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Pochvennichestvo (/ˈpɒtʃvɛnɪtʃɛstvoʊ/POTCH-veh-NITCH-est-voh; Russian:почвенничество,IPA:[ˈpot͡ɕvʲɪnnʲɪt͡ɕɪstvə], roughly "return to the native soil", fromпочва "soil") was a late 19th-century movement inRussia that tied in closely with its contemporary ideology,Slavophilia.
The Slavophiles and thePochvennichestvo supported the completeemancipation of serfs, stressed a strong desire to return to the idealised past of Russian history, and opposedEuropeanization. They also advocated a complete rejection of thenihilist,classical liberal andMarxist movements of the time. They laid a primary focus on changing Russiansociety by the humbling ofthe self and on social reform through theRussian Orthodox Church, rather than through the radical programs of (for example) theWesternizerintelligentsia.
The Slavophiles and thePochvennichestvo differed in that the former detested the Westernisation policies of EmperorPeter the Great (r. 1682–1725), but the latter praised what they saw as the benefits of the notorious ruler who maintained a strongpatriotic mentality for what became sloganised under Emperor Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) as "Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality". Another major difference was that many of the leaders ofPochvennichestvo and their supporters adopted a militantanti-Protestant,anti-Catholic andantisemitic stance.
The movement had its roots in the works of the German philosopherJohann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), who focused primarily on emphasising the differences between peoples and regional cultures.[1][need quotation to verify][2] In addition, it rejected theuniversalism ofthe Enlightenment period.Pochvennichestvo originated in the early 1850s with the "young editors" working at the journalMoskvityanin.[3]The most prominent[according to whom?] Russian intellectuals who founded the movement wereApollon Grigoryev (1822–1864),[4]Nikolay Strakhov (1828–1896),Nikolay Danilevsky (1822–1885) andKonstantin Leontyev (1831–1891).[citation needed]
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) also came to support such views, as expressed in his 1873 novelDemons. The ideology was later adopted by EmperorsAlexander III (r. 1881–1894) andNicholas II (r. 1894–1917).[citation needed]
The origins of the movement go back to the beginning of the 1850s when a group of young aesthetes - the so-called 'young editors' - took control of the literature and literary criticism sections of the Moscow journalMoskvitianin.
As the founder of the movement, [Grigor'ev] had also served as the guardian of its purity.
