ČAADAEV, PIOTR JAKOVLEVIĆ. — Russian thinker, the “first Occidentalist.” Born between 1793 and 1796 into a noble family, he was educated in admiration for Western culture. In 1812 he took part in the battle of Borodino; he was subsequently in France with the victorious Russian regiments. For some time he was a member of the Freemasons. From 1823 he made a long journey abroad. He spent the years 1826–31 in Moscow, leading a very secluded life. His Philosophical Letters are famous, the first of which dates from 1836. Because of the ideas concerning Russia and the Church of Rome contained therein, he was declared insane by Emperor Nicholas I. He subsequently wrote the Apologia of a Madman in his own defense.
C.’s Occidentalism is neither positivistic nor atheistic, but religious, and contains in germ the messianic idea of Slavism. On the one hand, C. was an opponent of the much-discussed formula “Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality”; he appreciated Western culture and expressed himself in highly negative terms concerning the historical and cultural development of Russia, which he regarded as a backward country; he accepted the idea of the primacy of the Church of Rome and praised the latter’s cultural and social activity (though he never became a Catholic); on the other hand, he foretold a great social and Christian future for Russia—young, virginal, and profoundly religious. Politically, he supported an educated and prudent liberalism permeated by historicist considerations. He died in 1856.
The Works and Letters, written for the most part in French, were edited by M. Gherbenzon (2 vols., Moscow 1913).
[Bernardo Schultze]