The Second Generation: The Stankevich Circle (1831-1840)

Kai Froeb2026

This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume I, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.

The Historical Context: Post-Decembrist Russia

The 1830s stood under the sign of reaction. Nicholas I (reigned 1825-1855) had, after the bloody suppression of the Decembrist uprising, established a regime of surveillance and censorship. The notorious “Third Section” (secret police) monitored every stirring of political or intellectual resistance.[1]

In this atmosphere of oppression, something remarkable occurred: a new generation of young intellectuals turned not to politics but to philosophy—precisely because political activity was impossible. Philosophy became a substitute for forbidden political discussion, an inner emigration, a space of freedom in an unfree land.[2]

But it would be a mistake to see this turn to philosophy as mere escapism. For the young Russians, philosophy—as already for the Lyubomudry—was existential truth-seeking. They read Hegel not as an academic exercise but as guidance for life, as a path to self-knowledge and to the knowledge of Russia.[3]

Nikolai Stankevich - The Philosophical Martyr

Nikolai Vladimirovich Stankevich (Николай Владимирович Станкевич, 1813-1840) was the central figure of the second generation of Russian Hegelians—although he himself never published a line and died of tuberculosis at only 27.[4]

Biography and Character

Stankevich came from the landed gentry of Voronezh province. In 1830 he came to Moscow to study at the university, where he studied philology and history. From the outset he showed an extraordinary gift for philosophy and an even more unusual purity of character, which deeply impressed everyone who knew him.[5]

Mikhail Bakunin, the later revolutionary, wrote of Stankevich:

“He was a man of rare purity and beauty of soul, a true idealist in the highest sense of the word, whose whole life was an unceasing, passionate striving for truth.”[6]

Belinsky too, who later converted to materialism, remained deeply devoted to Stankevich throughout his life:

“He was for us the living embodiment of the realized ideal—of a person who is completely one with his idea, who shapes his life according to the idea.”[7]

The Founding of the Circle (1831-1833)

Between 1831 and 1833, a philosophical circle formed around Stankevich, loosely reminiscent of the Lyubomudry but showing essential differences:

Differences from the Lyubomudry:

  1. No formal organization: The Stankevich Circle was not a “society” with statutes, but an informal circle of friends
  2. Stronger focus on Hegel: While the Lyubomudry had still been Schellingians, Stankevich and his friends studied Hegel systematically
  3. Broader social range: The Lyubomudry were without exception high nobility; the Stankevich Circle also included “raznochintsy” (Разночинцы)—intellectuals of non-noble origin, such as Belinsky[8]

The members of the circle:

  • Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)—later an anarchist
  • Vissarion Belinsky (1811-1848)—later a radical critic and proto-socialist
  • Konstantin Aksakov (1817-1860)—later a Slavophile
  • Timofei Granovsky (1813-1855)—later a liberal historian
  • Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)—later a writer (in the circle for a time)
  • Alexander Herzen (1812-1870)—in his own circle, but in contact with Stankevich[9]

From this small circle emerged nearly all the significant Russian intellectuals of the next generation—an astonishing concentration of intellectual energy![10]

The Systematic Study of Hegel

The Method of Reading Together

The Stankevich Circle differed from the Lyubomudry not only in composition but also in method. The friends read Hegel together, sentence by sentence, discussing every paragraph until all had understood it.[11]

Bakunin recalled:

“We gathered almost every evening—at Stankevich’s, at mine, or at Belinsky’s—and read Hegel together. […] No sentence was passed over without our discussing it and arriving at a shared understanding. This work was laborious, but incredibly fruitful.”[12]

This method of shared philosophical struggle for understanding shaped the circle deeply. Philosophy was not individual reading but a dialogical process—a “philosophy of conversation” that would later become characteristic of the Russian tradition.[13]

This systematic-philological way of working marked a qualitative leap compared to the Lyubomudry. While Odoevsky had read Hegel through Schelling’s lens, the Stankevich Circle attempted to grasp Hegel’s own method—not to receive it eclectically and inspirationally, but to retrace the inner movement of the text step by step.[14]

The Works Read

The circle studied systematically:

  1. ”Phenomenology of Spirit” (1807)—the first joint reading, 1835-1836
  2. ”Science of Logic” (1812-1816)—the most demanding work, 1836-1837
  3. ”Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences” (1817/1827/1830)—as an overview, 1837-1838
  4. ”Elements of the Philosophy of Right” (1821)—the most politically explosive, 1837-1839
  5. ”Lectures on the Philosophy of History” (posthumous, 1837)—the most historically relevant, 1838-1840[15]

Notable: the friends read Hegel in German—no translations existed at that time. This presupposes that all members had an excellent command of German (which was not unusual among the noble and educated youth of the time).[16]

The Significance of the “Phenomenology” - The Discovery of the Immanent Method

The “Phenomenology of Spirit” was the first work read jointly and had the strongest effect. Stankevich wrote in a letter in 1835:

“The Phenomenology is like a revelation to me. I understand now that life is not chaos, but a necessary process, a path of spirit to itself.”[17]

For the young Russians, the “Phenomenology” offered an alternative to both mechanical materialism and effusive romanticism: a path of reason that nonetheless does not negate the concrete, the individual, the suffering, but recognizes it as a necessary stage.[18]

The decisive philosophical insight was the discovery of Hegel’s immanent method: Hegel develops the shapes of consciousness not through external construction or dogmatic positing, but through self-examination of each shape. Consciousness applies its own criteria to itself and thereby discovers its one-sidedness. It then passes over to a new shape that sublates this one-sidedness—not through external compulsion, but through inner necessity.[19]

This insight was revolutionary for Russian thought: one need not criticize from outside (as the French Enlightenment thinkers did with their abstract principles), but could unfold the immanent dialectic of a position—measuring it against its own standards and thereby revealing its limits. Critique becomes self-critique, refutation becomes self-sublation.

The famous passage on “master and servant” was discussed intensively—and later interpreted by Herzen and others in a revolutionary sense, as a depiction of class struggle. But in the Stankevich Circle it was initially a matter of philosophical significance: the dialectic of recognition and self-consciousness, which shows that self-consciousness cannot constitute itself in isolation, but only in relation to another self-consciousness.[20]

The Splitting of the Circle: Slavophiles and Westernizers (from 1839)

The “Philosophy of Right” as a Turning Point

The reading of the “Elements of the Philosophy of Right” (from 1837) led to growing tensions in the circle. Hegel’s famous statement:

“What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational”[21]

became the stumbling block. How was this statement to be understood?

Conservative reading (later: Slavophiles):

  • The existing order is rational
  • The Russian monarchy and Orthodoxy are actual, hence rational
  • Reconciliation with reality is the task of philosophy[22]

Revolutionary reading (later: Westernizers):

  • Only the rational is truly actual
  • The merely existing (tsarist rule) is un-actual, because un-rational
  • Critique and change are the task of philosophy[23]

This split was initially bridged, but it deepened through:

  • The “Lectures on the Philosophy of History” (from 1838), which scarcely mentioned Russia and presented the “Germanic” West as the culmination of history
  • Hegel’s assessment of Orthodoxy as inferior to Protestantism
  • The general political tightening in Russia after 1839[24]
Stankevich’s Death (1840) and the End of Unity

On June 25, 1840, Stankevich died in Novi (Northern Italy) of tuberculosis. He was only 27 years old. The circle lost its integrating personality, its philosophical and moral center.[25]

Belinsky wrote after Stankevich’s death:

“Something in me has died with him. The circle cannot continue without him—he was our soul, our conscience, our binding tie.”[26]

Indeed, after 1840 the circle split into two camps:

The Slavophiles:

  • Konstantin Aksakov and his brother Ivan Aksakov
  • Yuri Samarin
  • Later also: Ivan Kireevsky (from the first generation!)
  • Emphasized: Russia’s own path, Orthodoxy, community (obshchina), critique of the rationalist West[27]

The Westernizers:

  • Vissarion Belinsky
  • Alexander Herzen
  • Timofei Granovsky
  • Ivan Turgenev
  • Emphasized: Russia’s backwardness, the necessity of Westernization, reason and progress[28]

The irony: both sides invoked Hegel! The Slavophiles saw in the Russian community the realization of Hegelian ethical life; the Westernizers saw in European civilization the realization of absolute spirit. Hegel became a battle-cry in a conflict he himself had never intended.[29]

The Philosophical Clarification of the Controversy

From the perspective of the Hegel interpretation underlying this work, it becomes clear: both sides—Slavophiles and Westernizers—missed Hegel’s position, each by interpreting it one-sidedly.[30]

The error of the conservative reading (Slavophiles): They read “what is rational is actual” as legitimation of the existing order. But Hegel distinguishes precisely between existence (mere being-there) and actuality (rational existence). Not everything that exists is actual in the philosophical sense. “Actuality” is the unity of inner and outer, of concept and existence.[31]

This means: an institution is only “actual” if it fulfills its own normative claims. A “state” that oppresses its citizens is not a real state in the Hegelian sense—it is mere existence, not the realization of the concept.

The error of the revolutionary reading (Westernizers): They read “what is actual is rational” as a mere projection of the ought onto the is. But Hegel does not claim: “Everything I find rational will already become actual.” Rather: “What is actual contains rational structures that can be recognized and conceptually explicated.”

The task is neither passive affirmation nor utopian projection, but critical reconstruction: What rational structures are inherent in the existing institutions? Where do they contradict their own claims? How can they be developed further from within themselves?[32]

The systematic point: Hegel’s position overcomes the alternative between “conservatism” and “revolutionism.” Reason is neither timeless-transcendent (Plato) nor purely subjective-utopian (Kant), but historically immanent. It is grasped in the process of its own realization—but this process is no mere affirmation, but critical development.

  1. On the political context of the Nicholaevan era: Nicholas V. Riasanovsky: Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825-1855, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959. On the “Third Section”: P. S. Squire: The Third Department: The Political Police in the Russia of Nicholas I, Cambridge: CUP, 1968. ↩︎

  2. This thesis is put forward by Isaiah Berlin: “Philosophy became the only legitimate discourse on society and man.” See: Isaiah Berlin: Russian Thinkers, London: Penguin, 1978, pp. 114-119. ↩︎

  3. Sarychev 2021, pp. 6-8. The existential seriousness distinguishes the Russian Hegelians from their German and French contemporaries, for whom Hegel increasingly became “academic philosophy.” ↩︎

  4. On Stankevich’s biography: Edward J. Brown: Stankevich and His Moscow Circle, 1830-1840, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1966. German summary in Dmitrij Tschižewskij: Hegel bei den Slaven, Reichenberg: Stiepel, 1934, pp. 92-110. ↩︎

  5. Brown 1966, pp. 35-47. All contemporaries emphasized Stankevich’s extraordinary personality. ↩︎

  6. M. A. Bakunin: Sobranie sočinenij i pisem, Moscow 1934, Vol. 3, p. 89, quoted in Brown 1966, p. 40. ↩︎

  7. V. G. Belinsky: Polnoe sobranie sočinenij, Moscow: AN SSSR, 1953-59, Vol. 12, p. 23. ↩︎

  8. “Raznochintsy” (literally: “people of various ranks”) was the term for intellectuals from non-noble families—sons of priests, merchants, low-ranking officials. In the nineteenth century they formed a new social stratum. See: Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter: Social Identity in Imperial Russia, DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1997. ↩︎

  9. This list follows Brown 1966, pp. 75-91, with additions from Tschižewskij 1934, pp. 95-98. The later ideological divergence of these men is striking: anarchist, socialist, conservative, liberal—all emerged from the same philosophical circle! ↩︎

  10. Isaiah Berlin remarks: “It is hard to find an equivalent in intellectual history—perhaps the circle around Schlegel in Jena, but even that was not so consequential.” Berlin 1978, p. 117. ↩︎

  11. Brown 1966, pp. 115-120. This method of reading together was later adopted by Russian revolutionaries underground—the famous “circles” of the Narodniks and Marxists studied Capital and Lenin by the same method! ↩︎

  12. Bakunin: Sobranie sočinenij, Vol. 3, p. 142, quoted in Brown 1966, p. 117. ↩︎

  13. This “dialogical” tradition continued in Solovyov, Berdyaev, Shestov, Bakhtin. See: Mikhail Bakhtin: Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Munich: Hanser, 1971, ch. 1, on “dialogical philosophy.” ↩︎

  14. Sarychev 2021, Vol. 1, pp. 180-195, documents the circle’s reading protocols. They show that the members attempted to retrace Hegel’s argumentation step by step—not merely to excerpt “results.” This philological precision fundamentally distinguished the Stankevich Circle from the first generation. ↩︎

  15. This list follows Brown 1966, pp. 120-135, with datings from letters and diaries of those involved. ↩︎

  16. Brown 1966, p. 117. Only from the 1850s onward did Russian Hegel translations appear, beginning with the Philosophy of Right (1856). ↩︎

  17. N. V. Stankevich: Perepiska, Moscow 1914, p. 347, letter to Ya. M. Neverov of July 22, 1835, quoted in Brown 1966, p. 122. ↩︎

  18. Brown 1966, pp. 122-125. The “Phenomenology” offered a philosophical justification of suffering—every stage of alienation is necessary for the development of self-consciousness. This was existentially significant for the young Russians under the rule of Nicholas! ↩︎

  19. From the perspective of the logic interpretation underlying this work (ch. 1.5, 22.2), this corresponds to the first fundamental operation: self-application (σ). The Phenomenology applies the criteria of consciousness to itself and thereby discovers the one-sidedness of every position. The Stankevich Circle grasped this performative structure in its practical significance—even if they could not yet explicate it in this systematic terminology. This discovery of the immanent method was the lasting philosophical achievement of the second generation of Russian Hegelians. ↩︎

  20. On the “master-servant dialectic” and its reception: Alexandre Kojève: Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1975, pp. 11-33. Kojève’s interpretation (Paris, 1930s) stands in direct continuity with the Russian reading! ↩︎

  21. Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Werke 7, p. 24 (Preface). ↩︎

  22. This interpretation was held in Germany by the “Old Hegelians,” in Russia by the Slavophiles. See: Andrzej Walicki: A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1979, pp. 92-116. ↩︎

  23. This interpretation was held by the “Young Hegelians” (Feuerbach, Marx), in Russia by the Westernizers. See: Walicki 1979, pp. 116-140. ↩︎

  24. Brown 1966, pp. 165-178. The “Philosophy of History” was especially problematic because it characterized Russia as a “land of the future”—but without saying what this future would be. ↩︎

  25. On Stankevich’s death and its effect: Brown 1966, pp. 205-225. ↩︎

  26. Belinsky: Polnoe sobranie sočinenij, Vol. 11, p. 549, letter to V. P. Botkin, August 1840. ↩︎

  27. Foundational on the Slavophiles: Andrzej Walicki: The Slavophile Controversy, Oxford: OUP, 1975. Peter K. Christoff: An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, 4 vols., Boulder: Westview Press, 1961-1991. ↩︎

  28. On the Westernizers: Martin Malia: Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, Cambridge MA: Harvard UP, 1961. Walicki 1979, pp. 116-180. ↩︎

  29. Isaiah Berlin has masterfully described this irony: “Hegel would have been horrified had he known what political battles were fought in his name.” Berlin 1978, p. 138. ↩︎

  30. This corresponds to the third fundamental operation of the logic interpretation: sublation. Opposites are neither harmonized nor played off against each other, but grasped simultaneously in their truth and their limit. (Ch. 22.2-22.3) ↩︎

  31. Cf. logic interpretation, ch. 7.2: “Actuality—Substance, Causality, and Reciprocity.” Actuality is not the same as facticity, but the unity of possibility and necessity. ↩︎

  32. This position is further developed in the ethics conception underlying this work (ch. 21: “Ethics”): the nine criteria for legitimate institutions are neither dogmatic nor arbitrary, but derived from the idea of life and open to further development. An institution must be able to examine itself (criterion 9: self-reflexivity). ↩︎