Ideological Self-Determination and Inter-Party Rotations in the Russian Democratic Environment (late XIX - early XX centuries)

The relevance of this work is due to the need to study the experience of political socialization received by the leading representatives of Russian democratic parties in the late XIX - early XX centuries. The nature of the events of a socio-political nature that took place in the Russian Empire during this period is to a large extent consonant with what is observed in modern Russia: this is the growth of civic consciousness and activism, the noticeable democratization of the political (especially the opposition) elite, the emergence and formation of political and public organizations. Using the examples of biographies of prominent figures of democratic socialism in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, the main factors of a social and demographic nature that contributed to the choice of one or another ideological and, as a result, organizational and party orientation of representatives of socially active youth of the modernization period are shown for the first time in a complex. The regularities of the formation of political preferences of future politicians are revealed. It is noted that inter-party rotations in this environment were not mass, but individual, and the political self-determination of representatives of the parties of democratic socialism was, as a rule, conscious and firm.