Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov (; , village Nadezhdino, Belebeyevsky Uyezd, Orenburg Governorate – , Moscow) was a Russian littérateur and notable Slavophile. Biography Aksakov was born in the village of Nadezhdino (then Orenburg Governorate, now Bashkiria), into a family of prominent Russian writer Sergey Timofeevich Aksakov (1791—1859) and his wife Olga Semyonovna Zaplatina (1793—1878). His mother was the daughter of Major General Semyon Grigorievich Zaplatina and a captured Turkish woman. The third son of eleven children, he was a younger brother of the writers Konstatin and Vera Aksakova. His paternal grandfather Timofey Stepanovich Aksakov belonged to an old noble Aksakov family whose members claimed to be the decedents of Šimon. Their first documented ancestor was Ivan Feodorivich Velyaminov nicknamed Oksak who lived during the 15th century. His family crest was based on the Polish Przyjaciel coat of arms (also known as Aksak) which is considered to be of Tatar origin in Poland (the word «oksak» means «lame» in Turkic languages). All this led some researches to believe that the Aksakov family also originated from Tatars, despite they had no relation to the Polish noble house. Aksakov's maternal grandfather was a Russian General Semyon Grigorievich Zaplatin who fought under the command of Alexander Suvorov and who married a Turkish captive Igel-Syum. Aksakov spent his early years in Nadezhdino. In the autumn of 1826 he moved with his family to Moscow where he received good home education. Career In 1838 Aksakov enrolled in the recently opened Imperial School of Jurisprudence. Upon the graduation in 1842, he returned to Moscow and took up a post in the Russian Senate's Criminal Investigation department. After three years's assignment in Astrakhan as a member of the Audit Commission, led by Prince Pavel Gagarin and later Kaluga (as deputy chairman of the local Criminal Investigation Chamber) he returned to the Senate, as its First Department's official. During the early 1840s Aksakov wrote a lot of poetry. Mostly satirical, his early work was compiled in the summer of 1846 into what was supposed to become his first collection, it centerpiece being "The Life of a Government Official" (Жизнь чиновника. Мистерия в трех периодах, 1843; published in London in 1861, in Russia in 1886). The book was cut by the censor in such a way that Aksakov decided against publishing what's been left; his whole poetic legacy came out posthumously. Several of his poems appeared in the Moscow Literature and