A fierce opponent of xenophobia, he saw Russia as a European country, and Russians as Europeans. This clashed with the Slavophile doctrine of maintaining Russia's "special place" in the world. "of slavophiles, Khomyakov sickens me when he places [Russia above the West just on the strength of our being Orthodox," Tolstoy wrote in a letter. All the while, well-publicized was his dispute with Turgenev, who saw the French state as Russia's potential guiding light. "What France is moving towards is the dictatorship of mediocrity," Tolstoy argued. Being neither a westernizer nor a slavophile, Tolstoy annoyed both parties by his infatuation with pre-Tatar Russian society which he idealized whole-heartedly, seeing it as an Eastern strain of European knighthood, based on the cult of the nobleman. Also causing controversy were Tolstoy's critique of the West's amoral pragmatism and socialist ideas, his dismissal of the Russian imperial ideals which he saw as tragically flawed, and his own doctrine of a centralized Russia, the vile Moscovia State being, in his view, at the root of all Russian political evil. This eclectic "political romanticism" appeared to be in conflict with every political and social trend of the time.