The article deals with the political science’s aspects of the Candidate dissertation by M.Ya.Ostrogorsky – “An Outline History of the French Legislation of the Press” (1875) – recently discovered by the author of the article in one of St.Petersburg Archives repositories. Young Ostrogorsky’s views on problems of political research methodology, of political modernization, of political currents, of political parties are characterized. The author comes to the conclusion that there exists certain conceptual coherence between the early Russian stage of Ostrogorsky’s creative evolution (1871 – 1882) and its subsequent stages.