Ordinary readers know Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev no more as a friend and addressee of Pushkin, to whom the great poet devoted several of his magnificent poems. These two brilliant personalities met in the summer of 1816 visiting the Karamzins. Seventeen-year-old Alexander Pushkin was still studying at the Lyceum, and the twenty-three-year-old Pyotr Chaadaev by that time was already a brilliant military officer who sniffed gunpowder in the Battle of Borodino and took part in foreign military campaigns. Peter served in the Life Guards of the Hussars, stationed in Tsarskoye Selo. They became friends a little later, when Pushkin finished his studies at the Lyceum.
Chaadaev Peter Yakovlevich and Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin
Chaadaev received an excellent education, he had an exceptional mind and therefore influenced the formation of the worldview of an inquisitive young poet. They had a lot of smart conversations and heated debates, as a result, it all came down to autocratic Russia with all its weaknesses - lack of freedom, serfdom, a difficult and oppressive atmosphere that reigned everywhere at that time. At any moment, free-thinker friends were ready to devote their own soul to “beautiful impulses” (To Chaadaev, 1818).
They also did not leave alone philosophical and literary thoughts. Their mutual friend Ya. I. Saburov said that Chaadaev amazingly affects Pushkin, forcing him to think deeply and philosophically. Pyotr Yakovlevich became one of Alexander Sergeyevich's closest friends and even took part in trying to mitigate his punishment when he fell out of favor with the tsar. The poet was first wanted to be exiled to Siberia or to the Solovetsky Monastery, but an unexpected result was a southern exile with a transfer to service in Bessarabia.
Twist of fate
The friendship of the two celebrities continued in letters, in which Pushkin often admitted that friendship with Chaadaev replaced happiness for him and that the poet’s cold soul could love him. In 1821, Alexander Sergeyevich dedicated his poems to him: “In a country where I forgot the worries of previous years …”, “Why cold doubts?” (1824). All these creations are evidence of Pushkin's enthusiastic attitude towards his elder friend and mentor, whom he called the healer of his spiritual powers.
Chaadaev was supposed to make a brilliant career, but after the uprising in the Semenovsky regiment, he resigned (as Pyotr Yakovlevich showed his opposition position). The next two years he spent inactive, then left to improve his health in Europe, and this saved him from the December storm. For all subsequent years, he experienced mental anguish, a severe spiritual crisis, a severe fracture caused by disappointment with the surrounding reality. He constantly thought about the fate of Russia. He called the entire higher nobility, the nobility and clergy bribe takers, ignoramuses, vile servants and reptiles in slavery.
In the early fall of 1826, Alexander Pushkin and Peter Chaadaev returned to Moscow almost simultaneously. Friends met at their mutual acquaintance S. A. Sobolevsky, where the poet introduced everyone to his poem Boris Godunov, and then they visited the salon of Zinaida Volkonskaya. A little later, Pushkin will present this great work to his friend Peter.
Petr Chaadaev: “Philosophical Letters”
In 1829-1830, with sharp social criticism, the publicist attacked Nikolaev Russia and wrote his famous Philosophical Letters. The first such essay-letter of Peter Chaadayev was at Pushkin, the poet mentioned it in his letter to a friend in the middle of the summer of 1831. It was published already in 1836 in the Telescope, then A. I. Herzen wrote that this event was a shot that rang out on a dark night.
Pushkin decided to respond and wrote a response letter to the author, which remained unsent. In it, he said that Chaadaev’s criticism regarding Russian public life was deeply true in many respects and that he, too, was far from enthusiastic about what was happening around him, but Pushkin swears by the honor that he would not exchange his Fatherland for anything and did not want to would have a story other than the story of his ancestors, which God sent them.
As a result, the Telescope was closed, the editor N. I. Nadezhdin was sent to Siberia, and Chaadaev was declared crazy and put under constant medical and police supervision. Chaadaev always appreciated Pushkin as his great friend, he was proud of it, treasured their friendship and called Pushkin "a graceful genius." In subsequent years, although they continued to meet in Moscow, they no longer had that former close friendship.
Biography
Petr Chaadaev, whose biography is presented in the article, was from a rich noble family and was the grandson of the historian and academician M. M. Shcherbatov on his maternal side. He was born on May 27, 1794 and was orphaned early, his father died a day after his birth, and his mother in 1797.
Petra, along with her brother Mikhail, took an aunt from Princess Nizhny Novgorod to her upbringing in Moscow - Princess Anna Mikhailovna Shcherbatova. The guardian of the children was her husband, Prince D. M. Shcherbatov. They lived in Serebryany Lane, on the Arbat, next to the St. Nicholas Church.
Career
In 1807-1811 he attended lectures at Moscow University, made friends with A. S. Griboedov, the Decembrists N. I. Turgenev, I. D. Yakushkin and others. He was distinguished not only by his mind and secular manners, but also by his reputation as a dandy and handsome. In 1812 he served in the Semenovsky, then in the Akhtyrsky hussar regiment. He participated in the battle of Borodino, and at the end of the war he began to serve at the imperial court and in 1819 received the rank of captain.
After the rebellion in the Semenovsky regiment, he resigned and in 1821 joined the Decembrist society, in 1823 he went abroad. There he attended the lectures of the philosopher Schelling, made friends with him and reconsidered his views and worldview.
Opal
Upon returning to Russia in 1826, Pyotr Chaadaev lived almost in isolation. Only then will he write his famous Philosophical Letters, of which there were only eight. His last letter after being printed in the Telescope in 1836 will be critically discussed in every home. Its meaning was that Russia was cut off from the global cultural development, that the Russian people are a gap in the order of the reasonable existence of mankind. Herzen was one of the few who supported the philosopher's hopeless conclusions about Russia. Chaadaev incurred the wrath of the authorities and was officially declared insane.
Such a reaction of the authorities and public unanimous condemnation forced Chaadayev to reconsider his views, and in a year he would write “Apology of a Madman, ” where there is already a more optimistic forecast for the future of Russia.
During his last years, he lived on Novaya Basmannaya Street very modestly and solitaryly, although Moscow society ascribed to him a strange eccentricity, but at the same time many were very afraid of his sharp tongue.
Chaadaev died on April 14, 1856, he was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy monastery in Moscow.
Proceedings of Philosophy
He called himself a "Christian philosopher." The philosophy of Pyotr Chaadayev may immediately be incomprehensible, it cannot be fully comprehended by reading only one of his works. This requires studying the full range of his writings and private correspondence. Afterwards, it will be immediately revealed that the main thing in his position was a religious worldview, which did not fall within the framework of Catholicism, Protestantism, or Orthodoxy. From the standpoint of a single Christian teaching, he wanted to give a new understanding of the whole historical and philosophical culture. He considered his philosophical religious studies to be the religion of the future, intended for fiery hearts and deep souls, and it did not coincide with the religions of theologians. Here he becomes like Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich, who in the same way very difficultly and tragically survived his spiritual crisis.
Peter Chaadaev knew scripture well and was well versed in it. However, the main question to which he wanted to find an answer was the “secret of time” and the meaning of human history. He sought all answers in Christianity.
“Only the eye of mercy is clairvoyant - this is the whole philosophy of Christianity, ” wrote Peter Chaadaev. His quotes help to reveal his personality more deeply, in one of them he looks like a prophet, because he writes that socialism will win, in his opinion, not because he is right, but because his opponents are wrong.
United church
He believed that the main idea and the only goal for humanity should be the creation of the Kingdom of God on earth through its moral development, and divine providence drives this historical process. Outside of Christianity, he could not imagine the historical being and embodiment of the Kingdom of God without a church. And here it must be emphasized that here Chaadaev spoke of a single church, not divided into different faiths. It was in this that he saw the true meaning of the dogma of faith in a single church - through the construction of a perfect system on earth, referred to as the Kingdom of God. It is necessary to immediately recall that in the Orthodox faith, the Kingdom of God is a mystical concept that arises after the completion of real earthly life (after the Apocalypse).
Chaadaev believed that the Muslim faith is far from the truth. A single Christian church that has split into faiths is the true embodiment of God. Of all the denominations, he suddenly selects the Catholic Church as the main one, which supposedly carried out God's providence to a greater extent. The main argument he called the high development of Western culture. In his conviction, Russia did not give anything to world culture and "got lost on the earth." He blames the Russian people for this and sees the reason that Russia converted to Orthodoxy from Byzantium.
