Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/355

Rh this view. The industrialisation of Moscow, the slavophil centre, was advancing with vigorous strides during the epoch under consideration. Haxthausen, the German slavophil, recognised that the nobles' town had already become a manufacturing town, and he did not fail to perceive and to point out that the process of industrialisation had been furthered by the nobles themselves.

With considerable justice, Pisemskii and others reproached the slavophils on the ground that the latter had no real knowledge of the folk, of the peasantry, and that their disquisitions did not rise above the level of "religio-linguistic sentimentalism."

The slavophils had already drawn attention to the class organisation of society, and might have learned much concerning the class struggled from French historians and socialists. They were, however, unable to realise the existence of classes and class contrasts in Russia, contenting themselves with a vaguely homogeneous conception of "country." Their failure here was in part a failure in the scientific field, for they were affected by the tendency to undue simplification that has always characterised the beginnings of sociological research.

Slavophilism, as a general trend based on the philosophy of history, had close relationships with the general literary movement. Kirěevskii was a historian of literature, whilst his brother acquired a deserved reputation as collector of folk-songs. Others among the slavophils did much to encourage the profounder study of folk-poesy, but Turgenev considers that as artists and thinkers the slavophils never created anything truly vital, for they did not face reality with a sufficiently untrammelled spirit. The criticism is just.

During the Napoleonic wars a patriotic tendency found expression in verse, and the writers of this school immersed themselves in the Russian past, the work of Sergěi Aksakov being a notable example. These trends fortified the slavophil movement (Sergěi's sons being among the founders of slavophilism), but they cannot be regarded as distinctively slavophil.

In youth Sergěi Aksakov had read much anent the ideals