Leont'ev wished that the police were enabled to read men's inmost thoughts, so that they might prevent the liberals from doing any harm. He did not shrink from being termed a reactionary, and he approved the work of the informer. "It is time," he said, "that the word informer should cease to have a degrading significance. . . . Politics are not ethics."
It is obvious that Leont'ev is vacillating between a purely biological law of evolution and a social and historical law, according as he contemplates the problem from the outlook of historic determinism or from that of freedom. Whilst he laughs at the slavophils as children, he cannot entirely escape the influence of their ideas. Before his conversion, Leont'ev's thought had been based upon that of Danilevskii, and upon the latter's principles of Russian policy; the ideas of Russia and Europe continued to some extent to influence his mind, although he gave a new significance to the leading demand of Danilevskii and the older slavophils. He regarded it as the error of the slavophils that they had failed to effect an organic union of nationality with religion and ecclesiasticism. He was manifestly in agreement with Košelev's formula, "Without Orthodoxy our nationality becomes fudge." He therefore abandoned nationality, for he regarded it as essentially based upon liberal and cosmopolitan democracy and as an instrument for the promotion of universal revolution. The title of one of his essays runs National Policy as a Means to the World Revolution. He considers that the main weakness of Russian policy is to be found in its nationalism. It is true that he conceives the idea of nationality as political nationality or nationalist policy. For this reason Leont'ev puts his whole faith in religion. From his outlook, Slavism as a principle is a nonentity when contrasted with Byzantinism, or at most is a sphinx, an enigma. Slavism as an idea is obscure and inchoate. There doubtless exists Slavdom, the unorganised substratum of Slav nations. There are panslavist aspirations; but panslavism, precisely because it is nationalist, conflicts with Byzantinism, and therefore with true Russism. Panslavism is a "utilitarian and liberal" ideal, and must therefore be abandoned; Russian policy must aim at the protection of Austria, for Austria is "a sanitary cordon against the Czechs and the other excessively Europeanised Slavs." Byzantinism is the foundation, Byzantinism is the nervous system of Russia, and there is no need for either Catholic or Protestant Slavs.
