The purpose of this publication is to present the work by an outstanding French historian of science Alexander Koyré who was deeply interested in the Russian philosophy of history to the Russian-speaking public. The paper, written about a hundred years ago, traces the evolution of Pyotr Chaadayev’s philosophical-historical thought in the context of his polemics against Slavophiles. It was the first serious theoretical dispute about the place of Russia in world history, which largely set the pattern for subsequent disputes on this topic that continue to this day. Chaadayev wrote his Philosophical Letters in French, using the categorical apparatus of German philosophy, particularly the ideas of Schelling, with whom he was personally acquainted. Nevertheless, Koyré contests the usual characterization of Chaadayev as a refined Westernist, showing that he accepted some of Ivan Kireevsky’s and other Slavophiles’ basic statements and attitudes, including the religious ones, but interpreted them in a completely different way, after his own fashion. Chaadayev sees the reasons for the backwardness of Russian civilization in the overwhelming dominance of ascetic Christianity, on the one hand, and in the plasticity of the folk character of the Slavs, in the absence of autonomous life and ancient cultural heritage, on the other. Russian civilization belongs neither to the Eastern, closed in itself, nor to the Western expansionist type. It has its own special way of historical development. After the publication of the first Philosophical Letter in the journal Telescope in 1836, Nicholas I, by the highest decree, declared Chaadayev insane and ordered him to be placed under house arrest. The philosopher responded with Apologia of a Madman. Koyré’ disputes the widespread view that Chaadayev’s historiosophic views underwent a significant change in this work, not to mention the renunciation of his sharply critical assessment of the history of Russian civilization as a kind of gap in the intellectual world order. This disadvantage, however, could turn into a springboard for a historical breakthrough towards broad welfare. In a country where the people are accustomed to blind obedience, it requires only the will of the ruler, the coming of the new Peter the Great
