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Rh of history. He was in fact, the first Russian who endeavoured, following the lines laid down by German philosophers of history, to attain to clear conceptions concerning the nature of the philosophy of history and of history in general. He was especially interested in the philosophical demonstration and valuation of the ideas of which historical facts are the expression. To Čaadaev the history of every nation is no mere succession of facts, for it is in addition a concatenation of ideas. In this and in similar respects Čaadaev reiterates the Hegelian dialectic and reproduces the Hegelian outlook. As we have seen, he employs Hegelian terminology, speaking of the logic and syllogistic of the "universal reason" as it evolves in history. To the Russians, in their adaptation to a commencing Europeanisation, a philosophy of history was especially necessary.

In this matter Čaadaev occupied a peculiar position between two parties that were then in process of formation, that of the slavophils and that of the westernisers.

He accepts the fundamental thesis of the slavophils, that society and historical development are to be conceived, above all, in a religious sense. But he is distinguished from the slavophils in that when he thinks of religion and the church he thinks of the militant and conquering church of the west, whereas the slavophils had in mind rather the contemplative religion of the east with its mystical renunciation of the world. Thus it was that Čaadaev instead of shutting himself up in a Russian monastery, sought out the world, becoming as it were a monk in a frock coat.

To Čaadaev the slavophils seemed to be retrospective utopists, learned apostles of a national reaction, whereas his aim was towards a world church, a universal church, modelled on the papacy. Čaadaev's papistical leanings constituted a stumbling-block for his slavophil friends and opponents, but in Moscow he had personal associations with Ivan Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and the other founders and advocates of slavophilism from whom he derived his later esteem for the Russian and eastern church.

In this way Čaadaev drew nearer to the program of official theocracy, though he continued to think rather of a "theocracy of consciousness" in Schlegel's sense than of theocracy as it was understood by Count Uvarov, and for this reason he was an object of suspicion to the government no less than to the first slavophils. In 1852, when the police compiled a register