Nikolay Strakhov

Who was Nikolay Strakhov?

Nikolay Nikolayevich Strakhov, also transliterated as Nikolai Strahov, 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, Kursk Governorate 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 on the literary journals Time and Epoch together with Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Apollon Grigoryev. He became one of the very few close friends of Leo Tolstoy.

In the 1870s Nikolay Strakhov wrote his most famous philosophical work World as a Whole and was among 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.