Science Almanac (1845) and Sovremennik (1846). In March 1849, upon the return from Bessarabia, where he had been sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to collect the data on the local religious sects, Aksakov was unexpectedly arrested, the interrogated and released five days later without any explanation. It was supposed later that the letter to his father expressing his outrage as regards the arrest of a renowned Slavophile leader Yuri Samarin might have been the cause. For several years Aksakov remained under the surveillance of the Imperial secret police. In February 1851 Russian Interior minister Count Perovsky summoned Aksakov up to express his disgust with the latter's poem "Brodyaga" (Tramp), about a runaway peasant, which, as it later transpired, became the object of interest for the Third Department as early as 1849. Perovsky demanded that he should stop writing, Aksakov refused and retired from the state service. He moved to Moscow and joined the Slavophiles' circle and started working on the almanac called the Moscow Collection (Московский сборник). Edited by Aksakov, its first volume came out in 1852, and featured his article "Some Words on Gogol" as well as fragments from "The Tramp". A year later both the second volume and the publication itself were closed but the government, and Aksakov was banned from editing. He responded with a piece called "A Day at the Criminal Chamber. Scenes from the Court". Published in London by The Polar Star in 1858 and praised by Alexander Hertzen as "a work of genius", it appeared in print in Russia only in 1892. In November 1853, commissioned by the Russian Geographical Society, Aksakov travelled to Malorossia, where he spent the next year. His vast essay "The Research on Trade at the Ukrainian Fairs" (Исследование о торговле на украинских ярмарках, 1859) came as a result. It was published by the Geographical Society in 1859, and earned its author the Konstantine Medal and half of that year's Demidov Prize. As the Crimea War broke out, Aksakov joined the Serpukhov Druzhina of the Moscow Militia in February 1855 and traveled to Bessarabia. After the war he stayed in the Crimea as a member of the government commission investigating the financial wrongdoings of the Russian intendant services. In early 1857 Aksakov went abroad to visit Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and secretly met Hertzen in London, with whom he started from then on to correspond. More than thirty