ABSTRACT
By the beginning of the sixteenth century the Samarins had achieved high rank among the gentry. Iurii Samarin’s father, born in 1784, was an officer in the Ismailovski regiment; he participated in the military campaigns against Turkey and France between 1805 and 1814 and retired from the army in 1816 as a colonel. Two years later he married and thereafter gave his time and attention to his family and estates. There is much in Iurii Samarin’s life that is reminiscent of the pattern familiar from the study of the other Moscow Slavophils. There are also differences, which will emerge in due course to establish Samarin’s individuality, as was the case with Khomiakov, the Kireevsky brothers, and Konstantin Aksakov. Samarin, born in St. Petersburg in 1819, was the youngest of the early Slavophils. His father, Fedor Vasilevich, a wealthy landowner, was equerry to the Empress Maria Fedorovna, the mother of Alexander I.
