To origins Marxist historiography of Russian conservatism: G. V. Plekhanov about M. M. Scherbatov

On the materials of the G. V. Plekhanov's three-volume generalizing «History of Russian Social thought» (1914−1917) his treatment and appraisal of the ideological heritage of M. M. Shcherbatov as the founder and first ideologist of the Russian nobleman's conservatism in the following historiographical perspective is examined. This aspect of the Plekhanov's treatise became the first trial of the Marxist historiography to interprete the Shcherbatov's socio-economic and political views and Russian “pre-parliamentary” conservatism in general. G. V. Plekhanov, the founder of the Russian Marxism, strongly disputed the historiographical identification of Schherbatov-ideologist as “the liberal and progressist” which was traditional for the Russian Pre-October historical and philological science. In the scientific and ideological perspective this Plekhanov's Marxist treatment determined the following interpretation of the Shcherbatov's ideological heritage in the early, Pre-Stalinist Soviet histiography.