In political terminology, there are many words whose meanings are not completely understood by many. This is due to the frequent change of state regime, as a result of which the new ruler interprets everything in his own way, and with many historical facts. In this article we will try to find out what liberalism is, what its representatives are and what ideology they adhere to.
So, a liberal is first of all a free-thinking person, a freethinker. It is believed that true liberals are endowed with excessive condescension, they are accustomed to turn a blind eye to many conflicting facts, unacceptable even to them aspects themselves. First of all, liberalism is a political trend, which involves freedom of speech, the actions of each individual in the economy and other sectors of life.
Liberals in Government
In the period from the 16th to the 18th centuries, a trend called liberalism arose in Europe. Its essence was that the representatives of the bourgeoisie began to demand the abolition of the absolute power, which was provided by the Catholic Church, in return full freedom of action for each citizen should come. First of all, this freedom concerned the field of economics and trade. The ability to conduct one’s business unhindered, to express one’s own opinion on any occasion - this is the ideal state model that every liberal aspired to. This, however, was the ideology of only the bourgeois stratum of society, which did not receive proper support from ordinary people in Europe.
There were also years when liberalism became the main political direction in many states. The heyday of this trend was the period of the French Revolution. Then every liberal - this was a representative of a wealthy family - lacked only freedom, which was limited by spiritual absolute. Despite the fact that such personalities as M. Zh. Lafayette, O. Mirabeau, as well as the Girondists and Felianes, received the state apparatus for some time , their own slogans about freedom turned into something anti-democratic. Each representative of the bourgeois family “dragged the blanket over himself”, solving only his own problems and satisfying his own needs.
Liberals in Russia
Representatives of French liberalism did not show their best side, but their documents, slogans and claims with the right to a better life remained in the memory of the people and on paper. It was these sources that became the main impetus for the appearance of such freethinkers in the Russian Empire. Of course, everyone knows that in Russia a liberal is a Decembrist and every supporter of them. In 1825, they spoke on Senate Square to overthrow the Sovereign. It cannot be said what our state could turn into if the masses supported them, but this did not happen, and many of the rebels were executed.
In Soviet times, the Bolshevik party waged an active struggle against any manifestations of freedom of speech and liberalism in society. We all know very well that in the USSR there were neither merchants, nor private enterprises, nor freedom of trade. People could not even leave the borders of their native state to see the world.