Discourse about Russia and the Problem of the Social Ideal in P.B. Struve’s Works of the 1930s

Abstract

The article actualizes the philosophical discourse about Russia in the heritage of P.B. Struve as well as it opens a discussion about the social ideal in his creative work. This question is formulated in a theoretical and historical-philosophical way. In our opinion, today it is necessary to return to the problem of the social ideal which was posed by Struve and the authors of his circle, considering it in a cultural-historical and epistemological perspective. The topic of the social ideal is of decisive importance in P.B. Struve’s philosophical and journalistic texts devoted to Russia. The ideological and political struggle of the thinker is essentially a struggle for great Russia. The desired image of a better Russia is the ideal-forming beginning of his philosophical work and the main motive of his political activity. The purpose of the article is to conceptualize the problem of the social ideal in Struve’s works of the 1930s based on the reconstruction of the social and cultural-historical aspects of his political and philosophical concept as well as to identify continuity in the development of the idea of Great Russia in the pre-revolutionary and emigrant period.