AKSAKOV, IVAN and KONSTANTIN. - Russian litterateurs and publicists of the 19th century, sons of Sergei Timofeevič Aksakov (1791-1859). The elder, Konstantin (1817-60), spent almost his entire life in Moscow, where he studied and in 1847 published his thesis: *Lomonosov nella storia della letteratura e della lingua russa*. Initially inclined toward “Westernism,” he became, with his brother Ivan, an ardent follower of the Slavophile school led by Ivan Kirevskij (1806-56) and A. S. Chomjakov (1804-60; v.).
His task was to lend an appearance of solidity, through the study of national history, to the fundamental thesis of the movement: the total corruption and impotence of Western states, all born of violence and driven by it to political revolution and religious schism, in contrast to Russia, founded on the principle of freedom, which has ensured her the unity of faith and the freely respected unity of power. To uphold this grand paradox, Konstantin displayed considerable ingenuity. Yet the true history of Russia openly contradicts his claims. To give substance to his thesis, he also appealed to poetry and drama. In various writings he contrasts the sound common sense of the Russian people with 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 censors, who suppressed several periodicals of which he was the founder, he did not lose heart and continued unflaggingly until his death to fight for his ideal against the liberalism imported from the West.