Chapter V

"EVERYTHING IS EMPTINESS:" ALIENATION AND

STRESS, THEIR CLIMAX AND THE END OF

A CAREER, RETIREMENT

During the weeks that followed Pushkin's exile from St. Petersburg, Chaadaev apparently continued his previous day-to-day life. No traumatic break or turning point in his career occurred. Although his mood became more pessimistic than it had been in the spring, the same problems continued to occupy his correspondence.

On 7 June he answered a letter from his brother, who was living at Alekseevskoe, the estate of their aunt, Princess Shcherbatova. His mood was a combination of despair, hostility and sarcasm. His first words were accusations hurled at his brother: "What are you saying! I have not written you in a long time? But when did you write? And when will you write? Everything here is emptiness." This last sentence is striking. It certainly seems to be an admission by Chaadaev that he had failed to find any meaning in his military career.

Mikhail's letter apparently was a reply to Chaadaev's February 9 1820 plea for money. His brother had been unsympathetic to the plea, telling Chaadaev to run into debt at the Inn and commenting with sarcasm: "As for the heat and stuffiness, they always accompany you and thus cannot be entirely unbearable for you." Chaadaev threw these remarks back in his brother's face and went on to state the reasons why he still needed the money, even though "they" apparently had not "made a fool of" him. He argued that his position as aide-de-camp to Vasil'chikov was "attended by various responsibilities" which he was not "equipped" to meet financially and that he could "not fulfill these responsibilities without extraordinary income — that is, without loans." Complaining that his financial situation caused him severe distress, Chaadaev tried to shame his brother into complying with his desires. However, he was unable to avoid a combination of accusations and sarcasm that probably did not help his cause:

Expenses last month were more than usual and I had to buy a drozhkii [a carriage designed only for short trips around town] — now I must go to Krasnoe Selo. There expensive horse races will go on and on. I am sure that no one in my place would preserve . . . the cheerfulness with which I write this to you. Your tenderness and thoughtfulness touch me so much that I do not have the spirit to talk to you about this. I will tell you only that your bluntness and the shortcomings of your understanding are inexcusable.

Finally Chaadaev ended by trying to make amends, pleading that he did "not understand everything about this" and hoping that "something will probably develop out of the situation . . . that soon, in each other's embrace, we will forget my grief and your bluntness.'' Whether the stature of Chaadaev's position as aide-de-camp to Vasil'chikov required all the varied expenses of which he spoke, as well as a trip to Krasnoe Selo to attend the horse races, it is difficult to say. However, it may be assumed that Chaadaev was not about to fill the position without meeting its various social responsibilities in full, whatever the cost. He was not about to allow his glittering reputation to be tarnished by a lack of money if he could help it.

He must have been a considerable spender, for even though he had inherited a sizable fortune, he was to be plagued for the rest of his life by a shortage of money. All these thoughts surely figured in his calculations, but what is probably the most significant conclusion must be drawn from his final statement that "something will probably develop out of this situation . . ." and that he would then find himself with his brother where they both could forget their troubles. Was not Chaadaev implying that he was feeling the strain of continuing to play a role that he no longer wanted to fill and that his own retirement would be a welcome relief?

Probably by the end of August, 1820, if not long before, Chaadaev's duties returned him to St. Petersburg. There, from his friend Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Obleukhov, he received a letter written in Moscow on the eighth of August. Obleukhov's epistle, more an intellectual communiqué than a personal letter, began thus: "I have recommended to you the "Dream of Scipio" as a result of our debates on the subject of glory. It was not included in your French edition. Since then you have forgotten . . . the debates. But I have not lost the desire to bring you the real opinion of Scipio on glory. It seems to me that the best means of giving it to you will be to translate it myself." Quoting from Rousseau, Obleukhov declared that he would offer more of a paraphrase than an exact translation. He concluded that "your friendship makes me hope that you will use this in an expedient way.'' Perhaps Obleukhov meant that Chaadaev should ponder whether his personal path to glory and success really lay in his service as assistant to General Vasil'chikov.

The "Dream of Scipio" was written by Cicero and describes part of the campaign of 202 BC. undertaken by the Roman general Scipio Africanus against Hannibal and Carthage. Although no "debates on the subject of glory" occur in the Philosophical Letters, Chaadaev showed a definite interest in the works of Cicero when he wrote his Letters between 1828 and 1831. He would refer to Cicero in the Fifth and Seventh Letters - and in the First Letter would borrow an especially poignant phrase: "What is the life of man worth if the memory of past facts fails to succeed in integrating the present with the past?" He would conclude that Russian reality had come to offer him a meaningless heritage. Possessing no link with those who had come before him, all that he could do was to try individually "to mend the rift broken within the family," to reach out and find a meaningful existence on the basis of friendship with his fellow intellectuals.

Gathering Clouds

The censorship, Arakcheev and his military colonies, the Tsar's handling of the Polish question — all this and more, by the summer of 1820, it seems reasonable to suppose, had done much to alienate many members of Chaadaev's generation from the society in which they lived. For the alienated, from 1820 on, there appeared to be two courses of action. On the one hand, they could remain in their positions of state service, and by participation in the Union of Welfare or in the societies which later replaced it, could hope to arrive at a means of bringing about by force, if necessary, a more satisfactory reality. On the other hand, those who did not want to face the risks of belonging to a secret society could retire from the service and enter a life of isolated introspection and study. These were the choices that were now beginning to face Chaadaev. While there is no evidence that in August, 1820, he seriously considered joining a secret society, within seven months he would find himself driven into retirement.

Very likely the single series of events which contributed most strongly to the alienation of Chaadaev and his friends was the repression of educational freedom carried out between 1818 and 1821. This purge of Russian education was the product of the combined efforts of the Russian Bible Society and the Ministry of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs. Many of the most conservative members of the Bible Society were given positions of major power within the Ministry when it had been created in the autumn of 1817. As a result, the actions of the Ministry came to reflect the beliefs of some of the most obscurantist religious fanatics in Russia. Foremost among these men were Vasilli Mikhailovich Popov, Dmitrii Pavlovich Runich, Mikhail Leont'evich Magnitskii and the Curator of Kharkhov University, Z. Ia. Karneev. In addition to these four; ten men who were either vice-presidents or directors of the Bible Society were given posts that ranged from Curator of Moscow University, to Director of School Districts, to memberships on the Central School Administration. With the Ministry under the control of Prince Aleksandr Nikolaevich Golitsyn, the Bible Society's President, the "capture" of Russian education by the Bible Society was complete.

The most notorious example of the Ministry's policy towards the universities was the campaign of Mikhail Leont'evich Magnitskii against the "pernicious liberalism" of the University of Kazan. Magnitskii had first come to Prince Golitsyn's attention as the Civil Governor of Simbirsk Province who had established a particularly active chapter of the Bible Society in Simbirsk. In 1818 Golitsyn obtained an appointment to the Central School Administration for Magnitskii who immediately moved to St. Petersburg to begin his new duties. Nikolai Ivanovich Grech, the editor of Syn otechestva, later recalled another activity of Magnitskii; the news of which apparently had been received favorably by Golitsyn. He had "compelled all [the local] officials to burn on the town square the works of Voltaire and other similar eighteenth century writers."

By the end of 1818 complaints against the teaching of "subversive" German philosophy at the University of Kazan had come to Golitsyn's attention. On February 10, 1819, he instructed Magnitskii to make an inspection of the situation and report to him. After only a six-day stay at Kazan, Magnitskii, on the ninth of April, presented Golitsyn a report which confirmed the veracity of the allegations that had recently crossed the lather's desk. It was not so much the facts of the report as the remedy which Magnitskii proposed that sent shock waves rippling through educated Russian society: the University of Kazan should be closed, formally sentenced as a criminal and burned to the ground!

Grech's reaction to these developments typified the disgust felt by Chaadaev's generation. Recalling the recent disorders in Europe, the assassination of Kotzebue and the Duc de Berry, the agitation of the students in many European universities and the revolution in Spain, Grech asserted that all this "compelled hesitation and a search for the means to pacify men's minds and to halt disorder."

They took it into their heads to establish religion by the distribution of the Bible . . . bigots, hypocrites, and rogues took possession of Golitsyn and his ministry. Magnitskii played the major role in this. Kazan University was given to him to devour.

Even in the Ministry, no one felt able to express any enthusiasm for Magnitskii's "final solution." Count Uvarov, the head of the newly founded University of St. Petersburg, spoke out against the haste with which Magnitskii had completed his investigation. However, he did agree that certain "ills" which existed at Kazan should be corrected. A general "revision" was decided on and was approved by Alexander I in June, 1818. Although the Ministry had decided that the University of Kazan's physical destruction would have been perhaps too "theatrical" a solution, it decided to appoint-Magnitskii, Kazan's would-be executioner, as curator and to entrust him to carry out the "revision" of its functions. This decision meant that Kazan would cease to function on the premises of freedom of expression and inquiry that Universities in Western Europe took for granted.

Magnitskii viewed his most important duty as ensuring what he called the moral education of his students. Humility and obedience became the student's primary virtues, any teaching which contradicted the Holy Scriptures was forbidden and eleven professors were dismissed, either because of their alleged incompetence or their subversive views. Grech's description emphasized the pathos of the situation.

Having arrived there, he at once distinguished the villains from the respectable people. He summoned the latter to himself, rose, and presented them rewards, the others he wounded, persecuted and drove out. In this he acted like a bloodthirsty member of the Committee of Public Safety in France. A Professor came to him, talked with him, gave him his opinion and perhaps brought a complaint. Magnitskii listened attentively and favorably to him. At the conclusion of the "speech" he said: "I have a request of you and hope that you will fulfill it." The professor nodded. "Here is a sheet of stamped paper, be so kind as to write a request for your own dismissal from the service and be assured that it will be quickly accepted." He compelled the students to go to church as often as possible; the inspector and instructors were instructed to ascertain who among them prayed with the greatest zeal.; for their grimaces they were elevated and rewarded. "

The University of Kazan proved to be only a testing ground for Magnitskii and his fellow theoreticians of reaction, Runich and Karneev. The years 1820-21 saw Runich's discovery of "subversive heresy" in the teachings of four professors at the University of St. Petersburg: Aleksandr Ivanovich Galich in philosophy, Raupach in history, Arsenev in statistics and Karl Fedorovich German in economics. Professor Aleksandr Petrovich Kunitsyn, who taught at the Lycée of Tsarskoe Selo, was also attacked by Runich for the "pseudo-philosophizing" of Rousseau which he had incorporated into his textbook on natural law. The use of Kunitsyn's text was forbidden and he was deprived of his chair on the faculty of the University of St. Petersburg. During this same period Karneev obtained the removal of Professor Timofei Fedorovich Osipovskii from the chair of social science at the University of Kharkov. Only the University of Moscow escaped temporarily the wrath of the theoreticians of the Ministry of Public Instruction. There three professors: Ivan Ivanovich Davydov, Mikhail Grigor'evich Pavlov, and Daniel Mikhailovich Vellanskii ostensibly gave lectures on physics and agriculture when, in fact, they taught the philosophy of Schelling. Not to fear, Magnitskii would move against them in 1823.

The desire of Magnitskii and his colleagues to safeguard the morals of the Russian people from what they regarded as the contaminating vapors given off by the decay of European society was not limited only to the realm of religion and formal education. They were deeply suspicious of the true intent of the romantic aesthetic that had come to dominate the literature of Western Europe. The works of Byron came to be looked upon with more suspicion than those of possibly any other author.

Chaadaev, who read English with great ease, was deeply interested in Byron. He possessed two editions of Byron's works in English and one in French translation -- all of which he had purchased in 1819. Sverbeev recalled that Chaadaev at this time "was handsome," that "he distinguished himself not by the manners of a Hussar but by a certain English appearance, one could even say as a Byronian." Petr himself later told P. I. Bartenev, one of Pushkin's earliest biographers, that he had introduced Pushkin to the works of Byron in St. Petersburg before the former's exile.

It is easy to imagine Petr's indignation if he had chanced to read the letter of April 23, 1820 which the Chairman of the St. Petersburg School District, D. P. Runich sent to the publisher of the journal, Russian Veteran (Russkii invalid). Runich expressed his anger over the journal's publication of a translation of an article from the French journal Conservateur, "on the English atheist poet who, in the opinion of the French critic himself, had a dark and truculent spirit and a mind disfigured by Pride, enflamed and ablaze with the fires of hell!"

On top of this, dear sir, permit me to ask what could be the use for Russians, and in general for human beings to know or be informed that in England, America or Australia there is a monster who is interweaving absurd poems and systems of disbelief, the aim of which is to represent a crime of passion as a necessary demand of the Great spirit? What here is refined or useful? Is not this the philosophy of hell? . . . who will be contaminated by the ravings of Byron?--Such is to perish forever; impressions like this, especially in young hearts, are blotted out only with difficulty. From the poetry of Byron's and the worthy genius ascribed to them grow Sands and Louvels!

The implication could hardly be less subtle. The free spread of the ideas that were originating in Western Europe would lead to chaos and anarchism in Russia. Karl Sand was the murderer of Kotzebue, Louis-Pierre Louvel the assassin of the Duc de Berry. Runich's tirade against Byron and his purge of four professors of the University of Petersburg served only to deepen the alienation of the younger generation. Grech offered his evaluation of Runich, calling him "an imitator, a devotee and a caricature of Magnitskii, . . . a fool, a bigot and a windbag." Nikolai Turgenev confided his despair to his diary.

Four professors of the University have been forbidden to read lectures which the critics call deceptive systems of disbelief and so on. What are these evil know-nothings doing to the religion of Christ? Do they want to push its principles to their final consequences? Then they would be terrified to see how this religion does not agree with the civil order.

Finally, Petr Andreevich Viazemskii wrote to Aleksandr Turgenev: "Today I found in the papers an announcement. 'Thus there will be a course in natural law based on the explanation of the Holy Scriptures.' Where do you think? In Kazan? No! In Naples! I wanted to cry 'Help!'"

To summarize a final and major development in the polarization of Chaadaev's generation from that of Arakcheev, Magnitskii, and Alexander I, it is necessary to look at Magnitskii's 1820 speech given before a committee of the Ministry of Public Instruction. His tirade was perhaps the most outstanding example of the extreme course of action which could result from the policies being advocated by the "leaders" of Russian education. "'Down with altars, down with thrones, long live death and hell.' Already in many countries in Europe they are howling this." Magnitskii proclaimed.

The Prince of Darkness himself approaches visibly around us. The veil which covers him becomes more and more transparent and soon, without doubt will fall altogether. This assault, the last perhaps which he shall lead against us, is the most terrible, for it is a spiritual assault embracing the entire world. Rapidly and invisibly the hostile forces surround us and suddenly everyone trembles and crouches. The human word, here is that which transmits this diabolical force; printing is its army. Godless professors of the Universities distill this atrocious poison of disbelief in the legitimate powers to our unfortunate youth . . . . Happy will be Russia if it can only separate itself from Europe in a manner such that no rumor, no news concerning-these horrible events which have occurred there can reach as far as Russia. The actual attack of this evil spirit cannot be stopped by the force of arms, for against a spiritual assault it is necessary to have an equally spiritual defense. A clairvoyant censorship united with a system of popular education on a solid foundation of faith: Here is the only protection against the flood of atheism and depravity which is sweeping Europe.

But not everyone in the older generation or in the Russian government was as shortsighted as Magnitskii. Some understood the reaction that the policies of the Ministry of Public Instruction would create among the very students whom they were designed to protect. In 1817 Karamzin had written to his friend Dmitriev that the Ministry's "attempt 'to make secular education Christian' would only serve to increase 'the number of hypocrites.'"

Frederick Parrot, the assistant curator of Dorpat University, was another who understood the potential results of official policy. Not long after Magnitskii had completed the process of "devouring" the University of Kazan, Parrot sent Alexander I a remarkable memorandum entitled: "Coup d'oeil moral sur les principles actuels de l'instruction publique." Parrot warned that the policies of Magnitskii and his colleagues were decreasing rather than strengthening respect for religion. Students who, in lectures that were supposed to be on history, physics, philosophy, medicine and ancient languages, were told only about the virtues of religion would end up feeling only coldness toward it. Professors who were forced to prove their piety by giving such lectures would only be turned into hypocrites.

It is necessary to grant youth freedom under a supervision which would not be restrictive and, most important, which would not be humiliating. Sometimes youth will misuse this freedom, will play pranks and even make mistakes; in such a case it must pay the legal penalty and it must come to the conviction that punishment will inevitably follow a crime. Such education has the advantage that it develops maturity early in youth and that, consequently youth will damage neither itself nor society.

Parrot's memorandum was filed away and forgotten; official policy toward education continued unchanged.

The "Christianization" of education carried out by the Ministry of Public Instruction and Ecclesiastical Affairs certainly exerted a negative influence on Chaadaev's reaction to the society in which he lived. Direct evidence to support this conclusion may be found in the correspondence of Aleksandr Turgenev. On September 14, 1820 Count Dmitrii Nikolaevich Bludov, a member of the State Council and prominent writer, Zhukovskii, the poet and friend of Karamzin, and Petr Chaadaev passed the evening at Turgenev's St. Petersburg residence. The next day, Aleksandr Ivanovich wrote to his close friend Prince Viazemskii.

I received your letter with the speeches and accounts, and yesterday distributed all the examples to the proper quarters . . . . The speech of Mostovskii would have insulted my national pride if dislike of the weak were insulting . . . . I tried to show my gratitude for the Kazan production which was the most noteworthy of your speeches. Bludov, Chaadaev and Zhukovskii spent yesterday evening at my place and brightened it by reading the Kazan booklet. If it were not for our laughter, then it would have been possible to burst from the fury of our indignation . . . . Duclos said in his time: "It is a little band of the impious which produces the devout." In ours, among us, it is possible to say: "It is a little band of the devout which produces the impious."

Viazemskii had apparently written some kind of parody on Magnitskii's "devouring" of the University of Kazan. This was his "Kazan booklet." Although it is tempting to consider Mostovskii as some kind of code word for Magnitskii, Turgenev was apparently not referring to Magnitskii but rather to Count Edward Osipovich Mostovskii, the Minister of Internal Affairs for the Kingdom of Poland. However, the combination of disgust over the "Kazan booklet" with the revision of the statement of Duclos can only point to what was indeed the central topic of the evening's discussion: contempt for the policies of the "little band of the devout" of the Ministry of Public Instruction which could only serve to increase the numbers of rebellious, alienated, impious Russian youth.

The Semenovskii Rebellion

When Aleksandr Turgenev wrote to Viazemskii to tell him of the evening spent with Bludov, Zhukovskii and Chaadaev, a succession of events that would lead to an explosion within the Semenovskii regiment and would change the course of Chaadaev's life was well under way. While the "rebellion" of the Semenovskii regiment that occurred in October 1820 had an immediate and identifiable cause, its origins may be traced to 1817 if not earlier. In his memoirs, Matvei Murav'ev-Apostol recalled numerous instances of senseless military discipline and outright cruelty. If one may judge by the testimony of Nikolai Turgenev and Ivan Iakushkin, Murav'ev-Apostol's list is far from exhaustive. A glance at some of these instances will offer some understanding of the tensions that had arisen within the Semenovskii as well as throughout the entire Guard Corps by the time that Grigorii Efimovich Shvarts took over his new regimental command.

One of the first of these events occurred in 1817 with the appointment of a protégé of Arakcheev, Petr Andreevich Kleinmikhel', as drill major of the Semenovskii. He at once undertook to correct the regiment's allegedly sloppy drills.

Hair plumes more than two feet long were attached to the uppermost part of the shako [a military helmet]. The full coat was worn at that time, as well as an ammunition belt, a sloping overcoat and on top of it a knapsack--in this situation it was demanded that the plumes of the soldiers not waver during the marching drills and the manuals of the rifle. The adjutant general . . . Zheltukhin (well-known for his cruelty) drove his troops to this ideal of perfection.

In 1818 Leontii Osipovich Gurko once led the . . . battalion from the Khamovnicheskii barracks to the riding school. He told us that they were angry at us because no soldiers had been beaten as a result of the drills . . . . When the battalion arrived at the riding school, as usual, it was given a moment to recover and then the drill began as always with the manual of the rifle. Gurko observed that one soldier did not remove his hand quickly enough in doing the present arms. He ordered him to walk out in front of the battalion to unsheathe his cutlass, and, because he had committed an offense, to put down his belt pouch and cutlass. My brother raised his sword, approached Gurko and said that the soldier who had been brought to his front was from his company, that his conduct had been exemplary and that he had never been punished. Gurko was so lost that he began to explain himself to my brother in French before the soldiers. And the soldier went unpunished.

One evening, returning to the barracks from a visit to a friend, Murav'ev-Apostol had seen a soldier climb across the railing of a bridge, strip of his uniform, and plunge to his death into the icy Neva. He declared that they "persecuted us [the officers of the Semenovskii] because we did not drive people to such extremes."

According to Murav'ev-Apostol, Arakcheev and the Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich finally managed to have General Potemkin relieved from the command of the Semenovskii regiment. Colonel Grigorii Efimovich Shvarts, who had complained that Potemkin was too soft-hearted with his troops, became the commander.

Shvarts took our regiment for his own reasons. When he found out that corporal punishment had been abolished within the regiment . . ., [in reprisal] for an unsatisfactory drill, he turned a person of one rank against another and ordered the soldiers to spit in each other's face. Drills were organized. On top of this, every day from all twelve companies in turn, he demanded ten men for himself and drilled them for his own amusement at his quarters, varying the torments. They were compelled to stand motionless for a whole hour, their feet were bound in splints . . . and so on . . . Mikhail Pavlovich was extremely satisfied with Shvarts, encouraged his daily visits, gave him a horse, a carriage and the like. The officers did not incite dissatisfaction among the soldiers. It was universal.

On the fifteenth of October 1820 many months of tension came to a head. The first grenadiers company of the Semenovskii was composed of the most seasoned troops and was considered to be the regiment's elite company. These troops, after the evening roll call, asked their sergeant major to tell their company commander that they no longer had the strength to continue to serve under Shvarts. Their commander, Nikolai Ivanovich Koshkarov, reported this to his superior, Colonel Vadkovskii, who relayed the complaint upward through the chain of command.

The sudden crisis in the leadership of the first company was met by rigid inflexibility on the part of several of the highest officers in the Russian army. Having tolerated the promotions of many officers who would turn their troops into martinets, they themselves had become insensitive to the minimal demands of human decency. Because of their insensitivity, they failed to see the need to force Shvarts to listen to reason, and eventually to relieve him of his command. The first company had declared that it had been authorized by the remaining companies to speak for the discontent of the entire regiment. But, because of the intransigence of Paskevich, the division commander, Vasil'chikov, the corps Commander, and Grand Duke Mikhail Pavlovich, Commandant of the Russian Artillery, the plea of one company was transformed into the nonviolent "mutiny" of the entire Semenovskii regiment. On October 16 the first company was ordered by General Vasil'chikov to march to the palace riding school.

When it had entered, the company to its amazement saw the gates open on both sides as two platoons from the Pavlovskii regiment entered with loaded rifles and arranged themselves in a circle. Vasil'chikov threatened to shoot them. The soldiers answered that they had stood under hostile fire and were always prepared to go where they were commanded but that they had not the strength to continue to serve under Shvarts. Vasil'chikov then sent the company to the Peter-Paul Fortress. An escort from the Pavlovskii soldiers ran through the halls of the Semenovskii barracks shouting that the first company had been taken to the Fortress. All the remaining eleven companies of Semenovskii went out on the square that faced their infirmary. The soldiers in outrage and anguish vowed to each other that they would stand together with their comrades and, if need be, perish with them . . . . Mikhail Pavlovich and Vasil'chikov appeared and commanded the regiment to form ranks. The soldiers answered that they were not prepared to and did not move their feet . . . . Vasil'chikov finally asked them what they did want. "Return our veterans to us or let us join them." The companies were ordered to the Fortress. In an instant the soldiers formed ranks by battalions and [as the sun began to rise] in complete silence headed toward the Fortress.

Awakening early on October 17, Aleksandr Turgenev looked out of his window on the closing scenes of one of the most peaceful mutinies in Russian military history. Three days later he wrote to Prince Viazemskii.

On Monday morning the whole Semenovskii regiment . . . having left its barracks, was imprisoned in the Fortress. In only their overcoats, they went by our house calmly and without arms. I asked among them: "Where are you going?"--"To the fortress."--"Why?"--"Under arrest."--What for?"--"Because of Shvarts." The first company had already been imprisoned before sunrise. They had demanded to be freed from Shvarts.

Turgenev went on to sketch the events that led to the rebellion and to give the details of the rebellion itself. His version corroborates all the major points of Muraviev-Apostol's more detailed account.

The Semenovskii regiment remained in the Fortress for nearly two days while Vasil'chikov and Count Miloradovich, the Governor-General of St. Petersburg, tried to decide how to break the news to the Emperor who was attending the Congress of Troppau. Finally on October 19, the regiment was taken by steamship from the Fortress of Peter and Paul to the island of Kronstadt in the Bay of Finland some twenty miles west of the mouth of the Neva. On the same day, a messenger) bearing a very brief report written by Vasil'chikov, was sent to Troppau where Alexander was meeting with Metternich for the signing of the official protocols of the Holy Alliance. The report informed the Emperor that his favorite and most trusted regiment had mutinied and stated that further details would soon be sent by way of Chaadaev.

Vasil'chikov had four aides-de-camp. It seems that he choose Chaadaev because Petr knew the Emperor personally and was favorably regarded by Alexander. According to Longinov, Alexander had informed Vasil'chikov early in 1820 that he wished to appoint as his aide-de-camp one of the four men who served the latter. The first, Grigorii Sergeevich Lachinov, was about to be promoted to Colonel. The Emperor was not well disposed towards the second, Nikolai Nikolaevich Raevskii, who was planning to retire anyway. The fourth, Count Nikolai Aleksandrovich Protasov, was too young. This left Chaadaev, who was third in seniority among Vasil'chikov's four aides. An order confirming Petr's appointment as aide-de-camp to the Emperor was to have been announced on Easter Sunday the 28th of March. However, neither Lachinov's promotion nor Raevskii's retirement had occurred by this time, and, during Easter matins, Vasil'chikov told Petr that his appointment had been postponed. He added that the Emperor had assured him that the appointment would be made in the near future.

Chaadaev was expected to leave for Troppau on October 20. Nikolai Turgenev noted in his diary on October 19: "They will send Chaadaev to Troppau." The following day his brother Aleksandr wrote Viazemskii: "Two . . . messengers have already been sent. Today Chaadaev went." However, Count Miloradovich and General Vasil'chikov were preparing their own reports to be taken by Petr and their efforts occupied them longer than they had anticipated. On the l9th of October Dmitrii Petrovich Buturlin, aide-de-camp to the Emperor, wrote to Prince Petr Mikhailovich Volkonskii that he took advantage of Chaadaev's impending journey to convey to him his impressions of the Semenovskii mutiny. On October 20, because Chaadaev had not yet departed, Buturlin added a postscript. Then on October 21 he added that "Chaadaev is leaving only today." Finally, according to Longinov, Petr actually did not leave until October 22 and arrived in Troppau no later than October 31.

After the Congress ended, Alexander wrote to Vasil'chikov on November 10, 1820, that he had received the first news of the mutiny on October 29. The fact that Petr, who was the best known of the messengers sent by Vasil'chikov, was not the first to arrive at Troppau and that the courier sent to Metternich by the Austrian ambassador in St. Petersburg possibly arrived before him was later intertwined by some with the fact of Chaadaev's subsequent and unexpected retirement. These people concluded that Chaadaev had hoped to use his mission to benefit his own career. They further assumed that his slowness, caused by his supposed fastidious attention to his comfort and his toilette along the route, had resulted not in success but had instead incurred the wrath of the Emperor and that this was the cause of his sudden retirement. Sverbeev who was often inaccurate in what he wrote about Chaadaev, was the only person who had known Petr well to accept this line of reasoning. Longinov wrote his article that appeared in Russkii arkhiv in 1868 specifically to refute Sverbeev's claims. The others who saw Petr's mission as an effort for personal gain that ended instead in disaster were Prince Aleksandr Ilarionovich Vasil'chikov, Aleksandr Ivanovich Kaznacheev and Vasilii Vasil'evich Kartsev. The first was the son of General Ilarion Vasil'chikov whom Chaadaev hated and who had little reason to feel kindly towards Petr. The second was an aide to General Zakrevskii and hardly knew Chaadaev. The third, Kartsev, also did not know Petr well. Against this testimony, some of which had strong cause to be biased, stands that of Longinov, Zhikharev and, most important, the Emperor himself. For in the letter of November 10, 1820, that he had written to Vasil'chikov, Alexander in no way indicated any dissatisfaction with the conduct of Chaadaev, declaring: "I have already informed you through Volkonskii and through Chaadaev of the various observations which occurred to me." Further testimony to Alexander's lack of displeasure with Petr may be found in the accounts of Zhikharev and Longinov, both of whom agree that Alexander bade farewell to Chaadaev by telling him that it would only be a short time before they would be serving together.

Since, despite testimony to the contrary, Petr appears to have carried out his mission to Alexander flawlessly, the questions most necessary for an understanding of subsequent events are to be found not in the nature of the mission itself but in the content of the reports that he delivered to the Emperor and Alexander's subsequent reaction. From the contents of Vasil'chikov's initial communiqué to Alexander which asserted that "the sole cause" of the mutiny "was Colonel Shvarts," it is possible to conclude that, if the reports hid the bungling of the high command which turned the complaint of one company into a full-scale mutiny of the entire regiment, they, at least were honest in laying the initial blame at the feet of Shvarts.

What must have been most discouraging for Chaadaev was not the report that he delivered, but Alexander's reaction to the news. After all, Petr knew that Vasil'chikov had blamed Shvarts and he certainly had some hope that Alexander's wrath might fall more heavily on Shvarts than on the regiment itself. But when he began his audience with the Tsar he was quickly disillusioned--Alexander had become possessed by the fear of revolutionaries and their plots. When he heard about the Semenovskii mutiny, despite the fact that evidence to the contrary was indicated in Vasil'chikov's reports, he became convinced that the dread revolutionaries had penetrated to the heart of Russian society. Nikolai Turgenev later asserted that the Emperor was convinced that the rebellion was the result of "political channels" and stated that during a long interrogation he tried to get Chaadaev "to confirm that a certain devil of a journalist who never had earned much money with his literary merchandise was at the bottom of the insurrection." The journalist who had aroused Alexander's suspicions was Nikolai Ivanovich Grech, editor of Syn otechestva. Grech himself recalled that, at Troppau, Frederick William II had told Alexander that he believed there "existed in Switzerland a central committee for European revolution."

Alexander asked Chaadaev, who had just arrived from Petersburg with a report about the unpleasant incident: "Do you know Grech?"--"I know him, your majesty."--"Was he ever in Switzerland."--"He was, but more than this I do not know," answered Chaadaev in all fairness. --"Well, now I understand," continued the Emperor, and he added: "I may be mistaken but I think that Grech has had a part in the Semenovskii rebellion."

The fact that Alexander could have jumped to such an unfounded conclusion was profoundly disturbing to Chaadaev. Nikolai Turgenev declared that Petr tried to dissuade the Emperor from placing the blame on Grech. But it is doubtful that he would have dared to try seriously to change Alexander's mind by arguing at length a case which he could see that the Emperor was not disposed to believe.

Metternich also noted the impression that the news of the revolt produced on Alexander, pointing out that it seemed to confirm all of the Emperor's worst suspicions of being surrounded by political intrigue and revolutionary plots.

The Emperor maintains that there must be some reason for three thousand Russian soldiers to have decided on an action corresponding so little with their national character. He goes so far as to imagine that the radicals have been responsible for all this; that in order to repress it, he must himself return to Petersburg. I do not share his opinion. It would exceed all measure of probability if the radicals in Russia already had influence over entire regiments--but this shows how much the Emperor has changed.

Chaadaev left Troppau to return to St. Petersburg no later than November 2. Matvei Ivanovich Murav'ev-Apostol later asserted that Petr told him "that, as a consequence of his meeting with the Emperor, he decided to quit the service." Chaadaev would give many different reasons for his retirement but the one given to Murav'ev-Apostol is quite possibly among the most accurate, for it is probable that Petr had earlier deluded himself into thinking that the Tsar did not share the extreme reactionary views of his advisors. After all, in 1818 Alexander had still talked of preparing a constitution for Russia. In 1819 there had been rumors that he was working on a plan to free the serfs. In early 1820 Chaadaev had expressed his discontent with the service to his brother. But even after Pushkin was sent into exile, although he was certainly disillusioned with the service, there is no evidence which would indicate that he seriously considered resignation. He had hoped to serve as Alexander's aide-de-camp in the near future and perhaps had entertained the hope that he could help to counteract the influence of the Emperor's conservative advisors. But at-Troppau in November 1820 Chaadaev could see the state of Alexander's mind and realized that his optimism was in vain. During the following weeks, he gradually realized that his career in the service no longer held any meaning.

Chaadaev arrived in Petersburg on November 15 bringing with him the Emperor's orders that would decide the fate of the Semenovskii. Alexander's decision was threefold: the soldiers of the Semenovskii were to be scattered among all the regiments of the Russian army; the officers of the regiment would also be reassigned among all the other army regiments; and a new Semenovskii would be created from the companies of the Grenadiers. The fact that it was Chaadaev who returned with the news of his former regiment's punishment provided those who disliked him with a chance to begin to talk. Rumors soon spread that Peter had taken to Troppau a report which compromised his cousin Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Shcherbatov and his friends Sergei and Matvei Murav'ev-Apostol, all of whom were officers of his former regiment, solely in order to assure his promotion to aide-de-camp to the Emperor. This hypothesis may have been attractive to those who were resentful of Chaadaev's social brilliance and his rapid rise to the highest levels of the military service but there is no real evidence which can serve to substantiate it. Petr's relations with Iakushkin, Nikolai Turgenev and Murav'ev-Apostol continued unchanged. Murav'ev-Apostol himself declared: "none of us would have thought of blaming Chaadaev for taking the report [to Troppau]. He was acting under orders."

By early December, Petr had been able to talk with most of his friends in Petersburg. No one seemed to be sure what the Emperor would do next, but all knew that some kind of measures would be taken to eradicate what Alexander conceived of as a spreading network of revolutionary ideas and plots. Nikolai Turgenev confided to his diary on October 27, 1820: "I heard from Engel'gardt that some member of the police had said that I and a few others were suspected of smuggling into the barracks various clippings from [Suspect] newspapers." Turgenev realized from this occurrence that his activities, from that point on, were very probably under police surveillance and he certainly informed Chaadaev of this the first time that he saw Petr after his return from Troppau.

Chaadaev knew from his interview with the Emperor that Grech was under suspicion. Vasil'chikov's son, Aleksandr Ilarionovich, later wrote that his father had told him that Alexander, while at Troppau, had heard rumors accusing not only Grech but also Chaadaev and Aleksandr- Ivanovich Kaznacheev of evil intentions. The Tsar ordered that Kaznacheev and Grech be placed under surveillance but did not move directly against Chaadaev, whose correspondence was already under surveillance.

The Black Office, which had been established by Alexander I to inspect private correspondence, had perlustrated Petr's March 25, 1820 letter to his brother. On November 29, 1820, Chaadaev's aunt, Princess Shcherbatova, wrote to her nephew urging him to resign from the service. This letter was also read and a brief excerpt made by the Black Office. In his letter of March 25 Petr had shown his support of the revolution in Spain, had mentioned "the black trick" that Shvarts had played on the Semenovskii and had called Vasil'chikov "my imbecile." Here was a reservoir of potential trouble for Chaadaev if and when this one arm of the Imperial bureaucracy transferred its information to the proper authorities. It is possible that the Emperor also knew of Chaadaev's letter of March 25 and had instructed the Black Office to inform him if there were a repetition.

At any rate, Grech was among the first to suffer from the Emperor's displeasure. On December 9 Vasil'chikov wrote to Volkonskil that he had relieved Grech of his duties as director of the Lancaster schools that had been established in the regiments of the Guards Corps. Soon after this, Chaadaev received his aunt's letter of November 29. Certainly the political atmosphere had not improved since his return from Troppau and, as the new year approached, Petr found himself forced to consider seriously the question of his retirement. He had little desire to continue to serve after he had seen Alexander at Troppau and became a major participant in the tragic demise of the Semenovskii. It was clearly evident that the beliefs of the reactionaries in the government had triumphed. He also realized that although he had never been in the forefront of the development of radical ideas in the years which followed the Napoleonic campaigns, many of his close friends had. Therefore, it might be only a short time before he became implicated in the investigations which Alexander had begun. Finally, he could see that his resignation would silence the rumors which claimed that he had taken the report to Troppau solely in order to insure his promotion as aide-de-camp to Alexander. Suddenly realizing that he had to act, in the last days of December he submitted to Vasil'chikov his request for retirement.

Retirement

On January 2, 1821 he wrote to his aunt and announced that he was "going into retirement." He took great satisfaction from the reaction "of certain persons" who were "unable to understand how I could decide on this when it seemed that I would receive all that which it seemed I wanted, that . . . which a young person in my position should consider a very high honor." Pointing out that there were some who thought that he used his trip to Troppau to ensure himself of this honor Chaadaev warned that they would soon be disillusioned. He continued:

The fact is that I was to be named aide-de-camp to the Emperor after his return, at least according to Vasil'chikov. But I found it more amusing to scorn this favor than to accept it. I'll have fun showing my disdain to those people who themselves despise everyone . . . . There is no one on this earth who is so stupidly arrogant as this Vasll'chikov and I have played a real trick on him . . . . If I ever wanted anything it was only in the way one desired a beautiful piece of furniture or an elegant carriage, in short, as a toy. Good--I will give him a toy for a toy. However, I like even better the pleasure of seeing arrogant stupidity spited. At most, I will see you in two months. Brother and I will stay for a time in Moscow and then I will consider the possibility of going off to Switzerland where I think I would like to stay forever . . . . I will visit you every three years, every two years or, perhaps every year you can come to Switzerland. It is impossible for me to stay in Russia . . . .

The decision to resign was a difficult one for Petr and, from this letter to his aunt, it is easy to see his agitated emotional state. He coveted his impending promotion despite his protestation to the contrary. But he could see that his desire to maintain and further his role of social brilliance and prominence was leading to a dead end where he would meet only with the scorn of those not so successful as he and where he might well become an object of the government's hunt for subversives. In going into retirement he was giving up the role of the brilliant young officer; it would take eight years and much torment before he could shape for himself a new role as a social critic. Meanwhile, all that he could think of doing was to run away to Europe to escape the stresses which confronted him.

Finally, he spared no effort to explain a difficult and trying decision, but he was virtually unable to-give the same explanation to more than one person. He had told Murav'ev-Apostol that he had decided to resign as a result of his disillusionment with the Emperor at Troppau. To his aunt he had presented the matter as a case of sour grapes: "I will show Vasil'chikov that I really did not covet the promotion." This was the essence of his second reason. And last to Vasil'chikov he declared that "he 'had an old aunt . . . to whom he owed much gratitude and who in a very demanding way had asked him to quit the army and come to her estate to look after her." Vasil'chikov wrote to General Volkonskii relating Petr's explanation and added that as an inducement to remain in the service he had offered Chaadaev a four-month vacation which the latter had refused. All that is known about his aunt's letter of November 29, 1820 is the conclusion that she advised her nephew to leave the service. The Black Office saw no reason to copy her letter verbatim, and consequently her reasons have not been preserved. Thus, it is possible that Petr's three contrasting reasons for his retirement are all accurate. While Chaadaev awaited the approval of his request for retirement the political situation grew worse. The Minister of Internal Affairs, General Arseni Andreevich Zakrevskii, suggested to the Emperor that a group of secret police be established to carry out surveillance of the Guards Corps. On January 4, 1821 Alexander approved the idea and ordered Vasil'chikov to carry it out.

One of the first results of Zakrevskii's project was the arrest in late January of retired Captain Dmitrii Petrovich-Ermolaev who had served as an intermediary between many of the relatives and friends of the imprisoned troops of the Semenovskii. After his arrest, Ermolaev's papers were seized. Among them were found two letters from Chaadaev's cousin, Prince Ivan Dmitrievich Shcherbatov, which took the side of the soldiers and were sharply critical of Shvarts in discussing the Semenovskii mutiny. A few days later Shcherbatov was arrested in Moscow, and after a brief investigation was sent to join an army detachment in the town of Aleksandr in Vladimir province.

Chaadaev's correspondence continued to be observed by the Black Office. His January 2 letter to his aunt was copied, and by early February the Emperor had presumably been informed of its contents. Petr's statement that Vasil'chikov was "stupidly arrogant" and his remarks that he would have to go to Switzerland since he could no longer remain in Russia certainly did not make a good impression on the authorities. On top of this, Alexander received at this time a report entitled: "A Note about Secret Societies in Russia, Compiled in the year 1821." The information in the report had been gathered by his police agent, Gribovskii. According to this "Note," Chaadaev was friendly with many of the leaders of "secret societies," and was being tested for membership in such a society.

On February 19, 1821 General Volkonskii replied to Vasil'chikov's report on Chaadaev's resignation. The reply came from Laibach, where the Emperor was attending another of the numerous diplomatic conferences of the era. It cryptically warned Vasil'chikov that he should choose his future aides-decamp with great care, especially the successor to Chaadaev.

On February 21, Alexander issued a decree accepting Petr's resignation as of the 29th of March. On the same day, Volkonskii wrote again to Vasil'chikov, explaining that the Emperor had accepted the resignation without giving Chaadaev the customary promotion because, "from another source, he had received very unfavorable information" about him. Volkonskii concluded by saying that he would show Vasil'chikov this information when he returned to Petersburg. The information which could have meant serious trouble for Petr was the report of Gribovskii on the secret societies. It probably also included reports from the Black Office.

Although Chaadaev's role in the "Semenovskii affair" changed his life, it did not earn him the ostracism of those acquaintances, who thought that he might be able to use his influence on their behalf. On February 19, 1821 one such person, Mikhail Pavlovich Bestuzhev-Riumin, wrote to Petr, whom he had met in St. Petersburg several months before.

Relying on your good disposition toward me . . . dear Chaadaev . . . I will ask your opinion about what I should do. In Romnyi we will find our corps commander. He will receive us quite well and promise to help us forget our misfortune. But what will come of it? He will thrust us into a training battalion where we will drill seven hours a day . . . Prince Gorchakov, Commander of the Staff Corps, handles everything here; if you could deliver a letter on my behalf to him, then by this you would do me a handsome favor. Despite the assurances of General Rot, this affair oppresses me more and more . . . . Farewell, dear Chaadaev. Forgive the disorder in-this letter . . . I still am not myself. I am so stunned by all that has happened to me, so many events have merged into and superseded each other that my head is going around in circles.

When he received Bestuzhev-Riumin's letter in March 1821, Chaadaev was still living in his suite of rooms at the Demut Inn in St. Petersburg. However, he was no longer in a position where he could expect to help his friend who had suffered disgrace and exile because it had happened to be his fate to be a junior officer in the Semenovskii regiment on the night of October 16-17, 1820. Eventually, Bestuzhev-Riumin would suffer a tragic fate which would show the bankruptcy of Alexander's policy of trying to stamp out subversion by scattering the supposed radicals of the Semenovskii. During his service in the South, Riumin befriended Sergei Murav'ev-Apostol and Pestel'. When the Decembrist revolt broke out in the south he was one of its leaders, and on July 13, 1826 he was one of the five men who were executed in the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

Further Evolution of the Secret Societies

Early in 1819 Chaadaev's close friend Ivan Iakushkin had gone into retirement and settled on his country estate in Smolensk province. There he began to construct a project for the liberation of his serfs. The project never overcame the inertia of the bureaucracy and the scepticism of his own peasants, and late in 1820 he returned to St. Petersburg only to find the Union of Welfare in disarray. Many members no longer participated in the society's functions and a large segment of those who did remain believed that it was useless to try "to create a social opinion in Petersburg." They wanted the society to prepare for more decisive action in the future. At about the same time a representative of the Union, authorized to speak on behalf of the Moscow membership, arrived in St. Petersburg and complained of the society's inaction, asserting that it should either be dissolved or reorganized. Discussions were held and it was decided that they should meet in Moscow in January 1821.

In November, Iakushkin was sent to Tul'chin and Kishinev to inform selected members of the Union of Welfare about the upcoming Moscow meeting. In order "not to arouse suspicion among the authorities," in Tul'chin, Iakushkin stayed with Pestel', whom he already knew. At this time Pestel' was writing his Russian Justice (Russkaia pravda) and Iakushkin recalled that his friend read to him lengthy excerpts of his radical work, which envisioned the creation of a republic in Russia. Pestel' wanted to attend the Moscow meeting, but the Tul'chin membership convinced him that his presence in Moscow would arouse the suspicion of the police. Instead they decided to send Ivan Grigor'ev Burtsov and Nikolai Ivanovich Komarov, who had already requested leaves to go to Moscow on personal business. In Kishinev, Iakushkin met General Mikhail Orlov and, on behalf of General Mikhail Aleksandrovich Fonvizin, invited him to attend the Moscow meeting. Iakushkin also spent some time with Pushkin and as a result was able to give Chaadaev news of his dear friend when they met in Moscow the following June.

Early in January, 1821 about twenty delegates arrived in Moscow, where daily meetings soon began, even though the government knew that delegates from the Union of Welfare had gathered to discuss secret societies. Mikhail Orlov put forward a written set of proposals: The society should resort to force against the government if necessary, it should acquire and operate a secret lithograph "by means of which it would be possible to print various articles against the government and send them out in great quantity over all of Russia," and finally that the society should counterfeit assignat rubles which would give it huge financial assets and would undermine the credit of the government. Orlov demanded complete acceptance of his proposals and, when he was refused, walked out of the meeting and left Moscow.

At the meetings which followed Nikolai Turgenev usually presided. So as to be able to get rid of "unreliable members" it was decided that the only "official" act of the Moscow gathering would be the announcement of the dissolution of the Union of Welfare. Only the most trustworthy would be informed that a secret society (the goals of which were being redefined) still existed. A two-part program was agreed on. Burtsov was in charge of the editing of the first part which proposed philanthropic goals similar to those of the Green Book in the old Union of Welfare. According to Iakushkin: "the second part, for members of the higher order, was written by Nikolai Turgenev. [Here] it was stated directly that the aim of the society was to work to limit the autocracy in Russia . . ."

[Eventually] both parts of our new statutes were transcribed in quadruplicate; one for Turgenev, another for Ivan Aleksandrovich Fonvizin, a third for [Iakushkin] and a fourth for Burtsov. Then all of the members [of the Union of Welfare] were invited to a meeting . . . . Turgenev, as our President, announced to all present that the Union of Welfare would exist no more and laid before them the causes of its abolition.

After the Moscow meetings, which had continued for about three weeks, the delegates returned home. When Burtsov returned to Tul'chln, the proposals that he brought were rejected out-of-hand by the local membership which went on to form, under Pestel's leadership, a new radical group known as the Southern Society. In St. Petersburg and Moscow the reorganization went ahead very slowly and when it was completed late in 1822, the new group became known as the Northern Society.

At the end of the Moscow meetings, Nikolai Turgenev returned to Petersburg, where in April 1821 he began a series of informal meetings with Chaadaev. On April 25, he noted in his diary: "Just now I went from the club with Chaadaev and visited Murav'ev." At this time, Petr was closing out his affairs in Petersburg and preparing to go in the early summer to Moscow and then to the estate of his aunt at Alekseevskoe not far from the former capital. Evidently both Turgenev and Iakushkin believed that the experience of Chaadaev's journey to Troppau and its aftermath had perhaps affected Petr to the point where he would be responsive to the political aims of the nascent Northern Society. It is probable that Chaadaev met Turgenev on several more occasions before the beginning of June 1821. Iakushkin was expecting Petr to come to Moscow before June, for on May 25 he wrote from his country estate to Ivan Dmitrievich Shcherbatov, asking if Chaadaev had not already arrived. But Petr was late in arranging his departure, which he finally set for June 9, 1821. On June 10, Turgenev confided to his diary: "Chaadaev left for Moscow yesterday. Three days ago, I spent the evening with him. We talked and came to an understanding (dogovorilis'). It is a pity that this did not happen earlier." Apparently Turgenev had finally given Chaadaev a complete briefing on the status of the nascent Northern Society and he had found Petr receptive to its aims.

When he arrived in Moscow in mid-June, one of the first of his old friends whom Chaadaev met was Ivan Iakushkin. According to Iakushkin:

When Chaadaev arrived in Moscow, I suggested that he join our society. He was agreeable to this idea but told me that it was unjust that I had not invited him earlier, then he would not have gone into retirement and would have tried to become adjutant to the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich who, very likely would protect the Secret Society if it were suggested to him that the society would support him in the case of the accession to the throne of his elder brother.

Historical hindsight shows Chaadaev's scheme for becoming adjutant to the Grand Duke Nikolai Pavlovich to have been quixotic. The man who Petr hoped would protect the Secret Society in the event of his brother's accession to the throne would himself gain the throne four years later and in doing so would destroy the Decembrist movement. It is also easy to wonder if Chaadaev would have had the nerve and the courage to remain in the service, in view of the events that occurred in January and February 1821. How would he have been able to explain away the unfavorable information about him which had come to Alexander's attention? What could he have said to explain the remarks in his letters which had been censored by the Black Office? Petr's reaction, as recalled by Iakushkin, was filled with wishful thinking. However, it does corroborate Turgenev's remark: "It is a pity that this did not happen earlier." For Chaadaev apparently had also told Turgenev that if he had been asked to join the secret society a few months earlier, he would not have retired from the service.

After a brief stay in Moscow, Chaadaev arrived in Alekseevsksoe, the estate of his aunt Princess Shcherbatova, early in July. Here he would stay until he left Russia for Western Europe almost two years later. Petr had spent some time with his brother in Moscow and it is apparent that he almost immediately began again to quarrel with Mikhail, for on July 19, 1821, from Alekseevskoe, he wrote a long letter to his brother.

As soon as we are separated from each other by only several versts your sensibleness returns. I admit to you that I would prefer for it to remain always unfailing, but if this is not to be, then this respite is better than nothing . . . . I arrived here in a state of complete good health and well-being, feeling excellent. It goes without saying that auntie was very glad to see me and still more surprised at not having seen you . . . . However, she, as well as I, knows your indolence . . . .

Even though you have gone away and become more mild, you continue your attacks. [Mikhail had apparently told Petr his coming to Alekseevskoe would place an undue burden on his aunt. He had also accused him of taking his passport. Petr replied that the passport had been locked inside his suitcase by mistake.] . . . .

Thus it is my pleasure to inform you that you are mistaken in the majority of what you shoved under my nose . . . . But you will see that everything will turn out for the best, and I foresee only a single possible difficulty: it will not be easy for you to find a pretext for your bile. However, do not despair: good will can attain everything. And so here it is, I will settle down here. I shall not demand special treatment . . . . I shall go to Moscow from time to time. There I can track down objects necessary for my animal existence. In a month or two I hope that you will come and provide me with the necessities of my moral existence, that is to say, force me to think things out . . . .

Matters which will detain you in Petersburg are not of the sort which can be managed swiftly. It would not be obliging on your part to remain in that unhappy world without order, but it would be still less obliging to hurry something by slight of hand . . . and so farewell my friend. God bless you, and who more than you could deserve this protection? . . . .

It seems that I have answered all your questions. How do I like my aunt's place? Very much, and especially so compared to the way it was described to me . . . . What will we do? Auntie will write this to you . . .

There are some themes in this letter common to much of Petr's correspondence of the previous eighteen months. Money was again a problem and a point of contention. Petr chided his brother for his lack of concern about a debt which Princess Shcherbatova was helping to pay and he assured Mikhail that he was giving their aunt three rubles per day as compensation for the cost of his stay. A second theme was his sharp criticism of Mikhail. Petr's strong egotism made it easier to blame his brother than to consider that, when things did not go as he wished, his own actions might have been to blame. He was to continue this sharp criticism of Mikhail during his trip to Western Europe at which time their relations would become severely strained.

Turning Inward

However, the most revealing part of the letter is not to be found in what Petr said either about money or about his brother, but in his remark that his brother's presence "would force" him "to think things out." The identity of the dashing and brilliant army officer who in a very short time had been able to achieve a rise to service among the highest levels of power in the Russian state was now lost forever to Chaadaev. A whole new life, a whole new thinking out of who he was and what were the reasons for his existence lay ahead of Petr. It was a prospect which frightened him. He had asserted that Mikhail's presence would force him to think things out. Petr knew that he had to redefine the essence of his life's purpose, but his fear of some sudden, unknown readjustment drove him at the same time to desire to postpone the stress which would result. Thus in the summer of 1821 he entered a period of searching and uncertainty that would not be resolved until he found a new identity as a philosopher, as a critic of Russian culture, seven years later.

Petr's immediate solution was to begin to read, to shape a new world for himself from the realms of philosophy, history, and religious thought. He had amassed a library of nearly 3,000 volumes, the majority of which fell into the category of "eighteenth-century rationalist literature." Works by Voltaire, Rousseau, Helvétius, Montesquieu, D'Alembert, Duclos, the Abbé Mably, Condillac and Condorcet predominated. There were also many of the works of Hume, Bacon, Locke, Shakespeare, Milton, Sterne and Gray. Finally, and more important for the direction in which Chaadaev's interests were beginning to turn, there were some of the works of several early French and German romantics: Chateaubriand, Madame de Staël, Lessing, the Schlegels, Winckelmann, Goethe and Schiller.

During the last half of 1821 Petr sold the vast majority of his library to his cousin-in-law, Fedor Petrovich Shakhovskoi. Chaadaev then began to gather a new library which emphasized the works of French and German romantics as well as various church historians and biblical scholars. The library did not grow appreciably until his trip to Western Europe and it is not certain if Petr kept any of the works of Schiller that were to be found in his original library. But it is probable that he did, for there was much in the writings of Schiller that would offer a strong personal appeal to Chaadaev in the summer of 1821. Furthermore, by the time of his return from Europe in 1826, he would become very much interested in the philosophy of Schelling. This progression fits perfectly the hypothesis offered by Martin Malia that, beginning at about the time of the Decembrist revolt (1825), an interest in Schiller on the part of many Russian intellectuals was followed by a passion for the philosophy of Schelling.

Certainly the essential theme of Schiller's plays which Malia sees not as political liberty but rather as "the self fulfillment of the individual" was a theme filled with relevance for Chaadaev in the latter half of 1821. Rebuffed by the real world of "established authority and external law," Schiller's heroes found that man could be truly free and attain the full realization of his potential powers only "in the inner world of the spirit and in the possession of a 'beautiful soul'-- die schöne Seele." Schiller's heroes were the "projections of his striving for self realization." Since the human ego was cramped and frustrated in the real world, self-realization demanded that, in the inner world of the spirit, it be free "to become magnified to colossal proportions." The plays of Schiller appealed to an egotism that was "not mere selfishness, but [was] a state of mind where the individual saw nothing but himself and viewed all external reality only in terms of himself."

After Chaadaev had suddenly found such complete frustration in real life, the satisfaction offered by Schiller was considerable. Petr was a proud man who, until the beginning of 1821, had tried to find a meaningful existence in the world of "established authority and external law." His retirement was an admission of the failure of this attempt. The next eight years were to witness his searching through the inner world of the spirit, a search that would lead to a self-realization that would be attained with the writing of the Philosophical Letters between 1828 and 1831. Already prone to selfishness and egotism, Petr would betray, in his letters to Mikhail written from Western Europe between 1823 and 1826, that more extreme form of egotism where he would come to see nothing but himself and view external reality only in terms of himself.

From the plays of Schiller in 1821, Chaadaev very probably went on to read Schiller's philosophical works: The Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man and The Philosophical Letters, in order to understand how his world of thought was constructed. This world, "a highly unstable equilibrium between revolt and its sublimation," may be described as "a precursor of the whole Or German idealism, that delicate tension of rationalism and mysticism, Enlightenment, and Romanticism, egotism and pantheism." Indeed, the world view of Schiller largely explains the direction of the development of Chaadaev's second library with its emphasis on German idealist philosophy and on French and German romantics in literature, literary criticism, and historical interpretation.

The new direction taken by Petr's intellectual interests is confirmed in part in two letters which he wrote to his cousin, Ivan Dmitrievich Shcherbatov. Because Petr had heard that his cousin was expected there for a brief visit, the first letter was written in late August to the home of Fedor Petrovich Shakhovskoi who was marled to Ivan's sister. Petr thanked Ivan for sending him some books, and inquired about his sister who had written him on August 16 that she was "prepar ing for a journey." Having heard that Iakushkin had recently been in Moscow and had needed some money, Petr regretted that he had not found out in time to go to Moscow and help out his friend. Finally, in a postscript, he added a request: "I wrote to you about the little volumes of the poetry of Goethe: if you have them I ask you to send them to me." The second letter was written early in 1822 when Ivan was under detention awaiting the final resolution of the sentence which the military court had imposed on him in November 1821 for his involvement in some of the events which led to the Semenovskii mutiny. It was brief and to the point: "Auntie sends you tobacco and I will ask you, if they gave you the books for me, to send them to me. Do you or do you not have in your collection the works of the German author Goethe--his poems and his novels?"

An additional clue to the nature of Chaadaev's intellectual pursuits in late 1821 and early 1822 may be found in the Mémoire sur Geistkunde which Gershenzon mistakenly attributed to Petr and included in his edition of Chaadaev's works. The clue is in a passage where the author mentions a friend who in 1822 acquainted him with the works of Jung-Stilling and on February 25th of that year gave him a composition of the latter: "Adventures on Death," having signed it himself. Out of gratitude to the friend who in the beginning of 1822 gave him this and later compelled him to read other works of Stilling that became tools of providence in the matter of his salvation, the author of the Mémoire declared that he would send his composition to his benefactor.

In his article, "Chaadaev i Iakushkin," Dmitrii Ivanovich Shakhovskoi explains that the only clear evidence Gershenzon had for attributing the Mémoire to Chaadaev was "that it was among the papers which his nephew Zhikharev later donated to the Rumiantsev Museum in Moscow. Obviously, if the author kept his word and gave it to his friend, this would explain how the document came to be in Petr's possession. Such a conclusion is fully in keeping with the contents of the Chaadaev-Zhikharev Archives which, except for some brief experiments at poetry, are composed entirely of letters written to Petr or copies of some of Petr's letters that were made over a lengthy period of time by his ''nephew.'' Thus, on the basis of Shakhovskoi's research, it is possible to conclude that Chaadaev had begun to delve into the mysticism of Jung-Stilling by late 1821 and continued to explore the doctrines of his philosophy in 1822. It is also possible that Petr may have become personally acquainted with Joseph de Maistre who was ambassador to St. Petersburg from the Kingdom of Sardinia until about the time of Chaadaev's retirement. However, Petr's investigation of mysticism was shortlived and its only lasting influence would be several passages in the First Philosophical Letter, taken almost directly from the writings of de Maistre and Louis-Gabriel-Ambroise de Bonald.

While the events of the Semenovskii mutiny and Chaadaev's retirement were unfolding, Pushkin had not forgotten his dear friend. In 1820 he had written another poem for Petr:

His mention of ruins seems to have been a melacholy reference to his poem of 1818, when he had expressed the hope that someday he and Chaadaev would inscribe their names on the ruins of the autocracy. However, at this moment in late 1820, these ruins had become for Pushkin only a stone sanctified by friendship. In 1821 he wrote a much longer poem to Chaadaev and also sent it to the editor of Syn otechestva, where it was published in September 1821.

There is no record of Chaadaev's reaction to this very warm expression of Pushkin's deep friendship. However, Petr did read the "Prisoner of the Caucasus" when it was published in 1822. Many reviews had been sharply critical of the fact that the prisoner made no attempt to save Cherkeshenka when she plunged into the river. It was noted that the character of the prisoner was "strange and not quite understandable," that it was filled with "contradictions." In view of this criticism Pushkin was delighted when Chaadaev understood his true intent and wrote to him that he considered the prisoner "insufficiently blasé." This remark told him "what he most wanted to hear: that the Prisoner's criticism was legitimate, that it could even have been sharper."

Meanwhile, in the last days of October 1821 there began a series of events which upset the tranquillity of Petr's retirement and put an end to any possibility that he would actually join the Northern Society and begin to participate in its functions. These events started to unfold on October 30, when the Emperor ordered Shcherbatov and Ermolaev to Vitebsk to be tried for their alleged roles in the Semenovskii mutiny. Ermolaev was charged, inter alia, with having written Shvarts (who by now had been relieved of his command of the Semenovskii) an insulting letter, and with having permitted soldiers to make fun of Shvarts in public. Shcherbatov was also charged with disrespect for Colonel Shvarts. By late November Shcherbatov had been found guilty and was condemned to lose his rank, his decorations, his nobility and to be subjected to corporal punishment. Ermolaev's trial was also completed by this time. He was sentenced to death! General Fedor Petrovich Uvarov, who had replaced Vasil'chikov as Commander of the Guard Corps, promptly ordered that the sentences should be reviewed because of their unusual severity. He recommended that Ermolaev be imprisoned for two years and Shcherbatov for one year. Both men were held in Vitebsk while their sentences were being reviewed.

The examination of Shcherbatov's papers, carried out by the court, led to suspicion of the activities of the Chaadaev brothers, especially Mikhail. Another search and seizure was scheduled. The date was December 22, 1821 and the target was Princess Shcherbatova's house at Alekseevskoe, where both Petr and Mikhail were spending the holidays. The search was led by the district police officer and papers belonging to both Petr and Mikhail were seized. Although nothing unduly incriminating was revealed, Petr and Mikhail were not informed of the results and on February 9, 1822 another search was carried out, this time at the house of Chaadaev's cousin-in-law, F. P. Shakhovskoi .

A storm cloud seemed to be hanging over the heads of Petr and Mikhail.

It is easy to imagine how all these encroachments of the police and military officers on the country estate of the Chaadaev's' and at the home of the Shakhovskoi's', how the searches and the interrogations must have affected the members of a family who considered themselves guaranteed against such and unpleasantness. The impression produced on Mikhail Chaadaev by the unexpected appearance and search of his aunt's estate by the land captain was severe. He was so shaken by the experience that for the rest of his life he feared the sound of the post boy's bell and went into a state of nervous agitation whenever it was heard at his estate. [As for Petr, he] dreamed of finding complete independence and peace in retirement, but instead he got into a mess that threatened him with all conceivable kinds of trouble.

Petr knew only too well he was under the suspicion of the Emperor and the police. What would happen next he could only guess. Early in 1822 he began to ask the advice of his friends, and by January 23, 1822, news of the search of December 22, 1821, had reached Nikolai Turgenev who noted in his diary: "In the past few days I have found out about something unpleasant for Chaadaev--what will be the end of this and to what will it lead?'' On February 12, 1822 he added: "Everything that I hear about Chaadaev is unpleasant. In general, I have heard nothing good for sometime." But on February 15 some of the clouds seemed to have lifted for Turgenev wrote: "Today I found out that one may write to Chaadaev in Moscow; at least this is reassuring news." Apparently by mid-February investigations of Obleukhov in Moscow and Iakushkin in Smolensk Province had revealed nothing unfavorable and Petr was finally told by the authorities that he had nothing to worry about. He was deeply relieved but all the same he decided to be on the safe side and put out of his mind all further thoughts about acting on Iakushkin's invitation to join the new society.

Chaadaev was able to devote the remainder of 1822 and the first months of 1823 to peaceful study and introspection. Except for Obleukhov he visited few people and the only person he is known to have written was Pushkin. When on August 1, 1822, the Emperor issued an ukaz banning freemasonry and secret societies, he was no longer associated in any way with either activity. yet the psychological problems of his retirement proved to be very difficult. His health began to deteriorate and he became affected by nervous hypertension.

Finally, by the beginning of the spring of 1823, his aunt and brother convinced him that a few months of travel in Western Europe would benefit his condition. Sensing that such a journey might afford him the time and experiences that would help him to understand and to solve the problem of identity that was posed by his retirement, he agreed to their suggestions and in late May of 1823 he left for St. Petersburg to board a German ship which would sail for Cuxhaven in early July. Matvei Murav'ev Apostol and Nikolai Raevskii saw him off and went with him as far as Kronstadt. There a storm came up and isolated the island for several days. Finally, on July 5, 1823, Petr left Kronstadt for Western Europe, having changed both his ship and destination. His journey would ostensibly be only a brief one and Murav'ev-Apostol recalled that Chaadaev parted as though they would see each other the following day But Petr came to dread his return to Russia and the length of his journey would grow and grow as he would continue to put off the psychological crisis which he sensed that he would face upon his return. The events of 1820 had changed his life. He was on his way to becoming a new person, but his metamorphosis would be long and painful.