AKSAKOV, IVAN and KONSTANTIN. – Russian writers and publishers of the 19th century, sons of Sergio Timofeevic Aksakov (1791–1859). The elder, Konstantin (1817–60), spent almost his entire life in Moscow, where he pursued his studies and published, in 1847, his doctoral dissertation: Lomonosus nella storia della letteratura e della lingua russa. At first inclined toward “Westernism,” he became, together 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 movement’s fundamental thesis: the total corruption and impotence of the Western states, all of them born of violence and led by it to political revolution and religious schism, in contrast with Russia, founded on the principle of freedom, which has assured it unity of faith and the freely respected unity of power. In defending this great paradox, Konstantin displayed considerable ingenuity. But the true history of Russia openly contradicts his assertions. To lend substance to his thesis, he also appealed to poetry and drama. In various writings he contrasted 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 censorship, which suppressed several periodicals of which he was the founder, he did not become discouraged and continued tirelessly until his death to fight for his ideal, against liberalism imported from the West.
BBL.: Kritiko-biografichii slovar' russkich pisatelej i učenich (Critical-biographical dictionary of Russian writers and scholars), edited by S. A. Vengerov, s. v., I. Saint Petersburg 1889 (with an extensive bibliography); P. Strube, in Slavonic Review, 2 (1923–24); E. Radlov, Storia della filosofia russa, translated by E. Lo Gatto, Rome 1925; B. Jakovenko, Filosofi russi, Rome 1927. Martino Jugie