Chaadayev, Petr Yakovlevich (1793–1856)

Russian philosopher. In his ‘Philosophic Letter’ (1836) he maintained that Russia had no past, no present, and no future save in reunion with the great body of European civilization and with the Roman Catholic Church, and he thus stimulated the great division in Russian thought between the Westernists and the Slavophiles. The government declared him insane.