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Madman or Criminal: Government Attitudes to Petr Chaadaev in 1836

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Richard Tempest
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Extract

Petr Chaadaev's First Philosophic Letter (Pervoe filosoficheskoe pis'mo) was published in September (Old Style) 1836, in the fifteenth issue of Teleskop, the mediocre magazine owned and edited by Nikolai Nadezhdin. The Letter, probably the most celebrated article in the country's history, dispraised Russia in her past and present as an exception to the universal laws of humanity, despaired of her future, deplored her Orthodoxy, described her as a pariah among the nations of both East and West, and denied that she possessed a true civilization; the essay had a strong providentialist, chiliastic, and Catholic flavor.

Chaadaev thus defined the terrain, the terms, and even the tone for the public debate—the first of its kind in Russia—between Slavophiles and Westernizers in the 1830s and 1840s, and he can be said to have inaugurated that debate. Chaadaev opened the discussion of the destiny of Russia on a note of attack.

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , Summer 1984 , pp. 281 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1984

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References

1. All dates are given according to the Julian Calendar.

2. Lemke, Mikhail, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy i literatura 1826–1855 gg. (St. Petersburg, 1909), pp. 412–13.Google Scholar

3. One of the reports was Uvarov's dispatch to Nicholas of October 20 which he had sent in his capacity as head of the Chief Directorate of Censorship; the other, which is referred to in paragraph three as well, dealt with Censor Boldyrev.

4. “Materialy po Chaadaevu,” Institut Russkoi Literatury—Pushkinskii Dom (hereafter IRLI), fond 334, no. 245.

5. Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, p. 83

6. Ibid., pp. 445–46.

7. Lemke, , Ocherkipo istorii russkoi tsenzury i zhurnalistiki XlX stoletiia (St. Petersburg, 1904), p. 186.Google Scholar

8. “Materialy po Chaadaevu,” IRLI, fond 334, no. 245.

9. Nikitenko, A. V., Dnevnik v trekh tomakh (Moscow, 1955), 1:188 Google Scholar. The concept of “a provocation” (provokatsiia—the word was yet to enter the language) made one of its first appearances in Russian government thinking on the occasion of the publication of Chaadaev's Letter.

10. Quoted in Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, p. 415.

11. “Materialy po Chaadaevu,” IRLI, fond 334, no. 245.

12. If Chaadaev's contemporaries and early biographers believed that it was the notorious Filipp Vigel' who first drew the government's attention to the essay by denouncing it to Metropolitan Serafim of St. Petersburg, subsequent scholars have supposed that the authorities were alerted to the Letter by Stroganov, who on October 13 had notified his minister of its publication, calling the author a “fool” (see IRLI, fond 334, no. 247): Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, p. 421; Raymond T. McNally, Chaadaev and His Friends (Tallahassee, Florida, 1971), p. 34. Uvarov's letter indicates, however, that the authorities became aware of the essay even before the arrival of Stroganov's dispatch which, the minister tells Stroganov, had reached St. Petersburg “after” the fifteenth issue of Teleskop.

13. Uvarov refers to the Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia; the Pavlov he mentions was the writer Nikolai Pavlov (1804–1864), author of Tri povesti.

14. “Materialy po Chaadaevu,” IRLI, fond 334, no. 245.

15. See Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, pp. 444–47.

16. ZapiskiA. I. Kosheleva (Berlin, 1884), p. 31 Google Scholar.

17. “Tsenzura v tsarstvovanie Nikolaia I,” Russkaia starina, 9 (1901): 666

18. The Letter had been written in French; Teleskop published it in translation.

19. IRLI, fond 93, opis’ 3, no. 1370.

20. Zhikharev, M., “Petr Iakovlevich Chaadaev,” Vestnik Evropy, 7 (1871): 190 Google Scholar.

21. Longinov, M., “Vospominanie o P. Ia. Chaadaeve,” Russkaia starina, 11 (1862): 122 Google Scholar.

22. Ostaf' evskii arkhiv kniazei Viazemskikh, vol. 3 (St. Petersburg, 1899), p. 349 Google Scholar.

23. Lemke, Nikolaevskie zhandarmy, p. 448.