Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov (; , village Nadezhdino, Belebeyevsky Uyezd, Orenburg Governorate – , Moscow) was a Russian littérateur and notable Slavophile.
Biography
Aksakov was born in the village of Nadezhdino (then Orenburg Governorate, now Bashkiria), into a family of prominent Russian writer Sergey Timofeevich Aksakov (1791—1859) and his wife Olga Semyonovna Zaplatina (1793—1878). His mother was the daughter of Major General Semyon Grigorievich Zaplatina and a captured Turkish woman. The third son of eleven children, he was a younger brother of the writers Konstatin and Vera Aksakova.
His paternal grandfather Timofey Stepanovich Aksakov belonged to an old noble Aksakov family whose members claimed to be the decedents of Šimon. Their first documented ancestor was Ivan Feodorivich Velyaminov nicknamed Oksak who lived during the 15th century. His family crest was based on the Polish Przyjaciel coat of arms (also known as Aksak) which is considered to be of Tatar origin in Poland (the word «oksak» means «lame» in Turkic languages). All this led some researchers to believe that the Aksakov family also originated from Tatars, despite they had no relation to the Polish noble house. Aksakov's maternal grandfather was a Russian General Semyon Grigorievich Zaplatin who fought under the command of Alexander Suvorov and who married a Turkish captive Igel-Syum.
Aksakov spent his early years in Nadezhdino. In the autumn of 1826 he moved with his family to Moscow where he received good home education.
Career
In 1838 Aksakov enrolled in the recently opened Imperial School of Jurisprudence. Upon the graduation in 1842, he returned to Moscow and took up a post in the Russian Senate's Criminal Investigation department. After three years's assignment in Astrakhan as a member of the Audit Commission, led by Prince Pavel Gagarin and later Kaluga (as deputy chairman of the local Criminal Investigation Chamber) he returned to the Senate, as its First Department's official.
During the early 1840s Aksakov wrote a lot of poetry. Mostly satirical, his early work was compiled in the summer of 1846 into what was supposed to become his first collection, it centerpiece being "The Life of a Government Official" (Жизнь чиновника. Мистерия в трех периодах, 1843; published in London in 1861, in Russia in 1886). The book was cut by the censor in such a way that Aksakov decided against publishing what's been left; his whole poetic legacy came out posthumously. Several of his poems appeared in the Moscow Literature and Science Almanac (1845) and Sovremennik (1846).
In March 1849, upon the return from Bessarabia, where he had been sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to collect the data on the local religious sects, Aksakov was unexpectedly arrested, the interrogated and released five days later without any explanation. It was supposed later that the letter to his father expressing his outrage as regards the arrest of a renowned Slavophile leader Yuri Samarin might have been the cause. For several years Aksakov remained under the surveillance of the Imperial secret police.
In February 1851 Russian Interior minister Count Perovsky summoned Aksakov up to express his disgust with the latter's poem "Brodyaga" (Tramp), about a runaway peasant, which, as it later transpired, became the object of interest for the Third Department as early as 1849. Perovsky demanded that he should stop writing, Aksakov refused and retired from the state service. He moved to Moscow and joined the Slavophiles' circle and started working on the almanac called the Moscow Collection (Московский сборник). Edited by Aksakov, its first volume came out in 1852, and featured his article "Some Words on Gogol" as well as fragments from "The Tramp". A year later both the second volume and the publication itself were closed but the government, and Aksakov was banned from editing. He responded with a piece called "A Day at the Criminal Chamber. Scenes from the Court". Published in London by The Polar Star in 1858 and praised by Alexander Hertzen as "a work of genius", it appeared in print in Russia only in 1892.
In November 1853, commissioned by the Russian Geographical Society, Aksakov travelled to Malorossia, where he spent the next year. His vast essay "The Research on Trade at the Ukrainian Fairs" (Исследование о торговле на украинских ярмарках, 1859) came as a result. It was published by the Geographical Society in 1859, and earned its author the Konstantine Medal and half of that year's Demidov Prize.