Chapter II

"I AM TRULY DYING OF BOREDOM HERE:" THE

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY YOUTH OF

PETER IAKOVLEVICH CHAADAEV

In the 1790s the social and intellectual milieu in which the parents of Chaadaev lived was undergoing several important transitions, all of which would affect the life of their son. The death of Catherine the Great in 1796 brought to the throne her son Paul who, hating his mother, was determined to undo as much of her work as possible. High on the list of Paul's goals was the elimination of the imitation of French manners and mores that, despite Catherine's disgust with the French Revolution, was still a prominent feature in the life of the Russian court. For the first time since the brief ascendancy of Peter III in 1762, a Prussian orientation emerged as a major aspect of the intellectual outlook of the ruler who set the course of the Russian state.

The Cultural and Intellectual Background

This decline of French influence on the official level coincided, to some extent, with a growing distaste for the French culture that had been the intellectual foundation of the Russian nobility for the previous four decades but had come, by the death of Catherine II, to be considered as imitative and something undesirable for an educated Russian. That is to say, many of the nobility had begun to look for a Russian approach to literature, theater and culture in general, hoping in time to define, develop and embrace a truly Russian national character. In time this gave birth to a Russian "national consciousness."

Russian intellectual life witnessed a "striving for a common identity, character and culture by the articulate members" of Russian society. Among the leaders of this movement had been Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov, who asserted that Russian civilization had developed indigenously and had not been the result of culture implanted on Russian soil by the Varangians, as many German scholars claimed. Another leader was Dmitrii Ivanovich Fonvizin, the talented playwright who used his plays to satirize his countrymen's love of all things foreign, and who, having traveled to France, wrote a sharp critique of the French national character, which he contrasted to a more human warmth that he found in many Russians. Finally there was the Moscow freemason Nikolai Ivanovich Novikov, who, in the midst of his extremely varied activities, ranging from philanthropy to publishing, formulated a critique of the French domination of society, a domination that he felt to be responsible for the corruption of Russian morals.

In freemasonry Novikov embraced another of the main currents of the changing milieu of the 1790s. Some young noblemen were attracted to masonry out of a love of novelty and a searching for social status. Such would be the case with Chaadaev, who became a mason at the age of 20 in 1814. But freemasonry also offered a appeal to many others who saw in it "a faith, but a faith illuminated by reason"; that is to say, they felt it to be compatible with the rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment to which many were still attached. However, Novikov's concept of freemasonry went beyond that of a special club, offering the appeal of "mystical" rites and social status. From the philosophy of the French mystic Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, it adopted an emphasis on self-perfection which could be obtained only through helping one's neighbor, through philanthropy. Thus, in a development that was filled with significance for the future Decembrist movement, Novikov taught his followers that they all shared a responsibility for the well-being of society.

One of the most active members of Novikov's circle was Ivan Petrovich Turgenev. Eventually Turgenev became the father of four sons--all of whom were later involved in freemasonry. Andrei, the eldest, was a central figure in the Friendly Literary Society (Druzheskoe literaturnoe obshchestvo) which, during its short existence in 1801, established the intellectual outlook of several of the major writers and critics of the first decade of the nineteenth century. One of these critics was A. F. Merzliakov, who later became one of Chaadaev's professors at the University of Moscow. The remaining three Turgenev brothers, Aleksandr, Nikolai, and Sergei, all became close friends of Chaadaev.

For the Turgenev brothers, as it had been for their father, the major teaching of freemasonry was its emphasis on philanthropy. Even their "first readings" and composition exercises" repeated "this in the tones of a didactic tirade. The lesson was always the same: every noble was taught the necessity of working and of being of service to others." But Andrei Turgenev was quick to realize the futility of trying to help his fellow man outside of the channels offered by the government system. He had seen his father exiled to his provincial estate in 1792 as Catherine moved against Radishchev, Novikov and their closest associates, who the Empress believed desired to take into their own hands concerns for their fellow men which the Russian ruler saw as an exclusive prerogative of government power.

Literary Criticism and Karamzin

Consequently Andrei Turgenev and most of his friends entered the service of the state, hoping there to find a meaningful social role. But his position in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, like most other positions in the government service, was such that its potential meaning quickly evaporated into a sense of insignificance. "Numerous remarks in his letters and journals clearly show that his work did not really absorb him at all and had no importance for him." His service "was nothing but a pastime, because the real work was done by clerks or by some high dignitaries. There is also evidence of the knowledge of Andrei Turgenev and his friends that their talents were not really used. This created a feeling of futility . . . [But], on the other hand, they had abundant leisure which they used for reading, teaching, and discussion." This escape into a refuge of intellectualism and literature calls attention to the final important development of the 1790s, the development of a literary criticism which could begin to address itself to the evaluation of social attitudes that were beyond the scope of any other type of private initiative .

The principal force behind the development of this socially oriented criticism was Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin. The ideas of Karamzin increased the scope of literary criticism and thereby began the development of a process that, in time, would change the aims of many critics. The duty of the critic had been to show the public as much of the beauty of a work as he could without presuming to judge it in any way. While many critics refused to embrace the ideas of Karamzin, for many others, the aim of criticism became the discovery of those works which would instill in the reader an awareness of social, political or moral problems. For Chaadaev the year 1828 would mark the culmination of this process. In his First Philosophical Letter he would emphasize, to such an extent the cultural and historical problems on which some literary critics had come to focus, that the medium itself would become transformed from literary to cultural and historical criticism.

Since the development of Karamzin's ideas marked the beginning of this important process, it will be worthwhile to investigate his ideas in some detail. Born in Simbirsk in 1766, Karamzin was the second of four children of a family of the provincial nobility. While studying at the Moscow "pension" of Johannes M. Schaden, Professor of rhetoric, poetry and mythology at the University of Moscow, Karamzin fell under the influence of the father of the four Turgenev brothers. As a result of the elder Turgenev's guidance, Karamzin became involved in freemasonry and in 1785 settled down in Moscow to begin a period of intensive journalistic and literary study.

Karamzin's first major work was the journal which he kept during his travels in 1790 through Western Europe and published piecemeal during the 1790s, under the title of "Letters of a Russian Traveler." In this Journal he gave strong emphasis to two major shortcomings of Russian cultural life: the fact that no one had as yet written what he considered a good history of Russell, and the fact that the Russian language was in need of enrichment. He disagreed with those who would say "that our history is less interesting in itself than others" and complained that "our language, while it is very rich, is not sufficiently developed. . . . New combinations of words and even new words will have to be created, as was the case with the Germans when they began to write in their native language." This concern with the cultural role of language was motivated at least in part by Johann Gottfried von Herder, whom Karamzin had visited during his travels. It would come, in the form of the polemic on the old and the new style, to occupy an important place in the development of Russian intellectual history during the first decade of the nineteenth century. Herder had asked: "Has a people anything more dear than the speech of its fathers? In its speech is encompassed the whole of its thought-domain, its tradition, history, religion and basis of life, all its heart and soul." As the 1790s progressed Karamzin's views would mature and he would reply to Herder's assertion that refined, invigorated language would serve as a more powerful medium through which literature could enlighten and ennoble the educated classes of Russia, classes that were all too often indifferent to the social evils which surrounded them.

Karamzin began to clarify his ideas in an essay, "Something on the Sciences, Arts and Enlightenment," published in 1794 in the almanac Aglaia. Pointing out that science and art, as well as literature, show us "the majestic beauty of nature," he asserted that they "inspire the spirit," that "they increase its ability to feel and to be tender," and finally that "they enrich the heart . . . and inspire in it love for order, love of harmony, love for the good and consequently hatred of disorder . . . and the vices which shatter the . . . bonds of society." That is to say: the primary role of art was to educate the feelings; literature as an artistic endeavor was essentially moral in nature; and in Karamzin's own words enlightenment was a "protector of good behavior." Karamzin's brief essay "What Does an Author Need?" was also published in the almanac Aglaia in 1794. Here, in speaking to his imaginary author, he more clearly enunciated his belief in the moralistic purpose of literature: "If your soul can raise itself to a passion for the good, can strengthen within itself the sacred desire for the general welfare unrestricted by any personal prejudice then-. . . you will not be a useless writer and no virtuous man will look with dry eyes upon your grave." In other words, if a man was moral, he would be a good writer. Only then could he perform the function of ennobling and enlightening the reader, for if his soul finds "a passion for the good," he, by implication, could expect to arouse this same emotion in his readers.

Three years later in his preface to the 1797 edition of the almanac Aonidy, Karamzin made the next logical step in the development of his ideas. If literature could spread to the point where it could enlighten enough people, then ultimately the whole nation would be enlightened and national pride would be uplifted. Or as Karamzin phrased it: "the preeminence of a nation is judged by the success of its authors . . . . I consider it unnecessary here to prove the use and importance of literature which, since it generally influences . . . social intercourse and the perfection of language (that is indissolubly connected with the intellectual and moral perfection of every nation), is always most useful, most pleasant of all for those who practice [that is, either read or write] it." Karamzin assumed that his readers had themselves become aware of and had begun to benefit from the spiritual and intellectual enlightenment of literature.

In 1798 Karamzin began a translation project to be called the Pantheon which led to difficulties with the censorship and to his retirement from the literary scene. Eventually, early in 1802 in the more liberal atmosphere of the first months of the reign of Alexander I, he was invited by the Moscow bookseller I. V. Popov to become editor of a new bimonthly journal, Vestnik Evropy (The Messenger of Europe). An original printing of 600 copies was planned, but the undertaking was so successful that the printing was quickly increased to 1,200 copies per issue. The Messenger of Europe served as a vehicle during 1802 for a series of articles in which Karamzin brought to their ultimate maturity these ideas concerning the social role of literature and the literary critic. Demonstrating how the author could help to mold the mores of a rapidly growing reading public, Karamzin created the potential basis for Russian literature's first social criticism.

He began to set forth his program in his essay "On the Book Trade and the Love of Reading in Russia." He now found that the reading public had increased in size to the point where the author would find countless people ready to be enlightened and ennobled.

Indeed hardly ever in any land has the number of curious people grown so rapidly as it has in Russia. True, there are still many nobles, including even those who are in a good financial position, who do not touch newspapers; however, the merchants and the middle classes have come to love to read them. The poorest people subscribe and the most illiterate want to know what is being written in foreign countries!"

Karamzin summarized his understanding of the social role of the author in his essay "Why Are There so Few Talented Authors in Russia?" "The good writer . . . thinks . . . that his labor is not without use to the fatherland; that authors help their fellow citizens to think and to speak better; . . . that the dignity of a people is demeaned by the absurdity and inarticulateness of bad writers; . . . and that it [his labor] in selecting patriotic and moral subjects can . . . nourish love for the fatherland."

Finally in a "Letter to the Publisher," (Pis'mo k izdateliu'), he eloquently described the role which literature could play in the development of the Russian national character and spirit at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In Russia, literature can be still more useful than in other lands. Feeling among us is newer and fresher; therefore belles lettres act all the more strongly on the heart and produce all the more fruit. How noble, how comforting to help in the moral education of such a great and strong nation as the new Russia; to develop ideas, to point out new beauties in life, to nourish the spirit by moral satisfactions and to unite in it sweet feelings and the welfare of other people. This is what I imagine to be the great subject for literature alone. This is the worth of its talents.

What Karamzin did not state but strongly implied was that he was defining a role for the literary critic. Because he recognized the powerlessness of other means of social, not to mention political criticism under the existing Russian government, he assigned to the literary critic the duty of calling to account the powers exerted by the leaders of society and government, an aim that N. I. Gnedich would assert more strongly two decades later. Thus by 1802 he had laid the basic premises upon which Russian criticism would build and develop through the following three decades. These were also the premises which Chaadaev later emphasized to such an extent that he found himself able to ignore the old medium of criticism and, in his First Philosophical Letter, to concentrate solely- on calling to account the shortcomings of Russian society.

Chaadaev's Parents and Childhood

Chaadaev's father, Iakov Petrovich Chaadaev, could trace his ancestry back to the Lithuanian nobility of the beginning of the seventeenth century. His family estate, Khripunovo, was located near the town of Arzamas in the Ardats district of Nizhnii Novgorod province, more than 200 miles to the southeast of Moscow. It had been purchased in 1653 by his great-great-grandfather Ivan Artemevich Chaadaev. Iakov's father, Petr Vasil'evich, had been a major in the Semenovskii regiment Or the Imperial Guards.

Iakov's eldest brother Ivan rose to the rank of captain before he resigned from the Semenovskii in 1761, ending a nineteen-year service career. He went on to a life of intellectual pursuits, translating works from French literature, including at least one play of Moliere, and serving as a deputy of the nobility to the Legislative Commission of Catherine II. His political outlook was conservative, for he was strongly opposed to Peter the Great's reform which granted nobility on the basis of service to the state and to proposals which would have reduced the power of landlords over their serfs. Iakov's second brother Fedor led a somewhat less distinguished life than Ivan, fulfilling-his service obligations as an officer in the Semenovskii regiment.

Born in 1754, Iakov, like his two elder brothers, enrolled in the Semenovskii and embarked on a military career in which he received the Cross of St. George and eventually retired as a colonel. In 1794 he published a play, Don Pedro Prokodurante. or the Good-for-Nothing Punished (Don Pedro Prokodurante. ili nakazannyi bezdel'nlk). His work was ostensibly a translation of a comedy by the Spaniard, Calderon de la Barca. But according to Prince N. M. Dolgorukii, whose opinion was later substantiated by Mikhail Longinov, this play was not a translation but an original, critical work, directed against an important administrator of the Russian economy whom Dolgorukii had known and identified as P. N. Prokodin, from where comes the name of the "hero," Prokodurante.

Through his mother, Natal'ia Mikhailovna Shcherbatova, Petr Chaadaev could claim a heritage which extended back to Prince Mikhail Shcherbatov of Chernigov, who was killed by the Tatars in 1246. Natal'ia Mikhailovna's father, Prince Mikhail Mikhailovich Shcherbatov, was the most ramous of the relatives of Petr Iakovlevich. Born in 1733, Prince Shcherbatov also served the Semenovskii regiment and in 1762 resigned as a captain to take up the study of Russian history. He eventually became a prolific author, completing a multi-volume History of Russia from the Most Ancient Times (Istoriia rossiiskaia ot drevneishikh vremen) and many other treatises. However, his most important work was not his History but the short treatise, 0 povrezhdenii nravov v Rossii which marked him as the leading defender of the rights of the hereditary nobility against the encroachments of the new class of service nobility created by the reforms of Peter the Great. He also spoke out forcefully against what he considered to be the excessive imitation of Western European manners and mores that had been initiated by Peter and had grown to such an extent that it was corrupting the innately good qualities of the Russian spirit. Shcherbatov was a severe and powerful critic of Russian society and culture, but his criticism lacked the complete pessimism that would be expressed by his grandson, for unlike Petr Chaadaev, Mikhail Shcherbatov believed in and approved of a part of Russian reality and pleaded only that this part, the hereditary nobility, be given an opportunity to play a more vital role in the development of government and society.

On October 24, 1792 the first child of Natal'ia and Iakov Chaadaev was born. It was a son whom the parents named Mikhail, presumably after Natal'ia's father. Seventeen months later, on May 27, 1794 Natal'ia gave birth in Moscow to her second son, Petr Iakovlevich.

The parents of Petr and Mlkhail Iakovlevich Chaadaev returned to Khripunovo, their country estate, soon after Petr was born. Tragedy soon struck the family. Petr's father died in I795, and his mother in 1797. Princess Anna Mikhailovna Shcherbatova, the 35-year-old unmarried aunt of the orphaned Chaadaev brothers, came to their rescue. She was a woman "of an extraordinary simple spirit, but, as was readily apparent, well-disposed and very devoted."

In the most unfavorable time of year, in the spring in the midst of floods, not hesitating for a minute, she set out for them and at some danger to her life crossed two flooded rivers, the Volga and some other, which were found along the road that she had to take. Reaching the place, she took the children and brought them back to Moscow, where they settled in a house located near the Arbat.

Princess Shcherbatova became the guardian of the two orphans and acted as their mother. Their other guardian was Count Nikolai Petrovich Tolstoi, born in 1759 and a brigadier in the Russian army. However, Count Tolstoi apparently had little contact with Petr or Mikhail and it was the personality of Princess Shcherbatova that played the major role in shaping the early development of the young brothers.

According to Mikhail Zhikharev [Chaadaev's "nephew" and earliest biographer], the life style of Anna Mikhailovna Shcherbatova and her newly adopted nephews "was typical of Moscow life at that time."

Right from the beginning a nurse cared for the children. In season and out of season, for reasons of hygiene, the children were deprived of air and of food, but occasionally they were glen too much of it. On Sundays and on holidays they were taken to church; in the winter they played on the ice, in the fall and the spring they were taken for walks especially ln those places where there were many people; they were dressed . . . in the most stupid and ridiculous fashion; two or three times a week they would have dined at the homes of the most highly regarded friends of the family. From time to time they would attend the theater. In the summer, that is to say during the four or even more than five summer months, the family went to the countryside either alone or with other relatives or even with close friends. Then on the seventh birthday of each child there occurred a sudden change of pace, the nannies disappeared and in their places materialized teachers, tutors, governors and attendants. The lives of the children were changed slightly or not at all. But a new element was developed within them: they began to study.

Thus by 1801, Prlnce Dmitrli Mikhailovlch Shcherbatov, the son of the historian and uncle of Petr and Mlkhail, had become their principal tutor. The Prince was a widower and had a son, Ivan Dmitrievich, who was the same age as the Chaadaev brothers. Consequently Ivan Dmitrievich studied with Petr and Mikhail and became Petr's first close friend. Petr's uncle, like his father and grandfather, had served in the Semenovskii regiment and was responsible for the early enrollment in the Semenovskii of Petr and his son Ivan.

One of the children's tutors was an Englishman who taught them English, a language "not much studied in Russia. Apparently he also taught Petr to drink grog. But Prince Shcherbatov was determined to give his son and the Chaadaev orphans the best possible education, one in keeping "with his high social position." Therefore, in addition to the anonymous Englishman, the tutors included "the most distinguished representatives of Muscovite learning" as well as "two or three men well-known in the European scholarly world."

Among these men was Christian Schloezer, born in 1774 and Professor of political economy at the University of Moscow since 1796. He was the son of the distinguished historian August Ludwig von Schloezer who, in the late eighteenth century, had devoted a major portion of his life to the study of the chronicle of Nestor. Schloezer knew Latin and had a strong interest in Roman history and it is likely that it was he who led Petr, Mikhail, and Ivan to the study of the civilization out of which Catholicism and the Western European world, and its unifying Catholic religion, had grown.

There is no available evidence of Petr Chaadaev's impression of Schloezer. However, the young Alexandr Ivanovich Koshelev, who between 1820 and 1822 took special lessons in political science from Schloezer, has given valuable testimony about him. Koshelev recalled that Schloezer was a very solemn person and, being a German, very abstract and theoretical. Adding that he was also "very intelligent, very knowledgeable, and highly sociable," Koshelev-asserts: "I waited impatiently for my lessons which instead of an hour and a half would last for two or three hours." Finally Koshelev remarks that Schloezer acquainted him with German literature and especially with the writings of Joseph von Goerres. Chaadaev had at least one work by Goerres in his library and it is very possible that Schloezer was responsible for his first contact with the philosophy of this disciple of Schooling, who later became a defender of Catholicism.

Though it would be presumptuous to assume that Goerres exerted a strong influence on Chaadaev at age twelve or fourteen, there can be little doubt that, if his thought had not made a strong impression on Chaadaev by 1807, it certainly had by the time Petr wrote his Philosophical Letters. A teacher and publicist, Goerres, born in 1775, became a professor of philosophy at Jena in 1798 and at Wurzburg in 1803. In his youth he was also the editor of "a small radical journal." His early outlook was shaped by a belief in the possibility of continuous progress for mankind, in tolerance as the supreme virtue, in rationalism, and in the goals of the French revolution.

However, around 1800, as the French revolution finally resulted in the rise of Napoleon, and as Herder and Schelling gained an increasing number of followers in Germany, Goerres began to move toward a more conservative position. He was strongly influenced by Herder, from whom he acquired "a deep interest in Germany's past." In 1802 he published Aphorismen über Organologie, a work which showed the strong influence of Schelling's Naturphilosophie. Because Goerres did not turn to Catholicism until the mid-1820s, his writings could not have led Chaadaev in this direction; however, his works undoubtedly made Petr aware of German philosophy and of Schelling and Herder in particular. Furthermore, his general outlook was strikingly similar to that of Chaadaev in the 1820s: "Goerres was a liberal in so far as he tried to apply principles of moral philosophy to politics, but he was at the same time a conservative in so far as he developed a strong historic sense which made him shrink from all violent and abrupt changes of the social order."

Although the lessons from Chaadaev's Uncle Prince Dmitrii Mikhailovich began in 1801, it was probably not until 1807 that he started his lessons with Schloezer. According to Longinov, in that year Chaadaev began to frequent "the University Or Moscow and received private lessons from Johann Buhle, Schloezer and other celebrated professors."

The year 1807 was an important one for Petr Chaadaev's development. This was very likely the first year in which Anna Mikhailovna Shcherbatova decided to spend the summer at her country estate. As a result, for probably the first time Petr was separated from Ivan Dmitrievich Shcherbatov, his constant playmate and companion of the previous seven years. His disappointment and even anger at the situation in which he found himself is evident from a letter which he wrote to Ivan Dmitrievich some time during the summer of 1807. The letter shows that Petr Iakovlevich was leading a somewhat frivolous life filled with a self-indulgence which became typical of his character as a youth and man.

Dear little brother!

Do not be envious of my happiness for I tell you I am truly dying of boredom here, and from eagerness to see you--especially so since they say that we will not leave here for a long time. It is said that we will have a performance. (Make note of it and come.) I think that it will be quite festive. We continue to go swimming and the dog warden is always with us. We had a fight with Egorev's dogs and came out victorious--one remained on the spot and was wounded. Incidentally we also spend time as we used to, with the difference that all afternoon is spent on the swings. Please brother, scold Fedor Ivanovich Chumakov and the others for not wanting to write to us on account of their unsparing lessons. I remain yours very truly, servant, friend and brother.

Petr Chaadaev

Granddaddy's carriage is ready. He is leaving and therefore I have no more time to write. In the fight the dog warden showed miraculous bravery.

Some Further Developments in Literary Criticism

Between 1803 and 1807 there had occurred a series of developments in Russian intellectual life which, when clarified, will help to explain Chaadaev's rebellion at the party given late in the summer of 1807 by his uncle Dmitrii Mikhailovich Shcherbatov in celebration of the new alliance between Alexander and Napoleon that had just been signed at Tilsit. Also, other events of this period are important because they became elements in the continuing growth of social criticism in Russia, elements which would widen the potential range of the criticism that was to culminate in Chaadaev's Letter.

The first of these interrelated events occurred in 1803 with the publication of Admiral Aleksandr Semenovich Shishkov's A Treatise on the Old and New Style of the Russian Language (Rassuzdenie o starom i novom sloge rossiiskogo iazyka). Shishkov's Treatise marked the opening volley of the polemic between the old and new style. In his work Shishkov related "the customs of the fatherland and the faith of the fathers" to the Old Church Slavonic language which he believed had to be the sole source of purity for the Russian literary language.

His attitude toward his native language was essentially the same as that of Herder when he had asked: "Has a people anything more dear than the speech of its fathers?" But whereas Karamzin wanted to develop and experiment with that speech, Shishkov wanted to preserve it in its static purity. Following the idea of the three styles of language expressed by Lomonosov, Shishkov asserted that "the Old Slavonic language" is "the root and basis of the Russian tongue." Complaining that contemporary writers had forgotten "Church and Old Slavonic, and Slaveno-Russian books, he attacked Karamzin's devotion to French literature and language. Such devotion led to neologisms," and this to the use "of understandings strange and alien to our ears."

Other Russian writers soon found inconsistencies in Shishkov's theories. They asserted that his research in places was shoddy, and that his arguments were sometimes poorly constructed. His Treatise quickly became a target for the criticism of the followers of Karamzin and the new style. Nevertheless Shishkov's role in the ensuing polemic, which lasted for nearly fifteen years, was significant. He resisted the unrestrained development of a florid literary style on the part of Karamzin and many others. Perhaps even more important, he turned many of the best mends of the day toward the study of the growth and development of the Russian language and of the national character which was an inseparable function of that development.

A deeper perspective of understanding of the historical traditions of the Russian language was attained. Both its contradictions and its correspondences emerged more keenly in the compilation of a dictionary of the Russian and the Slavic languages. Ancient writings and oral popular literature were accepted as living and necessary sources of the Russian literary language. The semantic border between Russian and the Western European languages was more sharply defined. The question of a general Russian norm for a literary language became inseparable from the questions of nationality [narodnost'], of national development and of the [proper] role of living popular speech . . . .

0f course, there were also elements of political conservatism in Shishkov's position. "Rising up against Karamzin and his followers, Shishkov, in his Treatise, did not refrain from expressing doubts about their religious and patriotic feelings." He believed that what he called "the young confidants" who, surrounded Alexander I in the early years of his reign, were heading on a course which would cause the pernicious ideas of the French revolution to enter into and subvert the Russian body politic. At first his hatred of the French did not seem destined to gain him a wide following. But when diplomatic relations between France and Russia were severed in 1804 and war against Napoleon eventually broke out, Shishkov suddenly found himself riding a growing wave of support for his ideas. Tangential to the polemic on the old and new style, and the increasing dislike of France and French culture, at least two important developments in literary criticism took place.

The development most relevant to the eventual interrelation of Chaadaev's historical and cultural criticism with the literary criticism of the 1820s occurred when an idea developed by Herder in the 1790s made its first appearance in Russian criticism in an article in the May 1804 issue of the journal, Patriot. The article, "A Glance at Short Stories or Tales," by an anonymous author, examined the novelty of this literary genre not only in Russian literature but also in the literature of Western Europe. Almost as an afterthought it planted the seedling -- the assertion that "the history of a literature is the history of a people"-- that would twenty-five years later provide the link between the common lament of the literary critics: "we have as yet no literature," and Chaadaev's more sweeping statement that "for us historical experience does not exist."

The second development affecting the course of literary criticism was a growing interest in romanticism which at this time began to make inroads on the Russian literary scene. One aspect of this interest was the increasing acceptance by critics of the ideas found in C. Meiners', The Principal Aspects of the Theory and History of Fine Arts. Interest in this book, which had been translated in 1803 by Professor Pavel Sokhatskii of Moscow University, marked a significant stage in the development of a new outlook on the part of many Russian writers and critics. Meiners declared that "no rule would be so false or demand so much restriction as one claiming that all fine arts must concern themselves without fail only with things of refined nature." In essence, Meiners asserted that neither the author nor the critic need be limited by the social concerns of the class about which he wrote, or the audience to whom his work was addressed. This interest in Meiners' aesthetics corresponded with a rapid increase in the size of the critic's audience, the Russian reading public. Thus, by freeing the critic from the duty of responding to the views of a single class, Meiners' aesthetics opened the way for the critic to focus on any social or cultural problem.

However, in 1807 the concerns of the Russian nobility were more involved with politics than with criticism. The unsuccessful war of 1806-07 was concluded by the Peace of Tilsit and by the unexpected alliance with France. The upper echelons of Russian society, who had thought the Russian army invincible, seethed with discontent. "Austerlitz had been a surprise. Friedland plunged [this society] into a stupor . . . . The French and Napoleon seemed to be imposing an alliance on the vanquished Russians. Such were the feelings of the nobles and merchants in 1807, especially in Moscow.

In the late-summer of 1807, at the peak of these heightened emotions, Chaadaev found himself taken on a visit to the country estate of his uncle Dmitrii Mikhailovich Shcherbatov who, somehow out of tune with the feeling of the time, gave a festive party in celebration of the Peace of Tilsit. Petr Iakovlevich, just thirteen years old, left immediately "and hid himself in a field of rye." Much later when they finally "found him there, with tears in his eyes, he announced that he would not return to the house because he did not want to be present at the celebration of an event which was a stain on Russia and an abasement for its government."

A year later, when Chaadaev had just begun his studies at the University of Moscow, Russo-French relations were still a topic of major concern to many of the nobility. The meeting of Alexander I and Napoleon at Erfurt in September and October 1808 was to many Russians a humiliation. Nikolai Turgenev, who was five years older than Chaadaev, but soon became one of his closest friends, was present at the Erfurt meetings. He wrote later that Napoleon's greatness

made upon me less of an impression than the inferiority of Alexander. A feeling, less judicious perhaps, made me see my country humiliated in the person of the Emperor. In effect, it was not necessary to know what happened in the interior of the cabinets to realize, along with all, which of the two sovereigns was the master at Erfurt and in Europe.

In the autumn of 1809 Chaadaev would have his first clash with the government authorities. The cause would be his anger at the officially enforced version of Russian-French relations.

Thus by the autumn of 1808, when Chaadaev first registered as a full-time student at the University of Moscow, there were evident many traits of his later character. His nephew recalled "small clashes . . . between Chaadaev and the members of his family in which, by his quick exchanges and his alert and hardy spirit, the youth usually got the better of his grave and serious guardian and uncle, Prince Shcherbatov." Petr Iakovlevich had developed a self-centered character, one that was prone to self-indulgence. If thwarted he was likely to hammer tenaciously away at a given goal until he gained what he wanted. Gradually he began to feel that he might be able to bend society to conform to his will.