The article is devoted to the development of an operational definition of the concept of adaptive conservatism in relation to the corpus of political and legal doctrines of the Russian state of the XVI–XVII centuries. The author offers a three-level analysis model: articulation of traditional values in doctrinal texts, their codification in normative acts and functioning in the practice of government. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that adaptive conservatism is formulated for the first time as an independent analytical category with its own verification methodology applicable to the source base and allowing to fix the mechanism of political and legal adaptation of value systems in the context of crisis and transformation of statehood. The methodological framework of the article is based on the dialectical method of cognition. The author pays special attention to the historical and legal method. The comparative legal approach is used to determine the unity and difference of opinions about adaptive conservatism. The author substantiates the operational definition of adaptive conservatism through verification criteria at three levels of analysis.