RICHARD HOFSTADTER ABOUT THE PHENOMENON OF AMERICAN POPULISM
The article presents an analysis of the works of the American historian Richard Hofstadter in the context of determining the characteristic features of the political thinking of theorists of American populism of the late XIX - early XX century. The author explores various interpretations of populism as a specific phenomenon of the political culture of the Progressive era in the context of assessments presented in American historiography. In Russian historical science, Hofstadter’s creative heritage has never been the subject of special analysis. It adds novelty to the work and the fact that the historical phenomenon of American populism is extremely rarely the subject of a separate historical study in Russian historiography. The author focuses on the ideological connection of populism and farmers associations (grangers), the Greenback party, and the nascent socialist movement. On the example of key American and domestic historical studies, the author shows that the main provisions of the political ideology of American populism were the “agrarian myth”, the socio-political ideal of agrarian democracy, nativism, bimetallism. A study of the problem shows that Hofstadter’s assessment outlines the idea of translating all the characteristic features of the political thinking of farmers and agrarians into political ideology, the main theorist of which was W. J. Bryan. The political career of this outstanding speaker was an expression of the correlation of the socio-political ambitions of agrarians with the political reality of the Progressive era. The author concludes that Hofstadter’s socio-psychological analytics and historical assessments of the phenomenon of American populism was a reaction of the left-wing liberal intellectual to ultraconservative ideology, which is based on archaic elements of tradition.