Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev

Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev (born June 7 [May 27, Old Style], 1794, Moscow—died April 26 [April 14], 1856, Moscow) was an intellectual and writer whose ideas of Russian history precipitated the controversy between the opposing intellectual camps of Slavophiles and Westernizers.

In his early years Chaadayev was an army officer and a liberal. During the 1820s he experienced a conversion to mystical Christianity, with strong leanings toward Rome. In 1823–26 he travelled in Europe, afterward writing in French his Lettres philosophiques (1827–31; “Philosophical Letters”), which posed the problem of Russia’s relation to the West; articulated a ruthless criticism of Russian history, culture, and the Orthodox religion; and advocated assimilation of Roman Catholicism and western European culture. The first letter of this work had circulated informally for years, but its publication in Russian in the review Teleskop (“Telescope”) in 1836 was a bombshell. The periodical was banned, and Chaadayev was declared insane and placed under medical supervision. He continued to live in Moscow, however, where he was venerated by the young Westernizers. He had affinities with both the Slavophiles and Westernizers, but his advocacy of a Western path of development for Russia divided him from the former, and his religio-historical conception separated him from the latter.