Pyotr Chaadayev
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Pyotr
ChaadayevPyotr or Petr Yakovlevich Chaadayev
(Russian: Пётр Яковлевич Чаадаев; born June 7
[May 27, old style], 1794, Moscow died April 26
[April 14, O.S.], 1856, Moscow) was a Russian
philosopher born in Moscow.
Chaadayev wrote
eight "Philosophical Letters" about Russia in
French between 1826-1831, which circulated in
Russia as manuscript for many years. The works
could not be published in Russia because of its
highly critical nature of Russia's significance
in world history and politics.
The main thesis
of his famous Philosophical Letters was that
Russia had lagged behind Western countries and
had contributed nothing to the world's progress
and concluded that Russia must start de novo. As
a result, they included criticism of Russia's
intellectual isolation and social
backwardness.[1].
When in 1836
the first (and only one published during his
life) of the philosophical letters was published
in the Russian magazine Telescope, its editor
was exiled to the Far North of Russia. The
Slavophiles at first mistook Chaadayev for one
of them, but later, on realizing their mistake,
bitterly denounced and disclaimed him. Chaadayev
fought Slavophilism all of his life. His first
Philosophical Letter has been labeled the
"opening shot" of the Westerner-Slavophil
controversy which was dominant in Russian social
thought of the nineteenth century.
The strikingly
uncomplimentary views of Russia in the first
philosophical letter caused their author to be
adjudged insane, and his next work was entitled,
fittingly, The Vindication of a Madman (1837).
In this brilliant but uncompleted work he
maintained that Russia must follow her inner
lines of development if she was to be true to
her historical mission.
His ideas
influenced both the Westerners (who supported
bringing Russian into accord with developments
in Europe by way of various degrees of liberal
reform) and Slavophils (who supported Russian
Orthodoxy and national culture.)
During the
1840s Chaadayev was an active participant in the
Moscow literary circles. He befriended Alexander
Pushkin and was a model for Chatsky, the chief
protagonist of Alexander Griboyedov's play Woe
from Wit (1824).
Most of his
works have been edited by his biographer,
Mikhail Gershenzon (two volumes, Moscow,
1913-14), whose excellent little study of the
philosopher was published at St. Petersburg in
1908.
