Russian intellectual life grew by leaps and bounds in the 1840's and 50's, despite crackdowns on publishing, etc. under Nicholas I. One of the major groups that developed out of the atmosphere were the Slavophiles.
The Slavophiles were a group of romantic intellectuals who created an ideology based on the idea of the superiority of the historical mission of Orthodoxy and Russia. These men were all landholders, with a wide variety of interests. They were well educated and leading members of society, and they created a salon-type movement which grew rapidly in the 1840's and 50's, meeting primarily in Moscow.

Sobornost

The foundation of the religious ideology of the group lay with the idea of sobornost, an association in love, freedom, and truth of believers, which the Slavophiles believed was the basis for Orthodoxy. The Slavophiles believed that such ideals could be found historically in the lives of the Russian peasantry which had lived (and continued to live, in some areas) in communes, and in the formation of the zemskii sobor, the traditional land council.

The opposite ideals (rationalism, necessity, and compulsion) were, in the minds of the Slavophiles, the center of Catholicism and all other ideas and religions of the West. Peter the Great had introduced these ideas to Russia, and had seduced the educated public, and it was the responsibility of the Slavophiles to cure Russia by returning to the native peoples, and then bringing that cure to the west.

These ideas largely fit the traditional framework of Romanticism in the west (the return to simplicity, an embracing of the necessities of life, etc). The Slavophiles' message was one which irritated Nicholas I and his government, because it was basically a disregarding of traditional religious structures in place of a form of religious anarchy. This clearly did not fit in with Nicholas's ideas of Orthodoxy. However, the Slavophiles remained opposed to virtually all things Western, which Nicholas did favour, because it meant that autocracy did remain paramount as the ruling system.

Success and Failure for the Slavophiles

The Slavophiles were opposed by the Westernisers, which was a less cohesive and more fluid group intellectually. The basic idea of the Westernisers was that Russia could only achieve her mission of superiority in the context of western and therefore European civilisation. As a result, they praised the ideas of Peter I but demanded even further reform and Westernisation, and a dramatic step away from all things Russian, including language, history, art, etc. Their writings and demands took a wide range of forms, from moderate to radical: the most famous of their group were Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin. Herzen was a more progressive Westerniser, writing from Europe (specifically London); Bakunin was more radical and favoured nihilism and anarchy. The Westernizers would find a champion (to a degree) in Alexander II, but would be dismissed by both Alexander III and Nicholas II. In the early 20th century, Sergei Witte was accused of being a Westernizer, and was forced out of government for a time as a result.

All in all, the Slavophile movement gained significant allies in the government and the nobility, especially in the reign of Nicholas I.