Reformní vize v ruském politickém myšlení druhé poloviny 18. a počátku 19. století

This contribution discusses reform visions advanced by significant personalities of Russian political events in the second half of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries as an organic part of the development of Russian political thought. The purpose is to set the liberalizing reforms of Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky within a wider context, primarily focusing on the development of the political opinions of significant personalities in the Russian Empire of the second half of the 18th century. It indicates where ideas had actually arisen about the necessity of reforming the hidebound Russian political system. This study is only concerned with the so-called official thinking, and refrains from discussion of the opposition and period manifestations of dissatisfaction with the tsarist autocracy. The central figures of this interpretation are: Tsarevna-Empress Catherine II, Count Pyotr Ivanovich Shuvalov, Count Nikita Ivanovich Panin, prose writer Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin, Prince Alexander Alexandrovich Bezborodko, and Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky. The essay’s goal is to furnish proof for the thesis about the continuity of Russian political thought and reform visions for the modernization of the Russian state and of a society governed by these ideas that would not interfere with the essence of a tsarist autocracy governed by the monarch’s will. This study is based upon analysis of source materials, and period and secondary literature.