Slavophile
A
Slavophile was an advocate of the uniqueness (and according to some critics, superiority) of
Slavic culture compared with others, especially
Western European culture. The word Slavophile can also be applied to an admirer of Slavic culture.
As an intellectual movement, Slavophilism was developed in the 19th-century
Russia. In a sense there was not one but many slavophile movements, or many branches of the same movement. Some were to the left of the political spectrum, noting that progressive ideas such as
democracy were intrinsic to the Russian experience, as proved by what they considered to be the rough democracy of medieval
Novgorod. Some were to the right of the spectrum and pointed to the centuries old tradition of the autocratic
Tsar as being the essence of the Russian nature.
The movement originated in
Moscow in the 1830s. Drawing on the works of Greek
patristics, the poet
Aleksey Khomyakov (1804-60) and his devoutly
Orthodox friends elaborated a traditionalistic doctrine that Russia has its own distinct way and doesn't have to imitate and mimic Western institutions. The Russian Slavophiles denounced
Western culture and "
westernizations" by
Peter the Great and
Catherine the Great, and some of them even adopted the traditional pre-Petrine dress.
The doctrines of Khomyakov,
Ivan Kireevsky (1806-56),
Konstantin Aksakov (1817-60) and other Slavophiles had a deep impact on Russian culture, including the
Russian Revival school of architecture,
The Five of Russian composers, the novelist
Nikolai Gogol, the poet
Fyodor Tyutchev, the lexicographer
Vladimir Dahl, and others. Their struggle for purity of the
Russian language had something in common with aesthetic views of
Leo Tolstoy.
In the sphere of practical politics, the Slavophilism manifested itself as a
pan-Slavic movement for the unification of all Slavic people under leadership of the Russian
tsar and for the liberation of the
Balkanic Slavs from the Ottoman yoke. The
Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 is usually considered a high point of this militant Slavophilism, as expounded by the charismatic commander
Mikhail Skobelev.
It should be noted that most Slavophiles were
liberals and ardently supported the
emancipation of serfs. Press
censorship,
serfdom, and
capital punishment were viewed as baneful Western influences. Their political ideal was a
parliamentary monarchy, as represented by the medieval
Zemsky Sobors.
Later writers
Fyodor Dostoevsky,
Konstantin Leontyev, and
Nikolay Danilevsky developed a peculiar conservative and according to some, anti-Semitic version of Slavophilism called
pochvennichestvo (from the Russian word for soil). This teaching, as articulated by
Konstantin Pobedonostsev (secular head of the
Russian Orthodox church), was adopted as the official imperial
ideology in the reigns of
Alexander III and
Nicholas II. Even after the
Russian Revolution of 1917, it was further developed by the
émigré religious philosophers like
Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954).
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Pan-Slavism*
An Interpretation of Slavophilism
