Introduction

Relevant and indispensable as the lives and careers of the individual Moscow Slavophils were, their inclusion is justified first and foremost on the basis of their respective contributions to “pre-Reform,” Moscow Slavophilism. The birthplace and geographical and cultural center of Moscow Slavophilism for Samarin and the other Moscow Slavophils was not in Russia’s western borderlands but in Orthodox Great Russia and its longtime capital, Moscow. Professor N. V. Riazanovsky called attention some years ago to the kinship of Moscow Slavophilism to Western romanticism. In Professor V. I. Kuleshov, a specialist in literature and history, has given us in his Slavianofily i russkaia literatura the names of a good many Western authors who were well known to the Slavophils. Professor V. I. Kuleshov includes both the “allies” of the Slavophils and those whom they renounced.