact that noone has ever thought about how it actually works. The Bolsheviks, who replaced the Tzars, have only thought about power, rather than the institutional set-up. As a result a new version of autocracy emerged. The same way has been followed by the Russian democrats, who brought their Eltsin rather than created institutions that make democracy a democracy. The results are well known today. But what has been suggested to let the things change? Nothing, as far as we know, apart from replacing 'bad' Putin with 'good' Medvedev. It looks like foreign, not to mention our own, experience means absolutely nothing to us. When considering the emergence of democratic and legal institutions in post-communist Eastern Europe, it is commonly concluded that 'their experience is different from ours'. However, the experience of institutional creationism in Eastern Europe is universal, not local. It is universal in the sense that it represents the gradual, 5-7 years long movement towards European civilizational standards. If this experience is not for Russia, then the most appropriate would be another 'particular way' to some another 'particular goal'. There is, of course, a problem of adapting universal standards to a particular country. This problem, however, is all about the adaptation of standards and not their imitation by masking the Russian archaic specifics with some universal European outlook. Specifics are primary to the standards in Russia, which leads to the deformation of the latter rather than adaptation. For example, the current Russian constitution bears a French model. However, this model has been re-edited in such a way, that it has become a legal arrangement of the renewed version of Russian autocracy or,