Team Westernizer’s Closing Statement

The Slavophiles did not not truly understand Russia. They spoke false histories, favored subjugation, and defended their arguments with a corrupted Christianity. It was not western influence that brought Russia to a point where intolerant autocrats flourished. Rather, it was its established institutions that halted western progress, such as Orthodoxy. This distortion of Christianity, altered by man to better suit himself, allowed the Slavophiles to defend the oppression of the Russian people by an all powerful tsar in the name of “moral freedom”, This contorted view of the rights of man is the very thing responsible for Russia’s status at the time, further strengthened by the false histories the Slavophiles would spew. The popular view among them, that in the beginning of Russia’s history they favored foreign rule rather than their own, is a myth. And their argument than an absolutist government is the only form able to rule over Russia is contradicted by their aggravation with what was their current ruler: An absolutist behaving as an absolutist.