ABSTRACT
Two important historical events coincided with the formulation of a programmatic form of liberalism in Russia: the death of Tsar Nicholas I in 1855 and Russia's defeat in the Crimean War. These events changed the framework for public life and created scope for the reformulation of central concepts and the introduction of new ideas. This chapter draws attention to the relationship between liberalism, nationalism and modernization in Russia. It focuses on the formative years of Russian liberalism in the immediate post-Crimean period, before disagreements arose inside the liberal camp concerning Chicherin's steadfast belief in the rationality of the state. The chapter points the importance of nation-building to his early political thought and shows how he combined liberal ideas with notions of nation-building and the nation as a modernizing phenomenon. The transformation of Russia into a unitary state, founded on equal citizenship, was essential to this nation-building project.
