Untitled - OUDL Home

Under Alexander II (1855-81) and his foreign minister,Gorchakov, official Russia waveringly began to reflect theinfluence of those currents of national opinion which hadalways hailed the other Slavs as ' little brothers' andbelieved in the mission of 'Holy Russia' to save themfrom the infidel Moslem and the contaminating West.The Slavophil movement, which grew up during thetwo decades before the Crimean War, had neither anyorganization nor any definite political programme; butthe Slavophils represented in their own way a deep,popular nationalism in their emphasis on the highdestiny of Russia, the uniqueness of her historicaldevelopment, and her radical difference from the West.They reconstructed Russian history in terms of Orthodoxy,Muscovy, and the native Slav heritage of thecommune (mir), the artel, and folk-tradition, and foretoldthat Russia " would give the world a new culture, anew Slav-Oriental civilization, in place of the decliningRomano-German European civilization."The Slavophils were first and foremost steeped inOrthodoxy, and, although they were well acquaintedwith and influenced by Western thought and literature,their fundamental opposition to the westernizers, suchas the great critic Byelinsky or the revolutionary Herzen,lay in divergence of approach—they profoundly religious,the westernizers primarily rationalistic. Their leaderswere closely bound to the Russian land and were bornand bred as patriarchal serf-owners. Moscow was theircapital, St Petersburg the washpot for the vials of theirwrath. They were deeply conservative, but at the sametime radically opposed to the governmental machine,which they denounced as an alien incubus imposed byPeter the Great and controlled by Baltic Germans andother bureaucrats entirely alien to the true genius ofRussian national life. When the catastrophic failure ofthis bureaucracy in the Crimean War led to the reformperiod of 1856-67 the Slavophils entered the lists prominentlyin the ensuing struggle, especially over theemancipation of the serfs. For them internal reformswere the first essential: only a healthy, cleansed Russiacould come forward as the saviour of Slavdom.Q—R.H. 241