An up-to-date study on the thoughts, aspirations, and labour activities of the reformer official in imperial Russia

The author of the article analyzes the monograph of Elena Morozova, a scientist from Saratov, who is a recognized scholar specialized in imperial Russia. The book provides an original interpretation of the Russian phenomenon of the formation of avant-garde personalities in the serf empire, endowed not only with reformatory free-thinking of a security-state wing as part of a wide imperial-intellectual process, but also really influencing the modernization of the cumbersome administrative state machine as well as laying the foundation for the legal process, liberation of numerous categories of not free people in the Russian Empire throughout the long 19th century. One of the managers of the new generation was N. A. Milyutin. The researcher, reconstructing the historical profile of N. A. Milyutin, reveals the archetype of an official-reformer in close relationship with the enlightenment intellectualization of a part of the Russian establishment, perplexed by the objective need to carry out a top-level modernization of the administrative structure of the state as a guarantee of the inviolability of the system and the pillar preservation of the national-imperial identity.