Chapter VIII

"ALONE IN THE WORLD, WE HAVE GIVEN NOTHING TO THE WORLD . . ."

ORIGINS OF A CULTURAL

CRITIQUE AND A PRESCRIPTION FOR

FUTURE PROGRESS

Late in 1828, as Chaadaev went back to writing his First Letter, he composed the final paragraph in a way which showed that he still intended to send this letter and yet another to Ekaterina Panova. Declaring that he had been forced to recopy his "scribbling which was completely illegible," he promised: "This next time you will not wait so long: I am starting in again tomorrow." Petr very likely did start again on the following day, but it was not until March of 1836 that his First Philosophical Letter would be read by the person to whom it had been addressed. For apparently at some point Petr became provoked by the continued refusal or inability of Panova's husband to repay the thousand-ruble loan and, after the completion of the next Philosophical Letter in mid-February, 1829, decided to continue to address his work "to a lady" only as a literary vehicle.

If at the close of his First Philosophical Letter Chaadaev meant that he, himself, would recopy his scribbling, then this copy has been lost. If, on the other hand, he meant that he would give his manuscript directly to a copyist, the direct result appears to be the manuscript in the Turgenev Archives that is numbered 2687/1233g. In any case, it appears that this manuscript was either transcribed directly from his original "scribblings" or from his recopying of these "scribblings," because this manuscript, which is clearly an early draft of the Philosophical Letter, is definitely not in Chaadaev's handwriting.

By comparing this early draft with the manuscript found in the very same folder and with a second almost identical manuscript found in the Dashkov Archives, it is possible to ascertain several important facts about how the final version of the First Philosophical Letter evolved from this early one. There are five major differences that show that the manuscript labeled 1233g is the early draft. First of all, many paragraph divisions in the latter versions are missing from this early draft. Second: in several places the words "Madame" or "you" appearing in the early manuscript have been omitted in the other manuscripts. This would seem to support the hypothesis that by the time he revised his early draft, Chaadaev no longer intended to send his Letter to Panova and, while maintaining the literary form of a letter to a lady, desired to make his work less personal. Third: there are passages in the early draft which have been reworded or rephrased in such a way as to state a thought more strongly in the latter version. In these passages, Chaadaev increased the emphasis of his critical attitude toward Russian culture and society. Also, in at least four instances, he added entire sentences to his early draft.

The fourth major difference is a very interesting passage which appears about one quarter of the way through the manuscript and has been omitted entirely from the later versions. This passage reads: ". . . it is today in our sick maturity that we are moving about with the madness of childhood; and we are doing this before the imposing quiet enjoyed by all the nations of Europe;*" and at the bottom of the page, as a footnote there appears: "*1828." Certainly this alone should be proof that Chaadaev did not begin to write his First Philosophical Letter in 1829, as has been a common assumption of scholars who have had access only to the published versions of the First Letter, all of which bear the date December 1, 1829. Finally, the fifth difference is that the early manuscript does not have the inscription of the place and date (Necropolis, 1829, 1 December) that follows the last paragraph of Chaadaev's final version. Presumably, December 1, 1829 was the date when Petr concluded his revision. The early version also does not have the cover sheet with the Latin inscription "Adveniat regnum tuum" that is found with both the other manuscripts.

When, early in 1829, Chaadaev completed the original draft of his First Philosophical Letter, as he had promised in his conclusion, he immediately began a second Letter. In his First Letter, he had offered a diagnosis of the symptoms of what he had come to see as Russia's cultural illness, an analysis of the causes of this illness and, after a look at how the unity of the Roman Catholic Church had benefited the development of Europe, a suggestion that the Russian people could benefit from an increased understanding of "Christian universality." In this new Letter he concluded that the study of history could provide a guide for understanding the human spirit. Showing how the Greeks had wrongfully emphasized the physical aspect of man's nature over the moral, he asserted that all of Russia's ideas, except for its religion, came from the Greeks. Russians, he found, had developed in a physical way while becoming completely detached from any moral purpose. He concluded that Russians as individuals would have to take the best of a bad situation, that they would have to continue to develop their "external social life" in strengthened intellectual ties with the West, which had given them what little character they possessed at this stage in their development. He hoped this process, continued over a long period of time, would, for the first time, make it possible for knowledge, beliefs, and opinions to penetrate into the depths of the Russian soul. Then he predicted that, over a long period of time, such a process would develop the Russian moral being and by so doing, create an individuality which could move the entire nation forward on the road toward a new level of progress and achievement.

Finally, in his concluding paragraph, he indicated that this letter marked an end to his immediate purpose:

Good day, Madam. My taking up this matter again, whenever you wish, is entirely up to you. After all, in a friendly conversation where people understand each other well, to what end should one elaborate and exhaust every idea? If what I have told you is sufficient to let you find some new lesson in the study of history, some interest deeper than that normally found in it, then that is all that is necessary.--Moscow, 1829, 16 February.

During 1829, Petr remained in seclusion. In March or April, he wrote a brief letter to Pushkin that gave little hint of his recent state of personal turmoil. Then, on July 6, 1829 Stepan Zhikharev wrote to Aleksandr Turgenev a letter in which he mentioned that Chaadaev still was in seclusion "reading and interpreting for himself the Bible and the fathers of the Church." Eventually, probably at some time in the autumn, Petr began to revise the original version of his First Philosophical Letter and completed this task on December 1, 1829.

Between the spring of 1830 and the summer of 1831, Chaadaev completed six additional Philosophical Letters. From the broad historical and cultural introduction which he had embraced in his first two Letters (Letters One and Seven of the final series), he moved on in these later Letters to a broad discussion of philosophical subjects that ranged from the philosophy of science to individual moral and ethical philosophy. In his Sixth Letter, he did return briefly to the subject of history and expressed there his thoughts on history's general development. However, since this study is concerned with Chaadaev as a critic of Russian culture and history, and with the development of his critical ideas in this area, his remaining Philosophical Letters need not be discussed any further.

The introductory chapter of this work has pointed out how Russian and Western historians have taken Aleksandr Herzen's evaluation of Chaadaev's First Philosophical Letter and read into his description of its sudden and unexpected publication the assumption, that thought not only had languished as Herzen himself had said, but had actually come to a complete halt. However, it has been a fundamental thesis of this study that, to imply the ossification of the Russian intellect during the years which preceded the writing of Chaadaev's Letter, would be to imply the absurd.

Previous chapters have traced the major stages in the development of the repressive political and social atmosphere created by Alexander I and his advisors. They have pointed out that this was a generation of older men completely removed from the beliefs and desires of that generation which formed the lower ranks of the Russian officer corps in the years between 1810 and Chaadaev's departure for Europe in 1823. The development of this younger generation's search for meaningful social roles has been traced and its ensuing frustration observed as the conservative leadership placed crippling restraints on the press, made a mockery of the educational concepts by which it had been reared, saw to it that its attempts to form Lancaster Schools failed, forbade masonry and finally destroyed its secret societies.

The result was that especially after December 14, 1825, as it looked towards the future, the younger generation saw two basic choices before it. One choice was continued government service, which would demand the acceptance of the repugnant beliefs of the older generation; the second choice was retirement to a life of meaningless indolence on a country estate. There was also a third possible choice which embraced two alternatives: the adoption of a contemplative existence filled with reading, study and discussion, or a more active intellectual foray into the field of literature and literary criticism.

In short, earlier chapters have demonstrated that by 1823 when Chaadaev began his European travels, there had occurred a series of developments that, since the conclusion of the Napoleonic campaigns, had created both critical ideas and critics eager to express them. Chaadaev's trip to Western Europe had been a means of postponing the necessity of choosing one of the aforementioned alternative roles. Returning in late 1826 to a Russian reality that was even more depressing and disheartening than the one he had left three years earlier, he found between 1828 and the summer of 1831 a new role as a cultural critic and man of letters.

As this study has examined the events which led Chaadaev to develop this role for himself, its final task will be a brief examination of some of the European sources of Chaadaev's ideas and the identification of the Russian origins of his critique of Russian culture. This will make it possible to understand both the origins and the organization of the ideas from which Chaadaev constructed a document that came to be a seminal point of debate in the formation of the thought of the next generation of the Russian intelligentsia. This inquiry should also make it possible to clarify Chaadaev's attitude toward Russian culture and history and to understand what in his attitude was original and what was derivative.

European Sources of the Critique

The general influence of European thought on the ideas expressed by Chaadaev in his Philosophical Letters has been very thoroughly detailed by Charles Quénet in his Tchaadaev et les Lettres philosophiques and therefore will be only briefly sketched here. The ideas of Schelling and of Lamennais, which have already been discussed, are two of the most important influences apparent in the First Philosophical Letter as well as in many of the later Letters. The thought of Pierre-Simon Ballanche was another source of Chaadaev's belief in the essential unity of man, who became "progressive only through his social nature." Because he believed that "each people has its mission," Ballanche was concerned that each nation understand its national character so that it might be able to carry out its mission, be it giving "to the world the arts of the imagination," or "the exact sciences." Chaadaev was very much concerned with these concepts of "national character" and "mission." However, he found himself unable to define a positive mission for his own country: "We are one of those nations . . . which exists only to provide some great lesson for the world. The lesson which we are destined to provide will assuredly not be lost, but who knows . . . how much misery we shall experience before the fulfillment of our destiny. In addition to that of Ballanche, Lamennais and Schelling, the influence of several other European intellectuals can be identified. However, of these men, only those whose thought can be shown to have influenced Chaadaev's perception of Russian culture and history--namely Herder, de Maistre and Bonald--will be discussed here.

Virtually everything that Chaadaev had to say about the general development of national character and culture in his First Philosophical Letter he derived from Herder's Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. In this work, Herder conducted an inquiry into the ideas and processes from which nations have developed. One of his conclusions was that the development of a national character progresses in a manner analogous to the development of human character. In applying this idea to the history of the development of the Russian people, Chaadaev, after tracing his understanding of the meaning of a nation's adolescence, arrived at a particularly pessimistic conclusion.

For all peoples there is a time of violent agitation, passionate restlessness, and activity without conscious motivation . . . . This is the age of great passion, great emotions, great enterprises of the people . . . . Each society has undergone these periods. They furnish it with its most vivid recollections, its myths, its poetry and all its strongest and most fertile ideas . . . . This interesting epoch in a people's history is the adolescence of the people. It is the moment in which their faculties develop most powerfully, and their memory of it constitutes the joy and edification of their age of maturity. We on the other hand, have had nothing like that. First a brutal barbarism, then crude superstition, after that fierce, degrading foreign domination by strangers whose spirit was later inherited by the national government--that is the sad history of our youth . . . . No charming memories and no gracious images live in our national tradition.

Chaadaev affirmed what Herder had asserted. "Nations," Petr wrote, "live by the mighty impressions which past centuries have left in their minds and by contact with other nations." But in his First Philosophical Letter, he went on to the pessimistic conclusion that the Russian nation had been an exception to the path of "normal" development. "We Russians, like illegitimate children, have come into this world without patrimony, without any links with the people who lived on earth before us . . . Our memories go back no further than yesterday, we are, as it were, strangers to ourselves." The two most important remaining influences on the ideas of Chaadaev's First Philosophical Letter are not what Paul Miliukov has emphasized as Petr's acceptance of the "doctrines of the Catholic reaction" expressed in the writings of Joseph de Maistre and the Viscount Louis Gabriel de Bonald, but the critical vignettes of Russian society and culture which Petr took from the works of Bonald and de Maistre and inserted, in some cases almost verbatim, into his Letter.

In his Du Pape, de Maistre wrote of the "singular phenomenon that is Russia, situated between Europe and Asia and attached to both." He also lamented that "the deplorable schism of the Greeks and the invasions of the Tatars had prevented the Russians from participating in the great and legitimate movement of civilisation that began in Rome." Chaadaev described Russia as a country "situated between the two great divisions of the world, between the East and the West, supporting itself with one elbow on China and another on Germany." He went on to deplore the fact that while in Europe "the verifying principle of unity animated everything," Russians were "strangers to this marvelous principle and became a prey for conquest." The final result was that "while we were isolated in our schism nothing that was happening in Europe reached us."

The similarities between two vignettes appearing in the works of Bonald and their counterparts in the First Philosophical Letter are even more remarkable. In a section of his Legislation Primitive entitled "De la Russie" Bonald asserted:

Russia has not marched ahead on the road to human knowledge with the same step as that of the other nations.

Russia should, in its turn, have participated in the well-being of Christianity and have received from Rome both the source of [its]-civilization and the apostles of the Gospel when the Greeks separated themselves from the Roman Church and fell into the schism that has lasted until the present day . . . . A hundred years later and near the end of the tenth century the Russian nation was converted to the Christian faith . . . and the Russian church--founded by the work of the Patriarch of Constantinople, by an illegitimate birth, received but a confusing light which . . . led it into error on one of the most essential things, that is to say, the unity of the church and the authority of the sovereign Pontif which are the only defenses against the anarchy of opinions and the revolts of heresy.

In his First Philosophical Letter, Chaadaev lamented: "We have never advanced along with other nations," and he continued, "we have absorbed nothing, not even the traditional ideas of mankind . . . . If we wish to take up a position similar to that of other civilized people, we must in a certain sense repeat the whole education of mankind." And he asserted that the Russian people had "come into the world like illegitimate children without a heritage" because, "forced by a fatal destiny, [they] proceeded to seek the moral code which was to constitute [their] education in miserable Byzantium, an object held in profound contempt" by the nations of Western Europe. Finally, in his Pensées politiques, Bonald asserted:

The Russians are still a nomadic people, at least in inclination, and the homes of Moscow are nothing else but Scythian chariots from which the wheels have been removed. Also the Russians have a singular penchant for varying the order and furnishing of their homes: One might say that not being actually able to move them about, they change in them everything that they are able to change.

To this Chaadaev agreed and, borrowing Bonald's thought, he rephrased and strengthened this expression of what both saw as a deplorable trait of Russian character.

Look around you! Do not we all have one foot in the air? It looks as if we were all traveling. There is no definite sphere of existence for anyone, no good habits, no rules for anything at all; not even a home; nothing which attracts, or awakens our endearment or affections, nothing lasting, nothing enduring . . . . In our houses, we are like campers; in our families we are like strangers, in our cities we are like nomads, more nomadic than the herdsmen who let their animals graze on our steppes, for they are more bound to their deserts than we to our cities.

From this brief discussion of European influences on Chaadaev's thought, it should be apparent that his ideas were primarily the result of a vast accumulation of knowledge, gleaned from his study of the works of Western European men of letters, and filtered through the perception of life that resulted from his experiences in Russia and in Europe, as he slowly attained a state of emotional maturity.

The Russian Elements of Chaadaev's Critique

Since the events which gradually created for Chaadaev this development of an emotional undercurrent or profound depression have already been discussed, in order to understand fully the genesis of his Letter only a single additional process is necessary: the identification of the specifically Russian elements of the critique of Russian culture contained therein. The tool for the process of this identification will be the comparison of a series of ideas expressed in the writings of various Russian intellectuals between 1817 and 1831. Here "idea" is to be understood as a single self-contained thought. These are not the unit-ideas of Arthur 0. Lovejoy, who sought to arrive at basic assumptions which could not be further broken down. Instead these are twelve self-contained units of thought of varying degrees of comprehensiveness. Some can be seen as major premises, some as minor premises, other are mere statements of fact. But together they comprehend nearly the totality of Chaadaev's critique of Russian culture. By breaking down his critique into these units of thought, it will become possible to see and to identify their presence in the writings of other Russian intellectuals of his generation. Although these ideas are often apparently unrelated, they may be brought into focus if the overall "idea" of Chaadaev's time is seen as the assumption that each country should have a culture unique unto itself, though nowhere is this idea stated in so many words by the critics of his time. Still, it is the implicit presupposition which lies behind the twelve "ideas" of Chaadaev's critique--"ideas" which were also formulated by many other members of his generation either before or at about the same time as the completion of his First Philosophical Letter.

In searching for an understanding of the development of a critical view of Russian culture, and in particular for the origins of Chaadaev's ideas, a distinction must be made between what began as literary criticism in the period before the Decembrist uprising and the historical-cultural criticism of Chaadaev. Literary criticism dominated the intellectual activity of the 1820s, and much, in fact probably most, of the literary criticism of the time was concerned solely with the development of a more mature Russian literature. However, a sizable quantity of literary criticism had social overtones, if only for the reason that the would-be social critic, such as Aleksandr Bestuzhev, found that literary criticism was the only means of critical expression that the censorship would allow. But Chaadaev had no ties with any journal or experience in journalism. He wrote his First Philosophical Letter with no concern for publication and thus felt free to express himself in social and historical terms.

There is also another and probably more important explanation for Chaadaev's choice of historical over literary criticism--the philosophy of Johann Gottfried von Herder. Herder's Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit and his Vom Geist der hebräischen Poesie are among the 1285, volumes which have been identified as having belonged to Chaadaev's personal library. Since it is known that this library originally numbered more than 3,000 volumes, it would not be unreasonable to assume that more of Herder's works were once a part of the library. Many, if not most of the Russian intellectuals of the first three decades of the nineteenth century were familiar with Herder's thought, which emphasized the uniqueness and importance of national traditions at a time when an awareness of Russian nationalism was beginning to mature.

But there is another aspect of Herder's thought which, although less well known, is of considerable importance in understanding Chaadaev's choice of a vehicle for his criticism. The words "history" and "literature" had both a special meaning and a special interrelationship for Herder. The similarity of the problem faced by Chaadaev with the one that had confronted Herder forty years previously is startling. Faced with a fragmented people which had developed an imitative literature, Herder was the first to formulate "the idea that literature is the evolutionary by-product of national conditions," that "vital and lasting literature . . . is the expression of the national soul conditioned by environment and tradition." In other words, a nation with no truly national literature must either have no national soul or individuality, or have failed to discover it. As Herder exclaimed: "Of a nationality which has no national songs, it can hardly be said that it has a national character." Thus for Herder the study of a nation's literature blended into and became the study of its cultural history. By the study of national literatures

we learn to know the ages and nations more profoundly than on the deceiving and comfortless paths of their political and military history. In the former we seldom see more than the manner in which they were ruled and how they permitted themselves to be killed; in the latter we learn how they thought, what they wished and wanted, how they enjoyed themselves and how they were led by their teachers or by their inclinations.

This cultural evaluation of literature led Herder to an interest in cultural history, and, in 1795, he formulated the question which had begun to trouble him: "Why have we as yet no history of the German people?" This was a question which, either in the form of history or of literature, would be of major concern to Chaadaev's generation. Herder may not have known the precise answer, but at least he knew where to look for lt. "Where," he wrote, "is the history of the German people? Not in the German emperors, not in German princes and princely houses, but in the German nationality, its organization, welfare, and language. Embraced in Herder's concept of history were "all the manifestations of the national mind, including language and literature, and . . . even fairy tales, myths and legends." Finally, Chaadaev did not even need to go directly to Herder for this concept of history. It had already been borrowed by other Russian writers and critics. To cite only three examples: in the May 1804 issue of the Patriot, the anonymous author of the article "A Glance at Short Stories or Tales" stated that the "history of a literature is the history of a people." In 1813, Ivan Matve'vich Murav'ev-Apostol, in his "Letters from Moscow to Nizhnii Novgorod" asserted that "a basic understanding of the characteristics, the advantages and the shortcomings of nations is best attained in their letters." And Orest Somov in his "On Romantic Poetry, written in 1823, declared that an independent national literature was the prerequisite of a viable and productive national character. As Tables Two through Seven will show below, if there was a single common intellectual concern of Chaadaev's generation during the 1820s, it was the immaturity of Russian literature. It is not surprising then that for Chaadaev, working on the intellectual foundation provided by Herder, the state of Russian literature became an index of Russian culture.

Having bridged the gap between a critique of Russia as a country without a literature and a country without a culture, this analysis returns to the critical ideas of Chaadaev's First Philosophical Letter. This letter can be broken down into many specific "ideas" which can become the building blocks of the general "idea" that was the major concern of his generation. The majority of these "ideas" can be shown to have been formulated before Chaadaev completed his Letter. Most of the remaining "ideas" can also be shown to have existed before his Letter began to become known in its manuscript form in 1830. However, in a few cases the expression of an idea may have been influenced by Chaadaev rather than vice versa. This is not of great importance. What is significant is that these ideas were the common intellectual currency of a group of Russians during the 1820s--a time that Aleksandr Herzen mistakenly implied was a period of darkness.

The following chart will show the twelve major ideas of the critique of Russian culture formulated by Chaadaev which can be demonstrated as being shared by other members of his generation. Tables 1 through 12 will present the specific quotations or paraphrases which have been compiled to formulate these ideas. The twelve ideas may be strung together to form, the following argument: There is a need to establish Russia's identity, to explain its role in the world. This need exists because Russia has no truly Russian literature and therefore no truly Russian history. Russia has no literature because it lacks an understanding of the essence of its own national character. There is something childlike about Russia's existence. Furthermore, the Russian intellect has not been creative. Lack of creativity and lack of a Russian literature has been caused by Russia's imitation of foreign literature and education. Having adopted forms of enlightenment which contradict its true character, Russia has failed to find real enlightenment. Russians are isolated from other civilizations and from themselves. Russian development is potentially shaped by its unique geographical position as a bridge between Europe and Asia. Russia's existence is suspended between past and future. Finally, the path of Russian historical development has omitted stages common to that of other nations.

The nine members of Chaadaev's generation depicted on the chart as sharing his ideas could all be described as litterateurs. Aleksandr Bestuzhev, born in 1797, was co-editor of the almanac Poliarnaia zvezda (Polar Star) and an active member of the circles whose activities culminated in the uprising of December 14, 1825. Dmitri Venevitinov (b. 1805), Ivan Kireevskii (b. 1806), Vladimir Odoevskii (b. 1804), and Nikolai Rozhalin (b. 1805) were members of the small Obshchestvo liubomudria (Society of Wisdom Lovers) which discussed German idealist philosophy in the early 1820s. Odoevskii was editor of the quarterly almanac Mnemozina (Mnemosyne) which appeared in 1824 and 1825, and Venevitinov was a frequent contributor of poetry, philosophical discourses, and literary criticism. Ivan Kireevskii wrote a small number of critical articles for journals such as the Moskovskii vestnik (Moscow Messenger) and later his own Evropeets (European) before becoming one of the leading fixtures of the Slavophile movement in the late 1830s. Petr Viazemskii (b. 1792) and Wilhelm Kiukhel'beker (b. 1796), both friends of Pushkin, were prominent poets and literary critics. Kiukhel'beker had also collaborated with Chaadaev and Turgenev in the latter's unsuccessful attempt to publish a journal. Stepan Shevyrev (b. 1806), a poet with a strong interest in German literature, was to become an advocate of the conservative governmental doctrine of official nationality in the 1830s. And finally, Nikolai Nadezhdin (b. 1804), the son of a priest, contributed a few articles to Kachenovskii's Vestnik Evropy (Messenger of Europe) before establishing his own journal, Teleskop (Telescope) in 1831.

 Note from Gordon Cook Aug 28, 1998

A Matrix Chart of these ideas with the idea on the horizontal axis, the person who exprtessed the idea in the vertical axis and the date when the id ea was expressed at the juncture of the two axis' exists in the dissertation. S omeday I may manage to get it into electronic form. For now imagine it.

Table 1. There is a need to establish Russia's cultural

identity to explain its role in the world

Shevyrev--There is a need for someone "to set forth the role of the Russian nation in the ranks of the other nations,"-- circa 1829. Undated letter to A. V. Venevitinov in N. Barsukov, Zhizn' i trudy M. P. Pogodina (22 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1888-1910), III, 73.

Chaadaev--The question that we must answer above all others is "what is the place which we occupy in the general order?" --1829. Major Works, p. 31.

Table 2. Russia has no Russian literature,

no Russian history

Kiukhel'beker--Favors German literature over the French as a model for Russian efforts and implies that he would like to see the development of national originality in Russian literature,--1817. "Coup d'oeil sur l'état actuel de la littérature russe," Le Conservateur impartial, No. 77 (September 25, 1817).

Viazemskii--"We admit with humbleness but also with hope: there is a Russian language but there is as yet no literature which is a worthy expression of the nation's power and maturity,"--1822. "0 kavkazkom plennike," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (10 vols.; St. Petersburg, 1878), I, 75.

Bestuzhev--"We have criticism but no literature,"--1825. "Vzgliad na russkuiu slovesnost' v techenie 1824 i nachale 1825 godov" in Poliarnaia zvezda, edited by V. A. Arkhipov, et al. (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia nauk, 1960), p. 488.

Venevitinov--"Russia has erected an imaginary edifice of literature without any foundation, without any sort of exertion of its internal strength,"--1825. "Neskol'ko myslei v plan zhurnala," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii (Moscow-Leningrad: Akademiia, 1934), p. 217.

Kireevskii--"We will be dispassionate and admit that we have not yet seen the complete reflection of the intellectual life of our people, that we do not yet have a literature," --1829. "Obozrenie russkoi slovesnosti za 1829 god," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, edited by M. 0. Gershenzon (2 vols.; Moscow, 1911), II, 38.

Chaadaev--"For us historical experience does not exist,"-- 1829. Major Works, p. 37.

Table 3. Russia does not understand the essence of its national character

Kiukhel'beker--"Among us everything is a 'dream' or an 'apparition,' everything 'seems,' 'relates,' or 'imagines;' everything is only 'apparently,' 'as if,' 'nothing,' 'something'. . . . We have feelings no longer. A feeling of melancholy has absorbed all the others," --1824. "O napravlenii nashei poezii," in Russkaia literatura XIX v. Khrestomatiia kritcheskikh materialov, edited by M. G. Zel'dovich (Moscow, 1967), p. 120.

Bestuzhev--"We are only now beginning gropingly to feel and think,"--1825. "Vzgliad . . . 1825," Poliarnaia zvezda, p. 189.

Venevitinov--"Self-knowledge . . . is the idea which alone is capable of animating the universe, it is the goal of mankind . . . . Each nation strives toward self-knowledge . . . . Enlightenment comprises the development of these efforts . . .[and is the end result of] the development of national principles. But Russia has received everything from outside [and therefore lacks national principles],''--1825. "Neskol'ko myslei," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, pp. 216-17.

Rozhalin--"We possess character although we do not know its true nature,"--1830. Letter to Shevyrev, November 17, 1830, Russkii arkhiv, II (1906), 240.

Odoevskii--"We will have to revive everything and inscribe our spirit in the history of the human mind as we have inscribed our victories in the records . . . ."--circa 1831. Russian Nights, translated by Ol'ga Olienikov and Ralph Matlaw (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1965), p. 211. This was written between 1830-42. The choice of 1831 admittedly is arbitrary but Dr. Matlaw states that Odoevskii's ideas on the nature of Russian national character had their origins in his experiences of the 1820s. See his Introduction, p. 14. For the original text see: Odoevskii Russkiia nochi, edited by S. A. Tsvetkov (Moscow, 1913, p. 344.

Chaadaev--"We have not been affected by the universal education of mankind,"--1829. Major Works, p. 27.

--"There is no definite sphere of existence for anyone, no habits, no rules,"--1829. Major Works, p. 28.

--"We do not have any individuality upon which to base our thoughts." We have developed no viable social roles or personal identities.--1829. Major Works, p. 31.

Table 4. There is something childlike about Russia's existence

Bestuzhev--"Our language has become like a well hypnotized infant, it babbles through dreams of harmonious sounds or moans about something, but a ray of thought seldom roams about its face,"--1824. "Vzgliad na russkuiu slovesnost' v techenie 1823 goda," Poliarnaia zvezda, p. 271.

--"We are like children who experience their first strength over their toys by breaking them and curiously looking at what is inside,"--1825. "Vzgliad . . . . 1825," Poliarnaia zvezda, p. 489.

Kireevskii--"The squabbles of our journals; their wild tone, their strange personalities, their rustic manners, are like the disorganized movements of an unswaddled child," --1829. "Obozrenie . . . za 1829 god," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, II, 14.

--"Our literature is a child who is only beginning to speak clearly 1831. "Obozrenie russkoi slovesnosti za 1831 god," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, II, 40.

Chaadaev--"All that we have received from the progress of the human spirit we have disfigured,"--1829. Major Works, p. 37

--"If Russia stirs it is only "with the puerile frivolity of the child who raises himself up and lifts his hands towards the rattle which his nurse shows him,"--1829. Major Works, p. 30.

--"We are like illegitimate children,"--1829. Major Works, p. 31.

We resemble children who have not been taught to think for themselves and who, having become adults, have nothing of their own,"--1829. Major Works, p. 32.

Table 5. The Russian intellect has not

been creative

Bestuzhev--"We have little creative thought,"--1824. "Vzgliad. . . 1823," Poliarnaia zvezda, p. 271.

--"Why do we have no men of genius and so few literary talents?"--1825. "Vzgliad . . . 1825," Poliarnaia zvezda, p. 489.

Venevitinov--"We still have not penetrated to the essence of knowledge . . . . Therefore, we cannot boast of a single achievement which could carry the impression of free enthusiasm and a true passion for-learning. Here is our situation in the world, a completely negative situation," --1825. "Neskol'ko myslei," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 217.

Chaadaev--"We have absolutely no universal ideas, everything is individual, volatile and incomplete,"--1829. Major Works, p. 35.

--"We have given nothing to the world, taken nothing from it,"--1829. Major Works, p. 37.

--"Now I ask you where are our thinkers?"--1829. Major Works, pp. 36-37.

Table 6. Lack of creativity may be traced to Russia's imitation of foreign literature and education

Kiukhel'beker--"Despite the endeavors of Radishchev, Narezhnii and a few others who perhaps with time will be appreciated there existed in our poetry until the beginning of the nineteenth century a school entirely founded on the principles of French literature." He concludes that if Russians are to imitate any foreign models, it is not the French but "the German spirit" which "comes very close to our national spirit, free and independent,"--1817. "Coup d'oeil sur l'etat actuel de la litterature russe," Le Conservateur lmpartial.

Viazemskii--"Excessive imitation destroys genius,"--undated. Zapisnye knizhki 1813-48, edited by V. S. Nechaeva (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1963), p. 30.

Odoevskii--"The reason that we have only an imitative role in

the sciences and the arts may be found in our lack of philosophy,"--18724. "Aphorismes de différents auteurs concernants la philosophie allemande moderne," Mnemozina II, quoted in Koyré, p. 146.

Bestuzhev--"Except for flaws of education, except for the fanciful uniformity of our lives, except for . . . the lack of individuality of our studies . . . we have overcome the passion for imitation,"--1825. "Vzgliad . . . 1825," Poliarnaia zvezda, p. 492

.

--"We were brought up only on French literature which is not at all in harmony with the custom of the Russian nation nor with the spirit of the Russian language,"-- 1825. "vzgliad . . . 1825," Poliarnaia zvezda, pp. 488-89.

Venevitinov--"Russia has received everything from outside," and thus there is an imitative quality to her life,--1825. "Neskol'ko myslei," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 217.

--Liberating Russian literature from "the ignorant self-assuredness of the French genre would be creative,"--1825. "Neskol'ko myslei," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 218.

Kireevskii--In his review "Something on the Character of Pushkin's Poetry" he places great emphasis on Pushkin's "originality" [samobytnosti] and declares that in his latest period, Pushkin has broken away from the imitation of foreign models--1827. "Nechto o kharaktere poezii Pushkina," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, I, 11-12.

Nadezhdin--"Have we at present anything which is peculiar to us? Our poetical meter was forged on the Germanic basis, our prose is a tower of Babel of all the European idiocies which have . . . invaded the Russian language. What are those works which we could proudly call our own?"--1831. "Letopisi otechestvennoi literatury, otchet za 1831 god," Teleskop, No. 1 (1832), pp. 152-53.

Chaadaev--Lack of identity "is the natural consequence of a culture based wholly upon importation and imitation,"-- 1829. Major Works, p. 32.

--Because the development of Russia has been imitative "you will find that we all lack a certain self-confidence, method of thought and logic."--1829. Major Works, p. 34.

--"Russia is now engaged in the absurd task of trying to assimilate in one stroke the progress that it took Europeans centuries to achieve,"--1829. Major Works, p. 41.

Table 7. Having adopted foreign forms of enlightenment which contradict its true character, Russia has failed to find real enlightenment

Venevitinov--The cause of Russian slowness in finding real enlightenment lies in the very speed with which it accepted the outward forms of education and built an imaginary edifice of literature without any foundation,--1825. "Neskol'ko myslei," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 217.

Kireevskii--"Russia's enlightenment came to us from outside. Its external forms contradicted the forms of our nationality,"--1832. "Deviatnadtsatyi vek," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, I, 97.

Chaadaev--Because we adopt only ready-made ideas we miss out

on the inner development which is the product of the intellectual struggle of developing an idea to higher levels of maturity,--1829. Major Works, p. 32.

Table 8. Russians are isolated from other

civilizations

Viazemskii--"We remain a century away from Europe and yet we want to follow directly in its tracks." Letter to A. I. Turgenev, April 14, 1820. Ostaf'evskii Arkhiv (3 vols .; St. Petersburg, 1899), II, 33.

Kireevskii--"Some sort of Chinese wall stands between Russia and Europe, and only a few openings let in the air of the educated West, "--1832 . "Deviatnadtsatyi vek," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, I, 95.

Chaadaev--"We are one of those nations which does not seem to form an integral part of humanity, but which exists only to provide some great lesson for the world, "--1829. Major Works, p. 32 .

Table 9. Russians are isolated from themselves

Viazemskii--"Today I wrote Aleksandr Turgenev about his sadness. [His brother, Nicholas had been forced into permanent exile as a result of his role in the Decembrist uprising] . . . . We are all exiles in our own country, too. Who among us is not more or less a pariah?"--July 10, 1826. Zapisnye knizhki, p. 125.

Chaadaev--"In our houses we are like campers; in our families we are like strangers; in our cities we are like nomads . . .,"--1829. Major Works, p. 28.

Table 10. The development of Russia and

the personality of its citizens are potentially shaped

by the uniqueness of the country's geographical position between Europe and Asia

Kiukhel'beker--"Russia, because of its geographical location, could assimilate all intellectual treasures of Europe and Asia,"--1824. "O napravlenii nashei poezii," Zel'dovich, p. 122.

Shevyrev--"Only the Russians are in a position to explain the Orient to Europeans, and indeed they have been created for the purpose of being a conductor" between East and West, --circa 1829. Undated letter to A. V. Venevitinov, Barsukov, III, 76.

--"We Russians have two extremes, kvas and champagne, Asianism and Frenchism, of which the latter is probably more harmful for the Russian,"--circa 1829. Undated letter to A. V. Venevitinov, Barsukov, III, 73.

Chaadaev--"Situated . . . between East and West, supporting ourselves with one elbow on China and another on Germany, we should have united within us . . . both imagination and reason" and have developed a civilization combining the greatest strengths of the other two civilizations, but we did not accomplish this,--1829. Major Works, p. 37.

Table 11. Russian existence is suspended

between past and future

Odoevskii--"We Russians, standing on the border line between worlds--the past and the future--and being new, fresh and unimplicated in the crimes of old Europe . . . ."-- circa 1831 Russian Nights, p. 211, and Russkiia nochi, p- 344.

Chaadaev--"We live only in the most narrow kind of present without a past and without a future . . . ."--1829. Major Works, p. 30.

--"It is in man's nature to lose himself when he does not find means of referring his condition to what preceded and what follows him,"--1829. Major Works, p. 34.

Table 12. The path of Russian development has

skipped stages common to that of other nations

Venevitinov--Russia has not followed a natural path of development. "We contradict the history of culture,"--1825. "Neskol'ko mysli," Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, p. 217.

Chaadaev--The experiences of "national adolescence" gives a nation "its myths, poetry, all its strongest and most fertile ideas," which "are the necessary bases of any society." However, "we have had nothing like" this-- 1829. Major Works, p. 29.

Apart from the argument presented by the compilation of these ideas, Chaadaev himself offers proof that his critique of Russian culture in the First Philosophical Letter was not original. His assertion is found in the opening paragraph of the Seventh Philosophical Letter and strengthens the earlier assertion that the Seventh Letter was actually the second in order of composition. The last sentence of the First Letter reads: "This time you will not have to wait a long time: I shall take up my pen again no later than tomorrow." Letter Seven begins: "The more you think over what I told you the other day, the more you will find all this has been said already many times by people of all parties and opinions, and that we are only attaching to it a significance which had not been given it before." Chaadaev certainly knew that his critique was borrowed from European writers like Bonald and de Maistre as well as from Russian critics and it would have made little sense for him to try to hide this fact from Madame Panova.

Furthermore, if it is assumed that "what I told you the other day" refers to the First Philosophical Letter, an apparent anomaly in the dating of the manuscripts may be solved. On the seventh page of the early draft manuscript a passage which has been cited in the first section of this chapter is dated in a footnote, "1828." Toward the end of the Letter the footnote "1829" that is appended to the statement: "As I write these lines, it is still a religious interest which moves England," does appear in the early draft. Thus Chaadaev apparently began to write his First Philosophical Letter late in 1828 and did not finish it until January 1829. True to the promise that he gave at the close of the First Letter, he began what came to be known as Letter Seven immediately and finished it on February 16, 1829, the date that appears at the end of the manuscript. During the remainder of 1829, he read widely and worked on a revision of his original First Letter. He completed this task on December 1, 1829, the date of the other existing manuscripts of the Letter. Later, when he had written Letters now numbered Two through Five, he found that he had more to say about history and in late 1830 or early 1831 he completed the Sixth Letter. In 1831, having finished all eight Letters, he decided to attempt to have the Sixth and Seventh Letters published as a unit. Finding the introductory paragraph of Letter Seven no longer necessary, he crossed out half of every third or fourth line and drew a vertical line down the middle. Finally, between 1832 and October 1836 (when the manuscripts now located in the Dashkov archive.; were confiscated by the police) Chaadaev arranged and numbered them in the order in which they eventually became known.

It should now be evident that possibly the single most important aspect of the Philosophical Letter is its formulation and synthesis of a critique of Russian culture--an aspect that has been unjustly ignored by historians, who would seem to have assumed that tracing the origins of Chaadaev's ideas would be too difficult or perhaps even impossible. As a result, the Letter and its critique would have never been placed within the historical context of their time. Seeing the letter as an aberration or a "shot from the dark," historians have failed to discern that Chaadaev's generation had been the first, both to compare Russian history and culture with that of Europe, and to find Russian historical and cultural development wanting. They have overlooked, therefore, the importance of the resulting disillusionment that became the foundation on which the leaders of the first generation of the intelligentsia began their efforts to build a new and viable Russian future. The development of these critical ideas by Chaadaev's generation began with Kiukhel'beker's 1817 review of Russian literature and had been largely completed by the time that Chaadaev finished the First Philosophical Letter. Thus, contrary to the usual interpretation of Herzen's opinion, most of the ideas of the critique were not really new, but had been assembled by Chaadaev in a synthesis of the major cultural criticisms which had grown out of the intellectual ferment of his generation. Confronted with the desire that every country must, or should have its own national culture, Chaadaev made a negative diagnosis: Russia did not have a unique cultural identity.

However, there is more to the Philosophical Letter than Chaadaev's diagnosis of Russia's cultural dilemma. Comparing Russia's development to that of Europe, he explains why Russia has not progressed in the mainstream of Western development. Chaadaev's explanation develops from the twelfth idea on the above chart. That is: because of such historical anomalies as "brutal barbarism, then crude superstition, and finally degrading domination by foreigners, Russia has skipped the stage of its national adolescence which would have given it the strong and fertile ideas which are the basis of a culture. Specifically, because the Mongol Yoke cut Russia off from Europe, it did not have a Renaissance. Separated from Europe, Russia failed to develop a culture. For without being part of the mainstream of human development, a nation can have a civilization but not Bildung, that is education and a culture founded on firmly established ideas handed down from generation to generation. The individual establishes an identity only by contacts with other peoples and by being able to relate to his past, to his history. But Russians, Chaadaev asserts, have no heritage and no links with other peoples and therefore, no identity. Russia's lack of ties with other nations and its failure to be intellectually creative is due to the fact that its "education" has been provided by Byzantine Christianity which had been split off from that of the Western Church and disfigured by Photius.

Europeans, on the other hand, have been creative because through the period of their national adolescence they have enjoyed a meaningful development, which matured in the crucible of religious unity. Looking at European development, Chaadaev begins to elaborate its virtues in terms of the "fifteen centuries" of unity provided by the Roman Catholic Church. In the remaining third of the Philosophical Letter, he offers an appraisal of the Church's role in this development and he concludes that in the future the Catholic Church, which is the pure nucleus of the Christian faith, could provide for some individual Russians the spiritual guidance to the ideas of "duty, justice, law and order" which the Orthodox Church could not. All of these ideas and conclusions were, in their Russian context, truly original.

If one looks at the First and Seventh Philosophical Letters as a self-contained unit, completed nearly a year before any of the remaining Philosophical Letters, it becomes possible to gain an understanding from the Seventh Letter of Chaadaev's prescription for future Russian development, a prescription which he had only hinted at in his First Letter. Thus, at the end of his Seventh Letter, he warns his fellow citizens that, despite Russia's imperfectly developed past and the disfiguring marks that it left on its present character, the Russian people nevertheless have more bonds to the civilization of Western Europe than to any other civilization. Moreover, Chaadaev asserts that in the future they should seek to continue to identify themselves-with the development of Europe. In living alone, as Petr believed Russians had up to 1829, what they had learned from others, be it the ideas of the Catholic faith, or new developments in science and economics, "remained external to [them] like a mere ornament without penetration into [their] souls." In his own words:

If the small number of spiritual habits, of traditions, of memories which we possess . . . links us with no nation on earth, if we belong indeed to one of the systems of the moral world, we are, nevertheless, by our external social life bound to the world, to the West. This bond, weak as in truth it is, without uniting us to Europe as intimately as people imagine, or allowing us to feel at every point of our being the great movement which is taking place there, nevertheless makes our future fortunes depend on those of the European community. Thus, the more we seek to identify with it, the better off we shall be.

At the end of his First Philosophical Letter, Chaadaev had emphasized the universality both of Christianity and of Roman Catholicism. He intimated that Catholicism was the doctrine through which this universality could become most effective. He had seen this universality as virtually the only hope for breaking down the barriers that separated men and nations. But at the end of his Seventh Letter, looking towards the future, he departed from his advice that the future hopes of man could be found in the universality of Christianity, and described not the means to this salvation, but what he hoped would be its eventual results. By the end of the decade of the 1820s, it was clear to him that Russia could not continue its old path of development.

This is certain; we shall assuredly not be able to remain much longer in our desert. Let us, therefore, do all we can to prepare the way for our descendants. We cannot leave them what we have not had: beliefs, a reason tempered by time, a strongly drawn individuality, opinions developed during the course of a life which was long, intellectual, animated, active, and fertile in result. Let us at least, leave them some ideas which, although we did not find them ourselves, will, by being thus handed down from one generation to another, nonetheless have something of a traditive element, and by this very means have a somewhat greater power, a somewhat greater fertility than our own ideas. We shall thus deserve well of posterity, we shall not have lived on earth in vain.

Thus while the first of the Letters written to Panova by Chaadaev was filled with pessimism and despair, by the end of the second of the Letters, the despair had given way to hope for future progress. If one considers the scorn and anger that was aroused among some Russian intellectuals by the publication of Chaadaev's First Philosophical Letter in 1836, it was perhaps unfortunate, for his sake, at least, that his Seventh Letter was not published along with the First--for although it does not dispel the latter's dismal darkness it does, at least, leave a ray of hope on the horizon.

Even though the Seventh Letter adds, so to speak, the final punctuation mark to Chaadaev's First Philosophical Letter, the major emphasis of this study has been devoted not to the aim of discovering where he believed Russia could go in the future, but to understanding how he arrived at his bitter analysis of the ills of Russian history and culture. This means that its focus must be returned to the First Philosophical Letter.

Having traced the origins of its critique of Russian culture and having shown where its ideas began to break ground original to Russian thought, the process of placing the First Philosophical Letter within the context of its time may be completed with a summary of its remaining unique aspects, which in turn will lead to a clearer understanding of the impact produced by the Letter when it was finally published. It is most obvious that its criticism is broad and far-reaching, bringing together all the major cultural criticisms of the time: its conclusions are deeply pessimistic. There had been nothing before quite like the despair induced by the cumulative weight of these ideas which, because the Letter was not originally intended for publication, did not have to be wrapped in the veils of literary criticism. However, as this study has indicated, comparison of the Letter's critique point-by-point with the writings of his contemporaries has demonstrated that all the major points of Chaadaev's diagnosis were present in the works of other critics of his generation. The shock which the Letter created when published seven years later was due to the fact that Chaadaev had made a synthesis of these ideas, had shaped them into a coherent outlook, and had shifted from literary to historical criticism. He had continuously and bitterly restated them in a work where their combined presence was overwhelming. Furthermore, his conclusion that Russia's cultural malformation was, at least in part, attributable to the fact that Russia had not matured in the crucible of religious unity provided by the Roman Catholic Church angered many of the Tsar's loyal subjects.

Finally, his ideas were all the more overwhelming because he and Nadezhdin dared to publish such a work at a time when the leading journals had recently been closed down by the government for less serious offenses. Consequently, in addition to defining the ideas that Chaadaev borrowed, this brief analysis of the First and Seventh Philosophical Letters has made it possible to define where the originality of Chaadaev's thought lies--in a synthesis of varied symptoms of cultural illness, a diagnosis of their origins, and a prescription for future progress through the development of cooperation between European and Russian society impelled by the universality of Christian morality.