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Chaadaev's Evaluation of Peter the Great

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Raymond T. McNally
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Extract

The question “Did Peter the Great exert a beneficial or a harmful influence upon the development of Russian history and culture?” is one that has provoked debate ever since that monarch ruled Russia in the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The varied answers to that question set up the general battle lines between Westernizers and Slavophiles during the first half of the nineteenth century. One of Russia's most critical intellectuals in that period, Peter Iakovlevich Chaadaev, answered the question in several ways. His answers provide a key to a peculiar kind of ideological westernization in Russian intellectual history. The discovery of hitherto unpublished source materials that fill an important gap in the documentation of Chaadaev's views on Peter the Great led to the writing of this article.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , March 1964 , pp. 31 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1963

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References

1 The literature on Peter the Great is too vast to be cited here. For our purposes see Oct., 1911, pp. 315-40; Nov.-Dec, 1911, pp. 1-37, 201-73; May-June, 1912, pp. 1-40, 193-259.

2 This is especially true in the case of the Slavophiles: “The Slavophile denunciation of Peter the Great came to be regarded as the watchword of the movement, as its most characteristic trait and as its main contrast with the Westernizers.” Riasanovsky, Nicholas, Russia and the West in the Teachings of the Slavophiles (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), p. 80 Google Scholar. In the case of the Westernizers, as Quénet points out, it was Chaadaev who assigned Peter the Great his role in the movement of Russian thought by introducing him onto the scene of “Westernism.” See Quénet, Charles, Tchaadaev et les lettres philosophiques (Paris, 1931), p. 283 Google Scholar.

3 There is no adequate study of Chaadaev that takes into account the newly discovered source materials. The best works to date are Quenet, op. cit., and Schelting, Alexander von, Russland und Europa im russischen Geschichtsdenken (Bern, 1948)Google Scholar. Winkler, Martin, Peter Jakowlevič Čaadaev (Berlin, 1927). (Moscow, 1960)Google Scholar.

4 K T.» Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom), Academy of Sciences, Leningrad. This text is a copy of one of Chaadaev's letters made by his nephew Mikhail Zhikharev. The letter is not dated, but from internal evidence it seems to have been written around 1843.

5 No. 15 (Moscow, 1836).

6 (Moscow, 1913), I, 85, hereafter referred to simply as “Gershenzon edition.“

7 Ibid., pp. 79-80.

8 ibid., p. 80.

9 See Mohrenschildt, Dmitri S. von, Russia in the Intellectual Life of Eighteenth-Century France (New York, 1936)Google Scholar.

10 Quénet, op. cit., p. 15.

11 respectively, Manuscript Section, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkinskii Dom), AN SSSR, Leningrad; also Manuscript Section, Lenin Library, Moscow.

12 For a recent view of the reasons for this defense of Peter the Great see Florovsky, Georges, “The Problem of Old Russian Culture,” Slavic Review, XXI, No. 1 (Mar., 1962), especially pp. 1–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Cited in Florinsky, Michael, Russia: A History and an Interpretation (2 vols.; New York, 1953), I, 427 Google Scholar.

14 Ibid.

15 See Rogger, Hans, National Consciousness in Eighteenth Century Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 For a possible direct influence of Karamzin on Chaadaev see Quénet, op. cit., pp. 276-80.

17 Rogger, op. cit., p. 248. See also Pipes, Richard, Karamzin's Memoir on Ancient and Modern Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 56–58Google Scholar.

18 See Pipes, op. cit., p. 56.

19 Ibid., p. 121.

20 ibid., p. 127.

21 Mohrenschildt, op. cit., p. 248.

22 For details on Voltaire's history of Peter the Great see (Prague, 1929).

23 Encyclopédic ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, XXIX (3rd ed.; Geneva, 1777-79), 580.

24 Montesquieu, , De I'esprit des lois in Oeuvres, ed. frères, Gamier (Paris, 1875-79), Vol. III , Book IX, Chap. 9, p 351 Google Scholar.

25 Rousseau, , Oeuvres complètes, Vol. V, Book II, Chap. 8 (Paris, 1827), pp. 83–84 Google Scholar.

26 Gershenzon edition, p. 166.

27 Ibid., pp. 164-65.

28 ibid., p. 188.

29 ibid., p. 191.

30 ibid., pp. 200-201.

31 On the rise of Russophobia in France see McNally, Raymond T., “Das Russlandbild in der Publizistik Frankreichs zwischen 1814 und 1843,” Forschungen zur osteuropäischen Geschichte, VI (Berlin, 1958), 82–169Google Scholar; idem, “The Origins of Russophobia in France. 1812- 1830,” American Slavic and East European Review, XVII, No. 2 (Apr., 1958), 173-89. See also Hammen, Oscar J., “Free Europe versus Russia, 1830-1854,” American Slavic and East European Review, XI, No. 1 (Feb., 1952), 27–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the English picture of Russia see Gleason, J. H., The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain (Cambridge, Eng., 1950 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

32 Gershenzon edition, pp. 222-23.

33 ibid., pp. 223-24.

34 Ibid., pp. 230-32.

35 250/538 (see note 4).

36 See especially an important letter to Sverbeeva in H. B. Nos. 1-4, 1918, as well as the letters in the Gershenzon edition.

37 Gershenzon edition, p. 247.

38 Ibid., p. 248. In 1841 Belinsky was following a similar line of reasoning: “Peter had no time to waste; for now it was no longer a matter of securing Russia's future greatness, but of saving her in the present.” Belinsky, V., Selected Philosophical Works (Moscow, 1948), p. 134 Google Scholar.

39 Gershenzon edition, p. 270.

40 A Russian translation of the original French text is available in (Moscow), III-IV (1934), 365-90.

41 Gershenzon edition, pp. 309-10.

42 Riasanovsky, op. cit., p. 80.

43 “Even Konstantin Aksakov had to admit that Peter the Great had been necessary. T h e other Slavophiles developed the same idea. Peter the Great represented the inevitable Reaction against the nationalistic exclusiveness, the ignorant respect for form, and various other vices of Muscovite Russia. This reaction was extreme, negative and essentially wrong, but it was nevertheless bound to contribute to the higher synthesis.” Ibid., pp. 80-81.

44 Riasanovsky, Nicholas, Nicholas I and Official Nationality (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1959), p. 105 Google Scholar.

45 “The whole philosophy of our history was often reduced to the appraisal of Peter's reform; by a certain scholarly foreshortening, the whole problem of the meaning of Russian history was condensed into one single question—about the work of Peter and the relationship of his reformed Russia to the old.” B. 0. (Part IV, lecture 68) in , IV (Moscow, 1958), 201.

46 See Florovsky, op. cit., pp. 1-15.

47 Taking up an idea formulated initially by Belinsky, Miliukov and Kliuchevsky presented the military situation as the major cause for the changes brought about by Peter the Great. Although Kliuchevsky doubted whether Peter the Great had any idea of making reforms when he came to the throne, he still admired Peter as an historical figure: “the reforms were brought on by the essential requirements of state and people; the need for reforms was understood by an authoritative, intelligent, energetic, and talented individual, one of those who, for no apparent reason, appear from time to time.“ Klyuchevsky, Vasili, Peter the Great (London, 1958), p. 269 Google Scholar. In summarizing the causes for Peter's reforms Sergei Soloviev wrote that “the new order of things remained and developed, and we must accept the famous change with all its consequences, as having necessarily issued from the conditions of the previous situation of the Russian people.“ C. M. (St. Petersburg, n.d.), Vol. XVIII, Chap. 4, col. 861. But Soloviev was more cautious in his “Public Lectures on Peter the Great” in (St. Petersburg, 1882), pp. 88 ff.

48 As Belinsky saw it: “The point is not whether Peter made us half-Europeans and half-Russians, consequently neither Europeans nor Russians: the point is are we always to remain in this characterless condition? If not, if we are destined to become European Russians and Russian Europeans, we should not reproach Peter, but rather wonder how he could have accomplished such a gigantic task.” Belinsky, op. cit., pp. 137-38. Vladimir Soloviev echoed this theme: “The period of reforms, closely linked with the name of Peter the Great, represents for us the core of Russian history. I speak not of Peter's personality but rather of his work. If his work is condemned, Russian history loses its meaning. For how could one justifiably assert that one man alone turned Russia forever from the right path?” Cited in Kohn, Hans, The Mind of Modern Russia (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962, p. 225 Google Scholar.