Kohanovskaya's name in polemics of pochvenniks and slavophils

The history of relationship between two close literary circles of Slavophils and Pochvennics is studied in the article. The similarity and differences between these ideological directions are exemplified through one important episode, which is associated with references to the works executed by N. S. Sohanskaya (Kohanovskaya). The main representative of Slavophils S. Aksakov criticized “ Vremya”, a periodical of brothers Dostoevsky, for its anonymous article “On the phenomenon of contemporary literature ignored by our critics. Mrs. Kohanovskaya and her novelettes”. This article repeated many of the Slavophils’ ideas but did not include any references to the reviews of Kohanovskaya’s works, which were published earlier in the Slavophils’ periodical “Russkaya Reseda”. One publication written by an anonymous author is compared to the article of N. P. Gilyarov-Platonov, who was close to Slavophils. His work was titled “On the new narrative written by Mrs. Kohanovskaya "From a provincial gallery of portraits"”. Both articles pointed to the similarity of the works written by Kohanovskaya to the oeuvre of S. T. Aksakov and underlined their positive penchant. Besides, one of the journalists from the periodical “ Vremya” criticized an article about S. T. Aksakov in the “Encyclopedic dictionary composed by the Russian scientists and literary men” (St. Petersburg, 1861). N. M. Pavlov’s article about Kohanovskaya appeared in Aksakov’s newspaper “Den”. Pavlov, in his turn, did not respond to the publication in the periodical “Vremya”, albite the similarity in positions of Slavophils and Pochvennic. This similarity becomes evident upon reading the article written by Saltykov-Shchedrin. Later, I. S. Aksakov in his obituary on the death of Kohanovskaya reminisced about “a remarkable article” written in her honor and published in Dostoevsky’s periodical “Vremya”.