Our Republican theory research block mainly focuses on publishing studies in history of republican thought and practice.
In 2018 Oleg Kharkhordin, Head of Res Publica center, finished working on this book Republicanism in Russia: Community Before and After Communism" published by Harvard University Press. The book summarized for the English-speaking reader the 10 years of research conducted at the center from 2007 to 2017. In 2020, Res Publica, or the Public Cause (Республика или дело публики) presented a popular version of the major knowledge on republican theory from the times of Antiquity up to the modern day. In 2021 Oleg Kharkhordin’s Republic. Full version will come out in print. It is a review of the major problems of classical Republicanism for students and university professors. Also in 2021, European University Press published a translation of Les Théories de la République (Theories of the Republic) by Serge Audier. The translation of this French book kickstarted the discussion on different traditions of Republican thought - for example, the English, the French, the German and the American ones.
Another important project is devoted to studying the concept of freedom and political power reflected in texts of classical republicanism and practices of different quasi-republican communities both in Russia and abroad. Thus, the volume From the communal to the public (2011) analyzed the concepts of society and public freedom in Ancient Russian texts, in the first texts of the Russian Enlightenment, in contemporary Russian, and in practices of “The Live City” (Zhivoi gorod) movement in 2006-2009. The digest To live with dignity (2019) focused on dignity, one of the key concepts of republican theory. Oleg Kharkhordin’s article in The Syndrome of Public Muteness, a monograph edited by Nikolai Vakhtin and Boris Firsov (NLO, 2017) described the problems faced by civil society groups when they attempt within a limited time frame to to arrive at a common position through a civilized discussion of pros and cons of certain actions. These are the problems of creating a special public register of the Russian language that will facilitate the practices of arriving at such decisions.