The East, Russia, and Slavism

Konstantin Nikolaevich Leontiev (1831-1891) was a prominent Russian conservative publicist and statesman who advocated for closer cultural ties between Russia and the East and against what he perceived as the catastrophic egalitarianism and utilitarian influences of the West. Leontiev saw that Western civilization was in deep crisis and that Russian society had no need to adopt its liberal-democratic institutions. He believed that state and public life in the Russian Empire should be based on "Byzantinism" - a strong autocratic power, strict churchliness, and a rigid class-hierarchical division of society. The published collection of selected works, compiled by Leontiev and first published in Moscow in 1885-1886, is relevant even today. This edition includes the article "The Disillusioned Slavophile" by the prominent religious philosopher Sergey Nikolaevich Trubetskoy (1861-1905), which reflects on the dynamics and some paradoxical contradictions of K.N. Leontiev.

Leontiev's legacy is of interest to historians, specialists in the humanities, and serves as an engaging educational reading for erudite readers - revealing the geopolitical vectors of Russia's development in the current time.