ABSTRACT
Samarin’s part in the evolution of the government’s policy and the emancipation edict serves as the ultimate measure of the degree to which his views and ideas were realized in the reform. Considering the inefficiency of the tsarist administration and the intricacies of the serf and land questions, the emancipation reform moved quickly in the roughly three years between November 1857 and February 1861. A few more biographical facts will be added in due course as we touch on his relationship with Samarin and Cherkassky during the few feverish years preceding February 1861. In the process certain facts should emerge which shed light on Moscow Slavophilism as it evolved at the end of the 1850s when, in connection with the emancipation of the serfs, serious differences emerged in the Slavophil camp, not the least of which were between Samarin and Koshelev.
