introduced, but the majority of the westernisers, following N. Turgenev's example, favoured the simultaneous introduction of the two reforms.
In contrast with the slavophils, the westernisers took a lively interest in economic problems."
As regards the nature and significance of nationality, the westernisers were cosmopolitans and humanitarians in the eighteenth-century sense, whilst the slavophils being nationalists, considered nationality more important than the state. Whereas Karamzin had insisted: "The national is nothing as compared with the human. The main thing is to be men, not to be Slavs," the slavophils declared that man was man only as a Russian, a Frenchman, etc. Samarin therefore finds that expression is given to nationality even in individual sciences, but Čičerin opposes him in the name of science. It cannot be said that all the westernisers rejected nationalism in toto, for the liberals advocated a moderate nationalism, but the radicals as a rule were antinationalists.
All differences notwithstanding, it is necessary to point to an agreement where questions of nationality were concerned. Both parties subordinated nationality to a higher principle, the slavophils to religion and the church, the liberals to the state. On individual points, therefore, peculiar and astonishing agreement was manifest. The more conservative among the westernisers, placing a high value upon nationality and the state, approximated to the bureaucratic conception of "official" nationality. The later slavophils went so far as to demand Russification, doing so in the name of religion and of the church, but many of the westernisers voiced similar demands in the name of the state—Pestel among the first! On the other hand, the stressing of nationality led to liberal and democratic views, in so far as nationality was opposed to political centralism, and considered to be of superior importance.
The westernisers were opponents of panslavism, both in its slavophil and in its political forms.[1]
The rejection of panslavism was not, however, universal, nor when it occurred was it always equally vigorous, and we
- ↑ In the liberal periodical "Otečestvennyja Zapiski" (1845) the Turks were considered to be more interesting than the Slavs they had subjugated. The "Atheneum" (1859) ascribed an important civilising role to the Austrian police in Slav countries. The slavophils and panslavists protested against such views.
