From the history of the anti-nihilistic controversy in the 1860s

The article presents a description of some socio-cultural and historical-philosophical processes that took place in Russian society in the 1860s, in a situation of renewal of the entire social life of Russia. The main attention is paid to the polemic between supporters and opponents of nihilism. This phenomenon is interpreted in the context of conservative philosophical criticism as a kind of “negative dogmatism”, the “religion of denial”, which has its own prophets and fanatics. The article provides a brief analysis of critical judgments about nihilism that belong to the largest domestic thinkers of the second half of the 19th century such as F. M. Dostoevsky, N. N. Strakhov and M. N. Katkov. The central place is given to the controversy of the largest representative of spiritual and academic philosophy P. D. Yurkevich with the leading ideologist of nihilism and materialism N. G. Chernyshevsky.