Boris Chicherin (1828–1904) was a professor of law at Moscow University. From late 1881 to 1883, he served as Moscow’s elected mayor, a position that lent him national promi­nence. He was also a well-regarded member of the elective land councils (the zemstvos) in Tambov province for most of the period from 1867 to 1900. Among Russians in his generation, he probably had the deepest experience in public institutions, including local self-government. As an intellec­tual, Chicherin first made his reputation as a historian. Between 1869 and 1902, he published a profound analysis of European political thought, in which he included chapters on Adam Smith and on his socialist critics. Chicherin’s polemic against socialism, Property and the State, was likely the most forceful statement of classical liberal principles to appear in old-regime Russia. His magnum opus, Philosophy of Right (1900), was an attempt to marry Smith’s notions of civic freedom with those of Georg Hegel and Immanuel Kant. Today readers of English can find a con­venient selection of Chicherin’s writings in Liberty, Equality, and the Market: Essays by B. N. Chicherin (1998).