Moisey Ostrogorsky was born to a
Lithuanian Jewish family in 1854 in the
Grodno province of the
Russian Empire (now in the
Belarus), where he grew up. He studied law at
Saint Petersburg State University and worked for the Russian justice ministry. He represented
Grodno province in the First State Duma (Parliament of the Russian Empire). In the 1880s, he went to Paris and studied at the
École Libre des Sciences Politiques, where he wrote his dissertation
Les origines du suffrage universel (The origins of universal suffrage) (1885). Whilst in France, Ostrogorski imbibed French political thought, which was distrustful of an all-powerful state, from thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim, Tocqueville, Saint Simon and Proudhon. He traveled to the United States and Great Britain. In 1902, he published
Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties (originally in French), which compared the political system of the two nations. After returning to Russia in 1906, he became the
Duma representative for the Hrodna province as a member of the liberal
Constitutional Democratic Party. He left politics after the Duma was dissolved during the Russian Revolution. As a political thinker, he was recognized in the West before he was in Russia. Ostrogorski has been influential on the political thought of the 20th century. After leaving politics, he taught at the Psychoneurological Institute in
St. Petersburg. He died on 10 February 1921 in St. Petersburg, now renamed
Petrograd.
Work on political science Ostrogorski's main work is ''La democratie et l'organisation des partis politiques''. He noted behavioural determinism in organisational structure: "As soon as a party, even if created for the noblest object perpetuates itself, it tends to degeneration", which influenced "the later researches of Max Weber, Robert Michels, and Andre Siegfried". Ostrogorski is also the author of a book that is about the equality of the sexes:
La Femme au point de vue du droit public.
Ostrogorski's paradox is named after him. ==Legacy==