Every single one of Herbert Spencer’s books were translated into Russian, often sooner than they entered any other language, and they were widely read by the late nineteenth-century intelligentsia across a wide range of fields — in fact, in just about every field which Spencer touched. Engagement with Spencer was, however, almost entirely negative; he was much discussed, and much rejected, and had no Russian “disciples” to speak of. After discussing the well-understood attack on Spencer’s social theories by the radical Populists in the 1870s and 1880s, this paper turns to a discussion of the lifelong engagement with Spencer (and dogged rejection thereof) by prominent Russian historian, jurist, sometime mayor of Moscow, and liberal Boris N. Chicherin (1828-1904), spanning from social theory to biology to theology to positivist philosophy of science.