AKSAKOV, IVAN AND KONSTANTIN. - Russian writers and publicists of the 19th century, sons of Sergei Timofeevich Aksakov (1791-1859). The elder, Konstantin (1817-60), spent almost his whole life in Moscow, where he did his studies and published, in 1847, his dissertation: Lomonosov in the History of Russian Literature and Language. At first inclined "toward Westernism," he became, along with his brother Ivan, an ardent follower of the Slavophile school, led by Ivan Kireevsky (1806-56) and A. S. Khomyakov (1804-60; v.).
His task was to give an appearance of solidity, through the study of national history, to the fundamental thesis of the movement: the total corruption and impotence of the Western states, all of which arose from violence and were led by it to political revolution and religious schism, as against Russia, founded on the principle of liberty, which has assured it the unity of the faith and the freely respected unity of power. To sustain this great paradox Konstantin displays much ingenuity. But the true history of Russia openly contradicts his assertions. To give consistency to his thesis, he also appealed to poetry and drama. In various writings he opposes the sound common sense of the Russian people to the bourgeois classes, corrupted by Western culture.
His brother Ivan (1823-86) was a prolific writer, after having led the life of a civil servant until 1852. He too published, in defense of Slavophile ideas, a series of writings with a paternalistically democratic and Pan-Slavist tendency. Persecuted by the censorship, which suppressed several periodicals of which he was the initiator, he did not lose heart and continued tirelessly until his death to fight for his ideal, against the liberalism imported from the West.
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Martino Jugie