[1] Depending on the historical context, the opposite of Slavophilia could be seen as Slavophobia (a fear of Slavic culture) or also what some Russian intellectuals (such as Ivan Aksakov) called zapadnichestvo (westernism).
Rural life was praised by the movement, which opposed industrialization and urban development, and protection of the "mir" was seen as an important measure to prevent the growth of the working class.
Drawing on the works of Greek Church Fathers, the philosopher Aleksey Khomyakov (1804–60) and his devoutly Orthodox colleagues elaborated a traditionalistic doctrine that claimed Russia has its own distinct way, which should avoid imitating "Western" institutions.
[6] In the sphere of practical politics, Slavophilism manifested itself as a pan-Slavic movement for the unification of all Slavic people under leadership of the Russian tsar and for the independence of the Balkan Slavs from Ottoman rule.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 is usually considered[citation needed] a high point of this militant Slavophilism, as expounded by the charismatic Russian military commander General Mikhail Skobelev.
[15] When the Polish uprising of 1863 started, Slavophiles used anti-Polish sentiment to foster feelings of national unity in the Russian people,[16][need quotation to verify] and the idea of the cultural union of all Slavs was abandoned.
[17][need quotation to verify] With that, Poland became firmly established to Slavophiles as a symbol of Catholicism and Western Europe, that they detested,[18] and as Poles were never assimilated within the Russian Empire -constantly resisting Russian occupation of their country - in the end, Slavophiles came to concede that annexation of Poland was a mistake when they realised that the Polish nation could not be russified.
After serfdom was abolished in Russia and the end of the uprising in Poland, new Slavophile thinkers appeared in the 1870s and 1880s, represented by scholars such as Nikolay Danilevsky, who expounded a view of history as circular, and Konstantin Leontiev.
[22] Later writers Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Konstantin Leontyev, and Nikolay Danilevsky developed a peculiar conservative version of Slavophilism, Pochvennichestvo (from the Russian word for soil).
The teaching, as articulated by Konstantin Pobedonostsev (Ober-Procurator of the Russian Orthodox Church), was adopted as the official tsarist ideology during the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II.
That, in turn, influenced their foreign policy ideas, such as Kennan's belief that the revival of the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate, in 1943, would lead to the reform or overthrow of Joseph Stalin's rule.