The Controversy Between the Slavophiles and Westernizers About Personality and the Choice of Direction for Russian Literature

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Guminsky, V. M. “The Controversy Between the Slavophiles and Westernizers About Personality and the Choice of Direction for Russian Literature.” Dva veka russkoi klassiki, vol. 7, no. 4, 2025, pp. 90–135. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2686-7494-2025-7-4-90-135
Abstract:
For the first time in literary studies, this article raises the question of the influence of Professor S. P. Shevyrev’s lectures on Old Russian literature on the development of literary and social processes in Russia in the mid-19th century. The concept of the author’s personality in the early stages of Old Russian chronicling proved relevant to contemporaries. Shevyrev’s observation prompted Gogol to rethink “Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends,” where he attempted to use his own example to call readers to spiritual renewal. Shevyrev’s thought largely became defining for the Slavophile movement. This article explores the opposing approaches to the question of personality through a problematic and analytical review of the journal debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles. For Westerners, the formation of a self-valuable individual determined the socio-cultural progress of Western European countries, unlike Russia, where the “principles of personality” were absent, at least until Peter the Great. Slavophiles believed that the central principle in the development of the Russian concept of personality was the Christian principle of conciliarity, realized in the life of the peasant community and the Orthodox Church: each individual voluntarily sacrifices their own interests for the sake of a common goal.
Keywords: personality, Westerners, Slavophiles, peasant community, A. S. Pushkin, N. V. Gogol, K. S. Aksakov, drama, art.
Author: Viktor M. Guminsky
Information about the author:
Viktor M. Guminsky, Director of Research, A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7837-178Х

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Received: July 03, 2025
Approved after reviewing: September 24, 2025
Published: December 25, 2025
Issue: 2025 Volume 7 No. 4
Department: Russian Literature of the 18th–19th Centuries
Pages: 90-135
DOI: Visit Website
EDN:
https://elibrary.ru/PSTRVV
UDK: 821.161.1.09"19"
Publication Type: Research Article

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