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Chaadaev (Чаадаев) Pyotr Iakovlevich
(1794—1856)

Pyotr Chaadaev was a major figure in the development of Russian intellectual history in the first half of the nineteenth century. His early life and his attitude towards Russian society were shaped by the experience of the generation of the Russian nobility born between the French Revolution and the European wars of 1805-06. For Chaadaev and most of his friends, the successful repulsion of the French invasion of Russia in 1812, followed by the entry of Russian armies into Paris in 1814, created liberal social expectations which, after these young officers returned to Russia, met only with one frustration after another. For some of his friends, these frustrations led to direct involvement in the revolt of December 14, 1825 and to the hangman's noose or to exile. For Chaadaev himself, they led to the writing of eight Philosophical Letters between 1828 and 1831. Eventually, nearly eight years after it was originally written, the publication of his First Philosophical Letter in October 1836 became a cause celebre from which the split of Russian intellectuals into opposing camps of Slavophiles and Westerners is generally acknowledged to have grown. The major presupposition of this study is that the events which shaped the development of the attitudes of Pyotr Chaadaev and of many of his friends towards the society in which they lived have never before been adequately examined.

USSR, 1949, Pushkin reading his poems to Southern Society

USSR, 1949, Pushkin reading his poems to Southern Society

Russia, 1994.06.07, Moskow. Birth Bicentenary of Pyotr Chaadaev

Russia, 1994, Birth bicentenary of Chaadaev