Bio: (1854-1921) Russian political scientist, historian, sociologist, and lawyer. Moisei Ostrogorski studied first in St. Petersburg and then earned a doctorate in political science in Paris. During his career, he lived and worked in the USA and Great Britain. At the beginning of his scientific work, he wrote several books devoted to Russian history and later devoted himself entirely to works in political sociology. His doctorate was on the origins of universal suffrage, and then he wrote the book Position of Women from the Point of View of Public Law (1892) in which he explored the legal position of women. His most famous book is Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (1902). In this book, he expressed the view that there is a pathological tendency of democratic mass parties towards the formation of a bureaucratic-oligarchic type of internal organization. Such a result is inevitable because, as soon as a party is organized and begins to act, its degeneration into an oligarchic structure begins at the same time. He observed both the formation of public opinion and voting behavior and came to the conclusion that party loyalty is similar to religious loyalty. In the same book, Ostrogorski conducts a comparative analysis of the political and party systems that then existed in the USA and Great Britain.

Main works

Chronology of Russian History (1872); 

Chronology of Universal and Russian History (1873);

История России с картинками вопросами для повторения для народных училищ (1877);

The Rights of Women: A Comparative Study in History and Legislation (1893);

Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (1902); 

Democracy and the Party System in the United States (1910); 

La democracy et les partis politiques (1912).