In the watershed year of 1855, with the accession of Alexander II in the midst of a humiliating defeat in the Crimean war, discussion turned to the possibility of change and reform in Russia. Alexander Herzen (1812–1870), the most celebrated Russian social thinker of his era, and Boris Chicherin (1828–1904), the preeminent legal scholar of his day, had both absorbed Hegel under the influence and tutelage of Timofei Granovsky (1813–1855), professor of history at Moscow University from 1839 to 1855, and the major torchbearer of Hegelian thought in Russia. Although Herzen and Chicherin shared common cause on a number of issues — Herzen even published several of Chicherin's essays — the two broke strongly and publically over events culminating in tsarist repression of student activities in the early 1860s.