The Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word was a conservative and proto-Slavophile

Slavophile

Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...

 literary society founded in St. Petersburg in the early nineteenth century.

The society began meeting as early as 1807, but its regular monthly meetings began in March 1811 in "a beautiful and luxuriously appointed hall in Derzhavin's large home on the banks of the Fontanka

Fontanka

Fontanka is a left branch of the river Neva, which flows through the whole of Central Saint Petersburg, Russia. Its length is 6,700 meters, its width is up to 70 meters, and its depth is up to 3,5 meters. The Fontanka Embankment is lined with the former private residences of Russian nobility.This...

"; as many as 500 people might attend its meetings, and it published its own journal, the Chteniya v Besede lyubitelei russkogo slova (Readings at the Colloquy of Lovers of the Russian Word), whose nineteen issues consisted mainly of material presented at the meetings. It was controlled by conservatives like Derzhavin and Alexander Shishkov

Alexander Shishkov

Alexander Semyonovich Shishkov was a Russian statesman, writer, and admiral.Shishkov was notorious for his proto-Slavophile sentiments. His aversion to loans from other languages was much ridiculed in the liberal press. He was the President of the Russian Academy and People's Education Minister...

 who opposed the liberal reforms of Alexander I

Alexander I of Russia

Alexander I of Russia , served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and the first Russian King of Poland from 1815 to 1825. He was also the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania....

; in literary terms, it sought to ban gallicisms and other foreign infiltrations from the Russian language and looked to Church Slavonic and folk traditions to create an acceptable culture. It was opposed and mocked by the progressive Arzamas Society

Arzamas Society

The Arzamas Society was a literary society in Saint Petersburg in 1815-1818. The society received its name after a humorous work by a Russian statesman Dmitry Bludov called A Vision at the Inn at Arzamas, Published by the Society of Scholars...

. It dissolved after Derzhavin's death in 1816, but was revived as a literary and scholarly society at Moscow University from 1858 to 1930; among the writers speaking at its meetings were A. K. Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...

, Afanasy Fet

Afanasy Fet

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet , was a Russian poet regarded as one of the finest lyricists in Russian literature.-Origins:...

, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....

, Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, and Ivan Bunin.