The reactionary party among the nobility, agitating against the liberation of the peasantry, took occasion in their periodical "Věst'" to denounce the slavophils as Russian Saint-Simonians. This was gross exaggeration, for the slavophils vigorously opposed socialism as unrussian. Homjakov and his friends counterposed socialism with the Russian mir and the Russian artel, but these institutions were conceived ethically and religiously, not economically and socially. In the mir they saw a means for averting the proletarianisation of the masses, and thus based upon the mir as against French socialism their agrarian hopes for the undisturbed development of Russia. For the slavophils the Russian mir was a foundation established by Christian love, was the foundation of the social organisation of the entire Russian people, which thus became a great family under the patriarchal leadership of the tsar. But we must not on this account speak of the slavophils as "Christian socialists."
In this idealisation of the mir, the slavophils were supported by Haxthausen, who was then studying Russian agrarian conditions on the spot.[1]
Speaking generally, the slavophils continued to cherish Rousseauist agrarianism. Kirěevskii contemned towns and urban civilisation, sharply contrasting with European civilisation the Old Russian Orthodox and religious civilisation, speaking of the latter as characteristically rural. Kirěevskii, too, was hostile to the growth of manufacturing industry, which was fostered by the state, and his followers remained faithful to
- ↑ In his third volume Haxthausen refers to his relationships with the slavophils ("Young Russia"), expressing his agreement with their views. He is especially enthusiastic about Konstantin Aksakov, referring to him as "one of the most talented men with whom I became acquainted in Russia." He met also Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and Samarin, and in addition Čaadaev and representatives of the westernisers (Granovskii, for instance). According to Herzen it was from Konstantin Aksakov that Haxthausen derived his view as to the importance of the mir and the artel.
uncritically favoured the relationship of serf and lord in the interest of the lord. Košelev wrote as follows to Ivan Kirěevskii in 1852: "I cannot understand, my dear friend Kirěevskii, how you, a Christian, can fail to be horrified at keeping men in servitude to yourself." But Kirěevskii's quietist passivism made it quite easy for him to tolerate the institution of serfdom. In 1847, when his sister wished to liberate her peasants, he dissuaded her from the step. In a discussion with Košelev, he said that if the peasants must be given land, they ought not to have five desjatinas, but one only: "This will help the peasant along, but he will still have to seek other work; in default of so necessity all the landowner's fields would remain untilled."
