Jean-Jacques Rousseau June 28, 1712, Geneva - July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, near Paris) - French writer, thinker, composer. He developed a direct form of government of the people by the state (direct democracy), which is used to this day, for example, in Switzerland. For the first time in political philosophy, Rousseau tried to explain the causes of social inequality and its types, otherwise to comprehend the contractual way of origin of the state. Despite the great popularity of the socio-political works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Russia, their fruitful impact on our advanced social thought, translations of many of them date back to the end of the 18th century, and some have never been translated at all. The compilers sought to ensure that this publication contained all the main socio-political works of Rousseau, of the greatest theoretical interest. Since the volume of the book did not allow placing all of them in full, some are only partially presented ("Letters from the Mountain," "Considerations on the Image of the Board in Poland") and entered the section "Additions," containing fragments of Russo's unfinished works on socio-political and historical topics.