A. S. Khomyakov and N. V. Gogol: the problem of relationships

The relationship between N. V. Gogol and his friend, a famous poet, publicist, “secular theologian” and historian A. S. Khomyakov represents an important, but littlestudied page in the history of Russian social thought. The article presents an analytical view of some of the features of the Slavophil doctrine, the problems of which are considered from the point of view of Gogol as a bright representative of this trend and, at the same time, as its demanding critic - as a Slavophile-statist. This article is based on the history of many years of communication between Gogol and Khomyakov, presented in a religious and political context. Khomyakov, being the thinker closest to the Church among the Slavophiles, to a certain extent shared the opposition towards the government, while Gogol, whose writing activity was the pastoral denunciation of “dead souls”, saw the radical sentiments of his contemporaries, including those from circle of like-minded people, one of the manifestations of the spirit that corrupts Orthodox unity. The general Slavophil views, in which Gogol was in many ways ahead of Khomyakov and his Moscow friends, did not prevent the writer from soberly assessing the extreme views of the “Easterners”, which were a kind of Westernization phenomenon in Slavophilism.