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Rh the police, but the physician soon discontinued his visits, whilst the police ceased to concern themselves about the author after he had been forbidden to write. In fact, Čaadaev never published anything in book form.

The Philosophic Writing of Čaadaev was given to the world without the writer's authorisation; by 1836 his views had undergone modification, and the essay had never been intended for the general public. But in this very point lies the significance of the work, and it is for this reason that it has become a literary document of the Nicolaitan epoch. It was addressed to a lady quite unknown in the literary world, and it was through its artless character, through its intimate tone of conviction, and through its frankness, that the Writing exercised so inflammatory an effect. The appearance of this heretical and revolutionary essay in Nadeždin's journal "Telescop" was, moreover, characteristic of tsarist absolutism and the censorship of that day. Nadeždin, it is related, adroitly extorted an authorisation to print from the censor when the latter was, as usual of an evening, engrossed at the card table. A passionate devotion to cards was a characteristic fruit of the Russian prohibition of thought. The censor's carelessness, the energy of an editor speculating in a sensation, in a word, the publication of the Philosophic Writing with its attendant details, reproduce for us the essence of Nicolaitan civilisation. Another characteristic touch is that the signal for the philosophic revolution should have been given by a soldier, for at that time the officers constituted in a sense the most cultured and independent class in Russia. Čaadaev took his place as successor of the decabrists. Further, his essay waw written in French. At the close of the twenties, the cultured Russian, though he studied German philosophers and accepted many of their ideas, was still predominantly under French influence. Beyond question Čaadaev's essay is a literary document of surpassing interest.

AADAEV grew up among the decabrists, and was subjected to the same influences as his friends N. Turgenev, Jakuškin, Griboedov, Puškin, etc. He shared the views of the decabrists, but in addition he watched the restoration of the old regime in France and elsewhere in Europe, attuning his mind to the Rh