DANILEVSKIJ, NIROLAJ JAKOVLEVIC. - Russian political writer, b. in Moscow on 10 Dec. 1822, d. in Tiflis on 19 Nov. 1885, famous above all for his book Russia and Europe (St. Petersburg 1871), in which, perhaps not without reason, people wished to see expressed, by a man who held no political office, a thought pleasing to the leaders of Russian foreign policy.
An advocate of a Pan-Slav ideal, he dreamed of a great federation of the Slavic peoples, also including Greece and Romania, with Russia at its head and Constantinople as its capital. Of lesser importance is a work of his entitled Darwinism (ibid. 1885). The figure of D. has frequently been recalled in recent times because of certain elements of his thought that seem to foreshadow present orientations of the foreign policy of the U.S.S.R.