mages of the Future of Russia in the Narrative of the Largest Liberal Parties of the early 20th century br

This study is devoted to the issue of the practice of constructing images of the future by Russian liberal parties of the early XX century.The purpose of the work is to evaluate the effectiveness of the corresponding value-semantic constructs. The methodology of the work is built on the basis of a combination of elements of structural and comparative analysis. The source base of the study was formed through the use of unpublished office documents of the Cadets and Octobrists deposited in the funds of the State Archives of the Russian Federation. The authors come to the conclusion that both the Cadets and the Octobrists were able to construct complex and three-dimensional images of the future, which were the result of attempts to offer a rational solution to the most pressing issues of contemporary Russian society. As a result, these images of the future turned out to be suitable for perception by the elites and the intelligentsia, but were of little relevance to the task of popularization among the masses. The messages developed by the liberals were distinguished by relatively low affectivity, the complexity of discourse, and the presence of significant barriers to perception. At the same time, we are not talking about conceptual, but rather methodological, instrumental shortcomings. As part of the political promotion of their messages, the parties focused on the educated part of society, the elite and, in general, the "managing class" ofthe empire. Unlike the leftists, anarchists, nationalists, and right-wing conservatives, both the Cadets and the Octobrists failed to compactly set out the elements of their images of the future in a system of laconic slogans, the use of which would enable the mechanism of emotional contagion among the broad masses to be set in motion. It should also be noted that a number of fundamental theses that formed the foundation of these images of the future contradicted (in the medium term) the basic trends in the development of the socio-political process. These images were formed during the period of a large-scale rise of extremist movements, due to which the level of trust between society and the authorities was relatively low, as a whole indicator of the consolidation of society and the degree of readiness of its various strata for a constructive dialogue. The images of the future proposed by the Cadets and Octobrists could have been much more popular in the previous period, but the specific historical context of the era objectively minimized the potential for their dissemination