ABSTRACT
The middle decades of the nineteenth century witnessed perhaps the most dismal phase of Western liberalism, individualism, and laissez-faire industrialism. “It is an astonishing time of external slavery and inner liberation.” With this ultimate characterization by Alexander Herzen, editor M. D. Gershenzon began in 1910 the volume on the Epoch of Nicholas. In this simple and brief statement Herzen brought out the truth and the paradox that marked the thirty-year reign of Nicholas I. Samarin’s and Ivan Aksakov’s brief incarcerations, while still young, were more in the nature of temporary eye-opening experiences than periods of great privation and soul-trying suffering. None of the Slavophils was ever in need or deprivation. On the contrary, they were well off. On the level of religion and philosophy, the early Slavophils left no doubt that neither of the West’s two major religious forces, Catholicism and Protestantism, nor its philosophical more specifically the then dominant Western rationalism, held any attraction or promise for them.
