Peter Chaadayev is a Russian writer, philosopher and thinker

Pyotr Yakovlevich Chaadayev, ordinary readers know nothing more than a friend and addressee of Pushkin, to whom the great poet dedicated several of his magnificent poems. These two ingenious personalities met in the summer of 1816 at a visit to the Karamzins. Seventeen-year-old Alexander Pushkin was still studying at the Lyceum, and Pyotr Chaadayev, 23, was already a brilliant military officer, sniffing gunpowder in the battle of Borodino and participating in foreign military campaigns. Peter served in the Life Guards of the Hussar Regiment, stationed in Tsarskoe Selo. They became friends a little later, when Pushkin graduated from his studies at the Lyceum.

Chaadaev Petr Yakovlevich and Alexander Sergeevich 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 many clever conversations and heated discussions, in the end everything amounted to autocratic Russia with all its weak points - lack of freedom, serfdom, the heavy and oppressive atmosphere that reigned everywhere at that time. To their homeland friends freethinkers were ready at any moment to devote their "souls wonderful impulses" ("To Chaadayev, 1818).

They also did not leave in peace and philosophical and literary reflections. Their mutual acquaintance Ya. I. Saburov said that Chaadaev amazingly influences Pushkin, forcing him to think deeply, philosophically. Peter Yakovlevich became one of the closest friends of Alexander Sergeevich and even took part in the efforts to mitigate his punishment when he fell out of favor with the tsar. The poet was wanted to send first to Siberia or to the Solovetsky Monastery, but the unexpected result was a southern link with a transfer to the service in Bessarabia.

Turn of fate

The friendship of the two celebrities continued in letters, in which Pushkin often confessed that friendship with Chaadaev replaced him with happiness and that the poet's cold soul could love him alone. In 1821 Alexander Sergeyevich devotes his poems to him "In a country where I forgot the troubles of the previous years ...", "Why cold questions?" (1824). All these creations are evidence of Pushkin's enthusiastic relationship to his elder friend and mentor, whom he called the healer of his spiritual powers.

Chaadaev had to make a brilliant career, but after resigning to the Semenov regiment, he resigned (as Peter Yakovlevich showed his opposition position). The next two years he spent in inactivity, then went to improve his health in Europe, and this saved him from the December storm. All the further years he experienced mental anguish, a severe spiritual crisis, a hard break, caused by disappointment with the surrounding reality. He constantly thought about the fate of Russia. He called all the nobility, nobility and clerics bribe-takers, ignoramuses, vile serfs and reptiles in slavery.

In the early autumn of 1826, Alexander Pushkin and Pyotr Chaadayev returned to Moscow almost simultaneously. Friends met at his common friend SA 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 give his friend Peter this great work.

Petr Chaadaev: "Philosophical Letters"

In 1829-1830, with a sharp social criticism, a publicist attacked Nikolayevskaya Russia and wrote his famous "Philosophical Letters." The first such essay-writing by Peter Chaadayev was in Pushkin, about which the poet mentioned in his letter to a friend in the middle of the summer of 1831. It will be published already in 1836 in the Telescope, then AI Herzen wrote that this event was a shot that was heard on a dark night.

Pushkin decided to respond and wrote a reply letter to the author, who remained unreported. In it he said that the criticism of Chaadaev concerning Russian public life is in many respects deeply true and that he, too, is far from delighted with what is going on around him, but Pushkin swears by his honor that he would not have exchanged his Fatherland for anything and did not want Would have a different story, except the history of his ancestors, which God sent them.

As a result, the Telescope was shut down, NI Nadezhdin's editor was deported to Siberia, and Chaadaev was declared insane and given up under constant medical and police supervision. Chaadaev always highly valued Pushkin as his great friend, he was proud of it, valued their friendship and called Pushkin "a graceful genius." In subsequent years, although they continued to meet in Moscow, but they did not already have that friendly affinity.

Biography

Petr Chaadayev, whose biography is presented in the article, was a native of a rich noble family and on the maternal line was the grandson of the historian and academician M. M. Shcherbatov. He was born May 27, 1794 and early orphaned, his father died the day after his birth, and his mother - in 1797.

Petra, along with her brother Mikhail, took her aunt, Princess Anna Mikhailovna Scherbatova, from Nizhny Novgorod Province to Moscow for education. The guardian of the children was her husband, Prince Dmitry Shcherbatov. They lived in Silver Lane, on Arbat, near the St. Nicholas Church.

Career

In 1807-1811, he attended lectures at the Moscow University, led a friendship with AS Griboyedov, Decembrists NI Turgenev, ID Yakushkin and others. He was distinguished not only by his intelligence and secular manners, but also by the reputation of a dandy and handsome man. In 1812 he served in Semenovsky, then in the Akhtyrsky Hussar Regiment. Participated in the Battle of Borodino, and after the war began to serve at the imperial court and in 1819 received the rank of captain.

After the riot in the Semenovsky regiment, he resigned and in 1821 joined the society of the Decembrists, in 1823 he went abroad. There he attended lectures of the philosopher Schelling, made friends with him and revised his views and outlook.

Opal

Upon his return to Russia in 1826, Pyotr Chaadaev lived practically in a bolt. Only then he will write his famous "Philosophical Letters", which was only eight. His last letter after the press in the Telescope in 1836 will be critically discussed in every house. Its meaning was that Russia broke away from the global cultural development, that the Russian people - this 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 he was officially declared insane.

This reaction of the authorities and public unanimous condemnation forced Chaadaev to reconsider his views, and a year later he will write "Apology of the Madman", where there is already a more optimistic forecast for the future of Russia.

Last years he lived on Novaya Basmannaya Street very modestly and secluded, Moscow society, although attributed to him a strange eccentricity, but at the same time, many of his sharp language was greatly feared.

Chaadaev died April 14, 1856, he was buried in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery in Moscow.

The works of philosophy

He called himself a "Christian philosopher". The philosophy of Pyotr Chaadaev can be immediately incomprehensible, it is impossible to comprehend it completely, having read only one of his works. For this it is required to study the full complex of his writings and private correspondence. After that, it will immediately appear that the main thing in his position was a religious world view, which was not within the framework of Catholicism, Protestantism or Orthodoxy. From the standpoint of a single Christian doctrine, he wanted to give a new interpretation of the entire historical and philosophical culture. He considered his philosophical religious studies to be a religion of the future, intended for fiery hearts and deep souls, and it did not coincide with the religions of theologians. Here it becomes similar to Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich, who in exactly the same way was very difficult and tragically survived his spiritual crisis.

Peter Chaadayev knew the Holy Scripture well and was well versed in it. However, the main question to which he wanted to find the answer was the "mystery of time" and the meaning of human history. All the answers he sought in Christianity.

"Only the eye of mercy is clairvoyant - this is the whole philosophy of Christianity" - as Peter Chaadayev wrote. Quotations of him 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.

One 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 this divine process is guided by divine providence. Outside of Christianity, he did not represent the historical being and the embodiment of the Kingdom of God without the church. And here we must emphasize that here Chaadaev spoke of a single church, not divided into various confessions. 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, called the Kingdom of God. It should immediately be recalled 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 split into a confession is where the true incarnation of God is. Of all denominations, he suddenly chooses the main Catholic church, which allegedly carried out more of God's business. He called the main argument the high development of Western culture. In his opinion, Russia did not give anything to world culture and "lost its way on the earth". He accuses Russian people of this and sees the reason for the fact that Russia took Orthodoxy from Byzantium.

Conclusion

But here it is very accurate to note that all these his thoughts are mostly theoretical in nature, since he considered himself to be Orthodox all his life and even deeply indignant when there were rumors of his conversion to the Catholic faith.

After a bit of fermenting in his philosophical discourses after the denial of Providence in the fate of Russia, in 1837 he suddenly wrote a work called "The Apology of a Madman", in which he spoke about the great destiny of Russia, about its special role assigned by the Lord himself.