The article examines the features of the Russian conservatism in the period of its emergence in the fi rst quarter of the 19th century. The specifi c character of the Russian conservatism lay in the fact that it had been conceived as a reaction to the radical westernization. The manifestations and main symbols of this process in the 17th — early 19th centuries included the reforms of Peter The Great and the extreme (for the time) liberalism of Alexander I, which had provoked the opposition on the part of the conservative-minded nobility. The project of constitutional reforms associated with in the name of M. M. Speransky was of particular importance. The list also included Gallomania, the form of Westernism among the Russian nobility; Napoleonic aggression against the Russian Empire, the Treaty of Tilsit 1807 and the Patriotic War of 1812, as well as an attempt to create a so-called “all-Christian state” in the spirit of the declarations of the Holy Alliance, which from 1817 to 1824 had actually served to deprive the Orthodox Church of the dominant status. Not without reason, Russian conservatives perceived these phenomena and events as a threat that might lead to the destruction of all the fundamental foundations of the traditional society: autocratic power, the Orthodox Church and religion, the Russian language, national traditions, class society boundaries, patriarchal life, etc. The unprecedented nature of the challenge generated a conservative response designed to protect the fundamental traditional values. The main axioms of the emerging Russian conservatism were formulated as a result of confl icts with representatives of the Russian liberal Westernism. These deemed the imitation of revolutionary and liberal Western European models inadmissible, and proclaimed the need to rely on one’s own traditions (linguistic, religious, political, cultural, domestic) and such values as patriotism, including the cultivation of national feelings and devotion to the autocratic monarchy. Having blocked the constitutional project by M. M. Speransky, conservatives played a huge role as ideologists and military statesmen in the events of 1812–1814, had a signifi cant impact on the formation of the university education system, and actually achieved the rejection of the ecumenical experiment in 1824, which would de facto deprive the Orthodox Church of its dominant status. During the struggle of the “Orthodox opposition” against Western European mysticism and Freemasonry, the system of Orthodox values had a signifi cant impact on the formation of the Russian conservatism. The greatest role in the formation and development of the Russian conservatism in the fi rst quarter of the 19th century was played by such fi gures as A. S. Shishkov, F. V. Rostopchin, Grand Duchess Ekaterina Pavlovna, A. А. Arakcheev, M. L. Magnitsky, A. S. Sturdza and Archimandrite Photius (Spassky). The central fi gure of the Russian conservatism was N.M. Karamzin.

This essay outlines the political portrait of Sergey Uvarov, one of the outstanding statesmen of the Alexander’s and Nicholas’s epochs. It so happens that until modern times the historical literature fight with Sergey Uvarov’s shadow rather than studied his works. Only the gradual reconstruction and comprehension of the conservative component of the historical process in the Russian science and literature made it possible to confidently discuss Uvarov as a politician. He had laid the foundations of an integral and fullfledged system of domestic education, on the basis of which sociocultural changes had grown in the society, serving as the initial and necessary ground for all real achievements of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries in the field of the state-building and the development of civil society, science, literature and art. Uvarov’s worldview was close to conservative European romanticism, which attached an extremely important cultural significance to the national religion. At the same time, the object of his personal studies had been Russia and its past and present. Uvarov managed to fundamentally strengthen and expand this component in domestic education, which, in keeping with the spirit of the policy of Emperor Nicholas I, had grown into a full-fledged system under Uvarov’s direct participation and leadership. Upon reconsideration of his official and political experience during the reign of Emperor Alexander I, Uvarov suggested that his successor used the national enlightenment in its conservative model as a strategic preparation for the abolition of the serfdom in Russia. The new generation was to become “primarily Russian in spirit rather than European in education”, to study “Russian things in Russian” unlike its Westernized predecessors, and to have a moral need to free their serfs, just as the latter had to be prepared to take their freedom responsibly. The essay introduces to the academic community one of the later handwritten works by Uvarov, devoted to relations between the state and the Church in Russia, which was heretofore little or completely unknown and is important for understanding Uvarov’s historical significance as a political notionalist and statesman.

The article researches a number of issues related to the Slavophile worldview in the 1840s–1880s and their work aimed at the development of the national consciousness in the Russian society: their attitude to Peter the Great’s reforms, to the Slavic world and to the revolution. The article also examines the role the Slavophiles had played in the development of the Orthodox outlook in the society and the foundations of the future Church structure, and their attitude to the slogan “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality”. It also considers the attitude to Slavophiles among the government circles and the so-called “German Party” at court. The article disputes the widespread opinion of the Slavophiles denying the existence of historical prerequisites that had caused the reforms of Peter the Great, and hankering after Russia’s return to pre-Petrine traditions. The desire of the “Moscow Party” for the development of the national culture and the formation of the national consciousness caused the constant opposition on the part of apologists of the European cosmopolitanism. The opposition was all the stronger because it formed a signifi cant part of the entourage of Nicholas I (and then Alexander II) and the St. Petersburg aristocracy. At the same time, Khomyakov and his associates tended to avoid alliances and patronage that could damage their independence. The so-called “German Party” at court did not limit its actions to vigorously defending the interests of the Baltic nobility, but actively struggled against any attempts to form the national consciousness. A consistent opponent of the Slavophiles, for decades it had enjoyed the constant support of the Third Department, as well as a number of ministers. And it was none other than the Third Department, that since the beginning of the 1840s had organized press campaigns to discredit the “Moscow Party” and general supporters of the development of inter-Slavic communication. To limit the infl uence of the Slavophiles, their opponents resorted to the active use of censorship, including its spiritual kind. With the Slavophiles being staunch opponents of the revolution, which they viewed as a distorted form of the religious consciousness, their enemies often sought to represent them as revolutionaries in the eyes of the supreme power and the society. The Slavophiles considered the establishment of an advisory Zemsky Sobor in Russia to be the only alternative to the future revolutionary catastrophe. This authority was meant to embody their ideas about the common people as a source of power.

The article considers the milestones of the historiography of Aleksey Khomyakov’s heritage from the end of the 19th century to the present day. Priority is given to works of independent theoretical and conceptual value. The article reveals the special character of the very fi rst studies of Khomyakov’s works dating back to 1870s1880s with particular attention paid to his religious views. The article analyzes the fi rst attempts to point out the importance of the philosopher’s socio-political positions. The article considers the essential features of works by Iu. F. Samarin, A. V. Gorsky, V. S. Solovyov, P. I. Linitsky, N. P. Kolyupanov, K. N. Leontiev, V. N. Lyaskovsky and E. А. Lebedeva. Khomyakov’s early views were shown to be criticized by Solovyov, Leontiev and Linitsky as not quite Orthodox ones. At the same time, the 1890s and 1900s witnessed a wave of apologetic monographs and articles on Khomyakov, canonizing his image as “the teacher of the Church” (books by Kolyupanov, Lyaskovsky and Lebedeva). The article analyzes the fundamental works on Khomyakov dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, written by V. Z. Zavitnevich, N. A. Berdyaev, P. A. Florensky and B. Shcheglov. The three-volume work by Zavitnevich appeared to be rather a compilation of biographical details than an independent apologetic writing, and so was subjected to fruitful critical discussion by Florensky and Berdyaev. Shcheglov’s monograph, published in 1917 and left unfi nished, summed up the pre-revolutionary stage in the research of A. S. Khomyakov’s views. The article presents an essay on the history of the study of Khomyakov’s heritage in the Russian expatriate community. Estimates of Khomyakov’s apologia are given in the works by Fr. Georges Florovsky and Nicolas Zernov. The fundamental signifi cance of the work by the Polish researcher Andrzej Valitsky is shown to be a turning point in Khomyakov’s historiography. The features of monographs by Soviet historians of the 80s are also considered. Their contribution to clarifying the socioeconomic position of Khomyakov, his participation in the peasant reform, his specifi c position between the conservative autocracy and the moderate liberal opposition is also evaluated. The article demonstrates the inconsistency and vagueness of terminological defi nitions in Khomyakov’s socio-political position among Soviet researchers, which reached critical proportions in Yankovsky’s theory of “the patriarchal liberal utopia” of Slavophiles. Attention is paid to the shift of emphasis in Russian and foreign works on Khomyakov in the post-Soviet period. Based on the analysis of the articles written in 2019–2021, conclusions are drawn about the current trends in the development of the history of the study of Khomyakov’s heritage.

From the onset, the traditional image of the prominent Russian conservative of the second half of the 19th century, the famous founder of the Moscow Vedomosti newspaper M. N. Katkov as a “defender of traditional values” was questionable. Representatives of various ideological camps: Westernist liberals, Slavophiles and nationalists from the editorial board of the Novoye Vremya newspaper were united in viewing him as a smart opportunist, who had chosen a convenient time for supporting the government to forward his personal ambitions. Despite the fact that speeches in defense of the Church could indeed be heard in Katkov’s journalism and his publications, in many ways they occupied rather an instrumental place in the system of his ideological views, which was far from the fi rst and which was repeatedly noted at the time by both Slavophiles and church traditionalists per se, such as T. I. Filippov and K. N. Leontiev. In this respect, Katkov came to be rehabilitated by Soviet historiography, which in a simplifi ed form argued the unity of “the liberal” and “the conservative” periods of his activity. This simplistic and ideologized image of Katkov is still present in modern research. Post-Soviet, especially conservative-minded, authors often tend to present Katkov as a consistent monarchist guardian and a no less consistent Orthodox conservative. And yet, Katkov’s political ideology assumed the transformation of Russia into a centralized and homogeneous national state of the European type, in which there could be no place for status in statu. Maintaining the unconditional loyalty to the Orthodox Church, at the same time the Moscow publicist denied its political subjectivity. By his propaganda of “the Russian Catholicism” and “the Russian Judaism”, Katkov came to be the fi rst one in the Russian conservative tradition to separate the Russian national identity from religion as such and Orthodoxy in particular.

The subject of this article’s research is the system of the notionalist’s ideas about the contemporary reality correlated with his theoretical vision of the worldwide historical process. The novelty of the work relies on the fact that the creative heritage of N.Ya. Danilevsky had been mainly studied by philosophers, whose major interest was his newly developed methodology of history. Without a comprehensive consideration of Danilevsky’s views, it is, however, impossible to grasp his theory and to liberate it from the stereotypes that had stuck to it at the end of the 19th — beginning of the 20th century. His theory cannot be understood without analyzing his interpretation of Russia’s historical path and its connection with the fate of the Slavs as a whole. The research performs a consistent analysis of the theory of cultural and historical types, Danilevsky’s interpretation of the history of Russia and the Eastern Question, and his project to create an All-Slavic Union. Based on the results of the study, the author of the article came to the following conclusions. Despite Danilevsky’s criticism of positivism, he could not overcome its infl uence in his theoretical constructions. Denying the existence of a single line of historical progress, he introduced the concept of a civilization “basis”, which tends to grow to become ever more complex over time. It is easy to imagine this complexity in the form of an ever upward vector. Danilevsky idealized the socio-political development of Russia, believing all problems to have been solved by the 1861 Peasant Reform. Fearing that the Germanic-Roman civilization would not allow the Slavic cultural and historical type to develop, the notionalist threaded the motive of the struggle throughout his work “Russia and Europe”. The struggle, however, would appeared to be defensive rather than aggressive and would ultimately be aimed at the creation of the Slavic federation — the All-Slavic Union, which was envisioned by Danilevsky as a union of equal members.

 Danilevsky’s work is still of interest to the reading public. The author of “Russia and Europe” tried to challenge the Eurocentric approach to the worldwide historical process, thereby declaring the value of each civilization. This idea is more than relevant in our time, when the problem of originality and uniqueness of diff erent cultures and civilizations is of utmost importance.

The article is devoted to the biography and socio-political views of K. N. Leontiev, the great Russian notionalist and publicist of the second half of the nineteenth century. The article discusses the evolution of Leontiev’s views. The emphasis is put on Leontiev’s ideas about byzantism as the foundation of Russia’s potential historical “longevity” and about “the Eastern Union” — a confederation, which, from his point of view, should include Orthodox and Slavic peoples, as well as many peoples of the Asian continent. The methodology of this review paper is based on the principles of science, historicism and objectivity. The research was based on the methods of comparative historical analysis, immersion into the ideological atmosphere of the time in which K. N. Leontiev had lived, and biographical analysis with elements of psychological research, which allowed to understand and reveal some fundamental aspects of his socio-political views. The article reviews and analyzes the literary heritage of the notionalist, including his journalism, fi ction and letters. K. N. Leontiev was one of “the pioneers” who had introduced the concept of byzantism into the socio-political discourse of postreform Russia. He nurtured great hopes that the Byzantine principles would allow Russia to outlast Western Europe by a long time — ultimately for a whole cultural and state epoch, i.e. for 1000–1200 years. The notionalist had generated these hopes in the fi rst half of the 1870s. However, K. N. Leontiev stopped counting on such a long period of Russia’s historical longevity towards the end of his earthly journey. An appeal to the biography and views of this notionalist, to his ideas about byzantism, “the Eastern Confederation”, Orthodoxy and the problem of the Church allows us to signifi cantly more accurately, sharper and deeper assess the catastrophic results of the 20th century for our country, the civilizational, spiritual, metaphysical, historical essence and the signifi cance of revolutions that befell it, as well as the period of the communist rule, and to outline potential ways for Russia to get out of the diff icult situation in which it has found itself in the current post-Soviet years.

The article discusses the concept of byzantism developed by the prominent Russian notionalist Konstantin Leontiev and its signifi cance for modern Russia. A counterintuitive conclusion can be drawn on how much relevance Leontiev’s ideas still hopelessly retain for understanding the peculiarities of modern Russia, its cultural and historical type and uniqueness. The beginning states the obvious reason to turn to Leontiev’s ideas today: a number of his predictions or prophecies have come true in the history of the twentieth century. In terms of, so to speak, predictive eff ectiveness, he had no match among Russian notionalists. Then follows the consideration of Leontiev’s concept of byzantism. Leontiev deepened the generally accepted idea of Russia being Byzantium’s religious successor and comprehensively rethought it from the coherent cultural-historical and religious-political perspective. In a nutshell, one could say that the basic theses in his concept of byzantism contained three all-embracing points: the Orthodoxy and the Tsar, or the Eastern Christianity and the autocracy, and their religious and political union. This social ideal possesses distinct external (despotism, various social constraints and inequality) and internal (intense inner spiritual life) sides. Though they come as the two sides forming an integral unit, the second, internal side is more important and fundamental than the fi rst, external one. The necessary condition of byzantism as a cultural and historical type at the personal level is also noted. The author argues the existence of a kind of unspoken and hybrid byzantism that even today continues to preserve and defi ne the uniqueness of Russia. It is represented by, fi rst of all, an unspoken alliance of quasi-monarchical presidential power, when the president comes to power by formal and democratic way, but cannot be democratically evicted out of his post. A strong authoritarian government is impossible without the internal willingness of the people to obey the “party in power” as long as it maintains its authority. Among other things, this kind of power is necessary to keep together diff erent peoples, ethnic groups and regions of Russia with their diff erent cultures and traditions. While this national diversity threatens Russia with disintegration, it is, on the other hand, the key to its vitality and its complex fl owering. Secondly, it is represented by an important social role of religions being traditional for Russia — mainly Orthodoxy and the Russian Orthodox Church, and, accordingly, traditional moral values in the life of the society.

The article discusses the main ideas of F. M. Dostoevsky’s political philosophy and their organic connection with the integrity of his Orthodox worldview. It is shown that the Orthodox monarchism of the writer, his artistic world and his understanding of a person as a spiritual being shared the same higher moral foundations. Dostoevsky’s Orthodox political philosophy, though unappreciated by his readers from “the educated stratum”, at the same time exactly corresponded to the off icial ideological formula of “Orthodoxy. Autocracy. Nationality”. Against the background of the prophetically depicted de-Goded world, which Dostoevsky had already looked into in the 19th century, his vision of the Russian people as “God-bearers” and the Orthodox monarchy as the most Christian and salvatory form of statehood served as the only “sliver of light” in this dying world. The particular value of Dostoevsky’s political philosophy is that it stood as the articulation of the mass peoples’ consciousness, which was no longer represented in fi ction and scientifi c literature of his lifetime due to the prevalent ideology of liberalism and democracy borrowed from Europe. The voice of Dostoevsky expressed “the culture of the silent majority” of the people, which was not refl ected in the secular culture of that period. In A Writer’s Diary and other works by Dostoevsky, this popular Orthodox view of the monarchy received a rational formulation and argumentation. The article highlights the main components of this argumentation, showing the consistency of the writer’s political views and their deeply thought-out and pained nature. Dostoevsky turned out to be equally correct in his predictions about the future revolutionary catastrophe in Russia and the huge number of its victims. He was the one to accurately formulate the essential reason for it as the takeover of Russia by “demons”. He also did not fail to name the last hope for the people — the repentance and the return to the Church. The relevance of Dostoevsky’s political philosophy in the modern era is determined by two factors: it helps to understand the real political thinking of the Russian people, which has existed for many centuries, but has hardly been studied so far; it explains “the archetypes” of Russian political consciousness that have existed at all times up to the present and remain an important factor in Russian history.

Article off ers an unconventional view of Dostoevsky as an artist of the godless world. The author separates Dostoevsky’s Christian worldview from the artistic image of the world he created in his works. In Dostoevsky’s imaginative world, Christianity is only a dream and hope, which is not manifested in real life. While only a few of his characters are focused on it, the absolute majority live their lives as if Christ never existed. The Christian dimension transcends the godless world created by Dostoevsky, only occasionally touching it from the outside as a kind of revelation. The external in this world must be overcome by the internal, which is only possible if one experiences this “external” within themselves, with all its sins and temptations. Dostoevsky’s world is therefore even more godless and frightening than the world in which he had actually lived. Which is also in the nature of things, because the only way to defeat it is by reaching the last satanic depths. Dostoevsky’s texts were originally addressed to secular people, to the religiously ignorant intelligentsia, as opposed to devout Christians. This fact also determines the perception of Dostoevsky’s works by diff erent types of readers. The author proposes a new classifi cation of types Dostoevsky’s readers belong to. The article introduces the concept of a “gnostic myth” about Dostoevsky, the emergence of which is characteristic of modern intellectuals. The historical context of the appearance of the Dostoevsky phenomenon is that Dostoevsky himself was a phenomenon of a traditional person living in conditions of a secular civilization of the modern era. Formed by a millennium of Russian Christian culture, Dostoevsky had been thrown into the godless intellectual world of the 19th century. This godless world, prophetically shown by Dostoevsky, is the world of the 21st century, which he had already envisioned in the 19th century, and this insight into the “new” world ruled by “demons” anticipated the genre of “dystopia” and is in fact his main artistic achievement.

The article examines the views and the work of S. A. Rachinsky and N. I. Ilminsky, the prominent religious enlightenment fi gures in the second half of the 19th century. The former had created a network of church schools for the common people in his estate Tatevo in Smolensk province and its environs, and spent a number of years teaching there. The latter in 1872–1891 held the position of a Director in Kazan Seminary for Teachers of Non-Russian Origin — the central educational institution of the missionary type in the Volga region, aimed at maintaining Orthodoxy among the Christianized peoples of the area. Both educators received the support of K. P. Pobedonostsev, the prominent statesman, publicist and notionalist, one of the leaders of the conservative camp and the chief prosecutor of the Holy Synod. The activists of the religion-based primary education shared the views of specifi c conservative populism based on the idea of common people possessing a set of values that could potentially prevent the society from social upheavals (such as simplicity, patriarchal relations, loyalty to traditions, true religiosity). Rachinsky’s and Ilminsky’s initiatives were aimed at preserving such qualities among the Russian peasantry and the “smaller” nations of the Volga region — social groups that, according to the educators, had managed to stay most aloof from the destructive tendencies of ideological and political development of the second half of the 19th century. Such views in many respects corresponded to the ideas of Pobedonostsev. The famous conservative shared the belief of Rachinsky and Ilminsky that the cause of upheavals that engulfed the post-reform Russia had been the excessive development of individualism and the desire to reconstruct the historically established way of life according to abstract theoretical principles, and that the counterbalance to these phenomena could only be found in the moods of the common people. Rachinsky’s and Ilminsky’s work became a noticeable phenomenon of public life in Russia in the second half of the 19th — early 20th century, and refl ected its important features.