The main aim of the text was to determine the beginning and the end of the nineteenth-century in Russia in the field of socio-political thought. Both the initial turning point and final turning point were chosen with intention to facilitate the understanding of specificity of Russian socio-political thinking in the age of last five tsars. The article presents the position that it’s useful not to adapt the periodizations well known and well-established in contemporary historiography. These are often too universal, good for description of general image of socio-political debate in the industrial era. However, one needs different, more specialized concepts if it comes to grasp the details which make Russian nineteenth-century socio-political mentality unique and developing with its own logic.