Formation of Jules Ferry's socio-political views in the 1860s.

Jules Ferry is a principle French politician of the last third of the XIX century, who can rightfully be considered one of the "founding fathers" of the Third Republic in France. His early views were quite contradictory: he called himself a liberal and a republican, but his political opponents sometimes defined him even as a socialist. He played an important role as a journalist and pamphleteer in the liberalization of the authoritarian Second Empire in France in the 60s of the XIX century. However, despite the importance of his political heritage, expressed in the establishment of republican values and institutions in the 80s of the XIX century, the formation of his socio-political views was not examined properly in historiography. There is still no special research on this topic in Russian Federation. The sources for writing this article were his numerous speeches, pamphlets, letters, newspaper articles written by him, as well as the memoirs of his contemporaries. The important issue explored in this article is the correlation of liberal and republican ideas in his system of views in the 60s of the XIX century, that is, until the moment when he began political activity, becoming a member of parliament in 1869. The article draws an important conclusion that in the 1860s Ferry was much closer to the classical liberals than to the "red" Republicans. It is concluded that there was a lot of classical liberal ideas in J. Ferry's views: he was a supporter of "necessary freedoms" (the expression of A. Thiers), he supported the idea of decentralizing France and condemned attempts to rehabilitate the Terror of the French Revolution at the end of the XVIII century. At the same time, like all other liberals, he defended the gains and values of the Revolution.

France, XIX century, the Second Empire, liberalism, Jules Ferry, Napoleon III, Leon Gambetta, Emile Olivier, republicanism, Third Republic