The Chaadayev Affair: Ideology, Rhetoric and State Power in Nicholas Russia

 Officially declared insane for his ideas, Chaadayev enjoys the reputation of one of the most famous and requested Russian philosophers, whom researchers declare the founding father of Westernism with his critical view of Russia's present and future, or the prophet of Slavophilism with his belief in the coming greatness of the country. But what if we look at these texts and Chaadayev himself in a different way? Delving deeply into the intellectual life of the 1830s, Mikhail Velizhev is trying to avoid stereotypes that have developed around the author of the Philosophical Letters. Investigating the circumstances of the scandalous publication of the first article of the cycle in 1836, Mikhail Velizhev dares to reconstruct the micro-contexts of the Chaadayev affair in order to show the significance of this unique story for the people of that era.