The Aksakov Room

In this room in the northern corner of the second floor the interior of the Moscow cabinet of I.S. Aksakov, one of the leaders of the slavophils, is kept. The cabinet furniture, a part of the library and different belongings of Aksakov were brought to Muranovo according to the will of his widow, A.F. Tyutcheva.
On the bureau and the desk there are an ink-pot, a bell (a small copy of the Tsar-bell), a blotting-pad, a wallet and some other things that belonged to Aksakov.
In the room there are several portraits of Aksakov where he is represented as a man of noble appearance, inner purity and high mental qualities.
Here also are the photographs of his wife, Anna Feodorovna. Before marriage she was a maid of honor of Her Majesty's court and was, in particular, the tutor of the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna. Being a witness of the reigns of Nicholas I and Alexander II, she wrote an extremely interesting book of memoirs: "AT the Court of Two Emperors".
Two documents gives us evidence of Aksakov's social activity determined to protect the Slavonic culture. The first one is a photograph of the Russian and foreign guests who came to the opening of the Slavonic Ethnographic Exhibition in 1867 and took part in the Slavonic Congress. The other is a photograph of a remarkable military leader who took part in the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1879, M..D. Scobelev. He gifted the photograph to Aksakov himself.
The bookcase contains different slavophilic issues . Among them is a magazine "Russkaya Beseda" ("The Russian Table-Talk") and the newspapers "Den" ("The Day") and "Moscow", which were published by Aksakov. Poems by F.I.Tyutchev were also published in that issues. Interesting is the fact that a lot of Aksakov's leading articles were written under Tyutchev's influence.
A watercolor by O. Peterson represents a terrace in the estate of E.F. Tyutchev, Varvarino. It became the place of Aksakov's exile in 1878. He was sent there for his speeches against the foreign policy of the state. Here Aksakov wrote a number of poems, including "Among the autumn flowers…" Its autograph is kept in the Muranovo museum.