Formation of a Slavophile. V. I. Lamansky’s Diary of the Early 1850s

Abstract

The article deals with the formation of Vladimir Ivanovich Lamansky’s Slavophile worldview, which took place during the years of his studies at St. Petersburg University (1850–1854), which actually coincided with the Crimean War. Lamansky’s diaries from that period and his later publications are used to reproduce his assessments of the last years of the Nicholas reign, the personality of the emperor, persecutions and prohibitions. The diary entries show well the difference in the origins of the worldviews of the “early” and “late Slavophiles”. While Moscow Slavophilism largely emerged on the wave of patriotic upsurge in Russian society and the sense of national pride caused by Russia’s victory in the war with Napoleon, the starting point of the views of the late Slavophiles was the antagonism of Europe and Russia, provoked by the anti-Russian unity of Europe and the defeat in the Crimean War. Other origins of the worldview of the late Slavophiles, including Lamansky, arealso noted.