KIREEVSKIJ, Ivan Vasilevič. — Russian thinker and publicist, b. in Moscow on 22 March 1805, d. in St Petersburg on 11 June 1856. In his youth he came under the influence of German idealist philosophy and became one of the leading exponents of the Slavophile school.
In 1832 he founded the *Europeec* (*Europee*). Important for its historical insights and lively polemic against the “Westernizers” is his essay *O Charaktere prosvetěenija Europy i ego otnos̆eni k prosvetěeniju Rossii* (*On the Character of European Culture and its Relation to Russian Culture*), published in *Moskovskyj Sbornik* (1852).
To Western Aristotelian philosophy, which he accused of failing to grasp the true laws of reality, K. opposed another philosophy, which he believed to be deeper and more complete, grounded in full and pure faith, namely “Orthodoxy.”