In this article, V.V. Blokhin analyzes the worldview of Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Mikhailovsky, their projects for the social reconstruction of post-reform Russia in the second half of the 19th century. Scientific interest in the theorists of populism is caused by the similarity of their socio-political concepts, which are based on the ideas of liberal socialism. In modern Russian historiography, interest in the typology of trends in democratic thought is growing from year to year. In modern Russian historiography, interest in the typology of trends in democratic thought is growing from year to year. Modern researchers give priority attention to reformatory socialism, in which the right and left, conservative trends are distinguished. The author believes that Herzen and Mikhailovsky expressed an unorthodox liberal-socialist trend in populism. Based on scientific journalism and memoirs, the author compares the socio-political views of Herzen and Mikhailovsky. The common foundations for theorists of liberal socialism are personalism, the idea of personality as the goal and meaning of progress. If Herzen formulated his doctrine of personality, relying on the philosophy of Hegel and the teachings of Saint-Simon, then Mikhailovsky - on the ideas of Proudhon. The philosophy of the Enlightenment with faith in man and a rational social structure became the theoretical prerequisite for the social theory of the populists. Being people of a critical and free mind, both Herzen and Mikhailovsky viewed progress as a contradictory and unfinished process of gradual changes in society. They were decisive opponents of violence in history, believing that the state as a historical institution had not yet outlived its usefulness, and therefore believed in the reform potential of the autocratic power. The reformism of Herzen and Mikhailovsky was based both on the conservatism of the peasantry, who did not want to follow the revolutionaries, and on the unpreparedness of young people for revolutionary activity, their ignorance of the people. The idea of the intrinsic value of an individual and his freedom, of the priority of social reform over the revolution, of the struggle for political freedoms are the constituent components of liberal socialism, to which both Herzen and Mikhailovsky belonged. © 2021 International Network Center for Fundamental and Applied Research. All rights reserved.