The book is devoted to one of the key problems of the Russian history of the imperial period - the relationship between power and an educated person. This problem is very old, gradually turning into a category of eternal ones, but it has not yet been solved and therefore has not lost its severity. The author refers to its origins, to the so-called "long XVIII century." The monograph explores the practically unexplored problem of the mechanisms of the ideological and sociopsychological impact of enlightened absolutism on the consciousness of subjects, and above all the enlightened nobility - the main social support and the main opponent of the monarchy. The author's conclusions are based on a comprehensive analysis of legislation, journalism, fiction, memoirs and letters of the upper class elite using interdisciplinary methods of conceptual history, social psychology and comparative source study.