This article attempts to analyse the relations between Aleksandr Turgenev, a statesman, public figure, archaeographer and writer, and the Elagin– Kireevsky family. A.I. Turgenev’s personality and life still remain little-studied. In the works of philologists, he is usually represented as a “secondary figure”, “in the shadow” of the other outstanding persons of Pushkin’s epoch who shaped its cultural atmosphere. Historians (with the exception of I.V. Kantorovich) have not dealt specifically with A.I. Turgenev. It appears that due to the limited scope of this article the study of some material on the relations between A.I. Turgenev and the Elagin–Kireevsky family will let us gain a better insight into one of the aspects of Turgenev’s place in the cultural and social life of Moscow in the 1830–1840s. Furthermore, this article clarifies dates of some events in Turgenev’s biography (e.g., his meeting with I.V. Kireevsky). It is shown from both published and archival sources (some of which are being researched for the first time) that A.I. Turgenev frequently visited A.P. Elagina’s salon and gatherings at the Kireevskys’. He not only took part here in the heated debates on contemporary literature and philosophy, but also acted as an educator: Turgenev introduced the frequenters of the Moscow “open houses” to the intellectual innovations of Western Europe, shared his family memories, and told “historical anecdotes”. Due to V.A. Zhukovsky, A.I. Turgenev was actively involved in the publication of I.V. Kireevsky’s journal Evropeets, and strove to support it. Besides, tolerance towards ideological opponents and broad-mindedness, typical of both the Westernizer A.I. Turgenev and the Slavophile I.V. Kireevsky, led to the publication of Turgenev’s last Chronicle of a Russian in Paris in Moskvityanin in early 1845.