Nikolay Strakhov
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Nikolay Nikolayevich Strakhov, also transliterated as Nikolai Strahov (Russian: Страхов Николай Николаевич) (October 16, 1828 - January 24, 1896) was a Russian philosopher, publicist and literary critic who shared the ideals of pochvennichestvo. He was a long-time friend and correspondent of Leo Tolstoy.
Nikolay Strakhov was born in Belgorod in a priest family. In 1851 Nikolay Strakhov graduated from Saint Petersburg Main Pedagogical Institute and became a teacher in Odessa. In 1861 Nikolay Strakhov moved to Saint Petersburg and became a prominent publicist and literary critic. Nikolay Strakhov worked in a literary journal "Time" together with Fyodor Dostoevsky and Apollon Grigoryev. He became one of the very few close friends of Leo Tolstoy.
In 1870s Nikolay Strakhov wrote his most famous philosophical work World as a Whole and was among the first (if not the first) to recognize Tolstoy's War and Peace as one of the world's greatest novels. Nikolay Strakhov was also one of the most prominent opponents of Liberalism, Rationalism and Utilitarianism in Russia, who contributed greatly to the development of traditionalist Slavophile ideology and its more conservative and nationalist variant known as Pochvennichestvo. In 1883 Nikolay Strakhov wrote The Struggle Against the West in Russian Literature where he supported ideas of Nikolay Danilevsky and claimed that Western European rationalism lacks scientific grounds.
Nikolay Strakhov supported and encouraged young Vasily Rozanov to become writer and philosopher. Despite his conservatism and support for official government ideology of Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and National Character he was at times criticized by pro-government publications such as Mikhail Katkov’s Moskovskie Vedomosti. Russian liberals bitterly resented Nikolay Strakhov and considered him a reactionary philosopher.
Nikolay Strakhov died in Saint Petersburg in 1896; he never married and had no children.
