Slavic question in Russian poetry: from Pushkin to Dostoevsky

Abstract

A.S. Pushkin is one of the first poets who raised his voice in support of Russia's foreign policy concerning to the Slavic peoples who were suffering from Turkish authorities’ humiliation. He also declared that Europe should not interfere in the activities of the Slavs, who protected their national interests and the national and historical traditions. The problem will be a landmark for the next generation of Russian thinkers- slavophiles such as A.S. Khomyakov, Y.F. Samarin, I.A. Aksakov, N.M. Iazykov and others. Pushkin’s creative communication with the future Slavophiles was the development of the principles of historicism and nation in the history of Russian literature and determining the vector of Russian social thought. Appeal to the historical past of the Fatherland and national ideals was the basis for the formation of the Orthodox-Slavic ideology of the early Slavophiles. The idealization of the cultural and historical base was transformed into a kind of spiritual and educational program. Under the influence of the Pushkin’s poetry there were defined literary-aesthetic and historiosophical criteria. The poem by F.M. Dostoevsky «On the European events in 1854» was poured into a single voice of the conservative wing of the writers.