When Russia's "Westernizers," Nikolai Stankevič, Vissarion Belinskij, and Mikhail Bakunin first encountered Hegel's ideas in the 1830s, they gravitated toward a conservative interpretation, centering on the proposition that the "rational is real." This article studies the preconditions for that interpretation, demonstrating that it was grounded in the writings of the late Hegel and of the circle of adepts who popularized his ideas and writings immediately after his death. These adepts later came to be known as Center and Right Hegelians. They influenced the early reception of Hegel in France as well as in Russia. Stankevič, the first of the Westernizers to subject Hegel to systematic study, learned about Hegel through these mediators.