The Westernizers and the Slava Files

The debates between the westernisers and the slava files would define this generation of russian intellectual life. Russia needed to fully embrace reason, science, liberal politics and economic progress in order to keep pace with their neighbors in the west. The leading light of the westernizers was a guy named viserian belinski. He believed that existence was attempting to resolve towards a great idea, and that idea was freedom. And he concluded that russia must be on a similar track.