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What the Slavophils really condemned, at least in their calmer moments, was not European culture, but the uncritical, indiscriminate adoption of it by their countrymen.
Even when they recognised that their country was not quite so advanced in civilisation as certain other nations, they congratulated themselves on the fact, and invented by way of justification an ingenious theory, which was afterwards developed by the Slavophils.
Not satisfied with starving the bodies of five millions of Jews, Russian legislators were determined to crush them intellectually. The Slavophils could not brook seeing "non-Russians" surpass their own people in the higher walks of life.
Two Ancient Cities Kief Not a Good Point for Studying Old Russian National Life Great Russians and Little Russians Moscow Easter Eve in the Kremlin Curious Custom Anecdote of the Emperor Nicholas Domiciliary Visits of the Iberian Madonna The Streets of Moscow Recent Changes in the Character of the City Vulgar Conception of the Slavophils Opinion Founded on Personal Acquaintance Slavophil Sentiment a Century Ago Origin and Development of the Slavophil Doctrine Slavophilism Essentially Muscovite The Panslavist Element The Slavophils and the Emancipation.
The Slavophils thus remained merely a small literary party, which probably did not count more than a dozen members, but their influence was out of all proportion to their numbers.
How far the Slavophils of Russia had a hand in goading on the creature is not known. Élie de Cyon, writing at a later date, declared that he all along saw through and distrusted Boulanger. Disclaimers of this kind were plentiful in the following years .
In serious minds it led to a deep and conscientious study of history, national literature, popular mythology, and the like; whilst in frivolous, inflammable spirits it gave birth merely to a torrent of patriotic fervour and rhetorical exaggeration. The Slavophils were the Russian representatives of this nationalistic reaction, and displayed both its serious and its frivolous elements.
To avoid misconceptions of this kind, it will be well to designate them simply by the organ which most ably represented their views, and to call them the adherents of The Contemporary. The Slavophils and the adherents of The Contemporary, though differing widely from each other in many respects, had the same immediate object in view, and accordingly worked together.
* This was one of the favourite themes of Khomiakof, the Slavophil poet and theologian. Deeply imbued with that romantic spirit which distorted all the intellectual activity of the time, the Slavophils often indulged in the wildest exaggerations, condemning everything foreign and praising everything Russian.
To the Slav enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most cowardly of betrayals. As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her Recollections that event made Nihilism possible. As usual, the populace, whether reactionary Slavophils or Liberals of the type of Western Europe, vented its spleen on the Government.
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