Abstract: The article traces the evolution of M. Gershenson's creativity as a pioner of intellectual biography studies. His publication in the "Landmarks" , formulated the political credo of Russian conservative liberalism, put the author in row with such outstanding Russian thinkers like N. Berdyaev, S. Bulgakov, V. Ivanov, G. Florovsky, G. Fedotov and others.The conclusion was made that Gershenson 's historical conception allows us to consider him one of the founders and the first historian of the "Russian idea".His sociopsychological portrait of Russian intelligentzia became a basis of the subsequent reasoning of Russian religious historiosophy about the alternatives of Russian intellectual history and fates of its creators.The synthesis of intellectual history and psychology proclaimed by M. Gershenson, extended the subject field of research the history of social and political idea of Russia, carried out the deep revision of world view bases of Westerner sand Slavophiles as two poles of "Russian Europeism" .