Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 285, an interview with Professor Paul Robinson,

author of the book Russian liberalism.

Today we have a special guest of Paul Robinson, a professor at the Graduate School of Public

and International Affairs, the University of Ottawa, and author of the recently published

book Russian liberalism.

Welcome Professor Robinson.

Thank you for inviting me.

Given today's Russia and the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin, the concept of Russian

liberalism seems to be lost. But before we get into that, our listeners would

be interested in what Russian liberalism is actually historically.

But it's actually not an easy question because I mean even liberalism itself is a somewhat

uncertain concept. And many political philosophers nowadays say

you can't talk of liberalism, you can only talk of

liberalisms in the plural of some sort of broad family of doctrines which

have something in common but you know often contradict one another so modern day paleo

conservatives and one day neo-conser I mean so I'm getting mad about I have but but

modern day social liberals, right, would be very different than

modern day classical liberals, right? And often would be in conflict with one another and you get similar problems of course in the history of Russian liberalism

and it is it is something that has evolved over time and has taken on you know multiple

Manifestations so it's not easy to pin it down but in my book I I divided up into certain sort of types one of which is political conservatism so in a Russian context political conservatism has been interested in an expansion of civil liberties and in the rule of law

which is a matter of considerable importance historically speaking.

...