“No one dares to mentally throw a dirty reproach at me for defending autocracy”: to the question of the attitude of I. S. Aksakov to the Russian autocracy

The article reveals the content of the attitude of I. S. Aksakov to the Slavophil doctrine of land and state, which he supplemented with a theory of society. In connection with the attitude of Aksakov to the authorities, the nature of the opposition of Slavophilism is explained. The doctrine of social peace proposed by the Slavophils was opposed to the idea of statehood as a universal form of the country's existence. Autocracy was recognized as a historically conditioned form of government, organic to the moral ideas of the Russian people, which in the post-Petrine era ceased to correspond to the spirit of the Russian people. Therefore, defending the principle of autocracy, Aksakov criticized the government and the defenders of power for the lack of national identity. Thus, the Slavophil trend was contrasted with adjacent traditionalist trends in a single conservative field of Russian social thought. Aksakov's struggle for the national ideal of autocratic power is illustrated in the article by little-known facts and details of a non-public nature, reflected in personal correspondence and draft notes.