The transformation of slavophilism and the autocratic state in the 1860-1870s

Abstract

The article deals with the process of Slavophilism’s transformation and shows the dependence of that process on the change in autocratic state policy after the death of Nicolas I. The Slavophilism couldn’t exist anymore in the form it had been formed during the rule of Nicolas I because the Russian society had moved to a different stage as a result of the Emancipation reform of 1861 and a range of other important reforms carried out by Alexander II. The author reveals the regularity of Slavophilism’s evolution in the 1860-70s which led to its transformation. The author establishes the idea that the character and the direction of Slavophilism’s evolution depended on the attitude of the Slavophiles toward the autocratic state. They were hoping that the authorities would return Russia to its original path which was conditioned by and collocated with the basic origins of Russian civilization. The author points out the features of the late Slavophilic ideology which distinguish it from the early (classic) Slavophilism and due to which the conservative essence of the Slavophilism was expressed more apparently in the late Slavophilism than it was in the classic one. Those features were mainly the result of the autocratic state’s influence on the process of development of the pre-revolutionary Russian conservatism.