Abstract Petr Chaadaev’s retirement from military service in 1821 has always attracted attention and a number of explanations; however, as the extent of these different theories makes clear, the sense of this event remains incompletely understood. This article offers a deeper contextualization of the affair, one that considers how an emotional affect – Chaadaev’s display of contempt for authority in a personal letter – lies at the heart of the matter. This Chaadaevan affect only becomes fully legible when considered in relation to various contextual elements, including Romantic philosophy of language, early nineteenth-century “radical” political emotions, Russian liberal elite sentiment toward Alexander I, the global democratic movements of the 1810s, and, finally, the intricacies of contempt itself. Taken together, these different elements greatly expand understanding of how Chaadaev and his contemporaries understood his behavior – and why it was ultimately so meaningful as to inspire writers across the nineteenth century from Pushkin to Dostoevsky.

Abstract This article explores the under-researched theme of enthusiasm in Russian Imperial culture and its role in the Decembrist revolts. Enthusiasm played a crucial role in European history, evolving from religious fanaticism and mental disease to an agent of artistic creativity and liberal politics. The post-Napoleonic era and Romanticism embraced enthusiasm and its counterpart, melancholy, as important drivers of political change. Romantic enthusiasm and melancholy became part of the Decembrist generation’s cultural vocabulary in the early 19th century. Liberal noblemen in the post-1815 Russian Empire experienced political boredom and civic melancholy in response to the socio-political status quo, while the 1820s European revolts showed an alternative mode of action. Relying on a framework from the history of emotions, this article argues that the “first Russian revolutionaries,” the Decembrists, utilized enthusiasm as a political, Romantic, and revolutionary norm in structuring their motivation, secret societies, and the failed 1825 revolts.

Abstract This article examines the relationship between conspiracy theories and security decision-making in imperial Russia. Under Alexander I, the meta-narrative about the conspiracy of secret societies, such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati, assumed a dominant position in governmental discourse. From the idea of the pan-European revolutionary upheaval, it soon evolved into the concept of a Western plot against Orthodox Russia. After the Decembrist Uprising, this trope became a key perceptual framework within which tsarist officialdom shaped state policy. While the secret police of Nicholas I avoided excessive conspiracy fantasizing, instead reaffirming the image of the virtuous Russian metropole, the functionaries of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and powerful regional administrators like the Polish Viceroy Prince Ivan Paskevich and the Ukrainian Governor-General Dmitrii Bibikov exaggerated fears of revolutionary subversion to justify the expansion of the security apparatus. The article demonstrates the long-lasting impact of the Decembrist conspiracy on the Russian bureaucratic mentality.

Abstract This article examines a particular historical moment as the dramatic events of the Napoleonic Wars were concluding at the Congress of Vienna, through the way in which it was reflected and refracted in the personal writings of a future Decembrist, Nikolai Turgenev. The analysis ensues from the juxtaposition of rapid historical change taking place on the ground, the European peace congress in which Turgenev was an active participant and which would soon be celebrated as the foundational peace framework of the nineteenth century, and the deep melancholy that permeates his diary entries written over this period. Employing a psychoanalytic understanding of melancholy as a type of mourning, and a melancholic as a figure outside of time, this article engages with the diary as “an archive of loss” and as a mechanism by which the “working-through” of the melancholic state takes place. By the end of this ninth diary book, Turgenev was poised to return home as a “radical melancholic,” still a melancholic but now able to act and ready to engage in political work for the happiness of Russia.

Abstract This article challenges the traditional divide between “revolt” and “revolution” in interpreting the Decembrist uprising of December 14, 1825, in St. Petersburg. Often seen as either a failed military mutiny or Russia’s first bourgeois revolution, the event is reexamined here through the lens of dynastic law and political legitimacy. Drawing on new archival sources and a fresh reading of state documents, the study argues that Nicholas I’s rise to power marked not just the suppression of a rebellion but a legal and political transformation that signaled the end of dynastic arbitrariness and the start of regulated succession under the 1797 Law on Succession. In this perspective, the interregnum crisis, marked by the Decembrist uprising, emerges as a pivotal moment in the institutionalization of autocratic legitimacy in the Russian Empire.

Abstract Income books from the Nilo-Stolobenskaia Hermitage provide glimpses into how eighteenth-century monasteries endeavored to improve the spiritual experiences of their pilgrims through the distribution of paper icons. Beginning in 1721, the Nilov monks handed out paper icons throughout the year, but especially during the winter months when pilgrims most often visited the monastery. The miniscule income derived from the exchange of paper icons shows that their distribution did not provide the monastery with extra income but served the spiritual needs of its pilgrims. The surviving paper icons of Saint Nil Stolobenskii indicate that the Nilov monks understood the concern of the Russian Orthodox Church that printed icons follow proper iconographic standards. The display of the figure of Saint Nil and the buildings of his monastery and the hymns to the saint celebrating Nil’s power as a miracle worker on these icons helped pilgrims maintain their spiritual attachment to the saint and his monastery.

Аннотация В статье привлечено внимание к ряду произведений гимнографического характера князя Симеона Шаховского, известного писателя и государственного деятеля первой половины XVII века. Представлены векторы научного дискурса по данной теме, приведен полный перечень таких опытов Шаховского несомненной атрибуции. Характеристика степени гимнографического таланта князя Симеона сделана на материале опубликованного канона Софии Новгородской. Автор статьи детально изучает содержание, композицию, многоуровневую тематическую организацию канона. Результаты такого подхода к тексту позволяют утверждать, что необычайная эрудиция и религиозная чуткость светского богослова Шаховского позволили ему объединить экзегезу избранных фрагментов библейских книг, историческую информацию и отрывки догматического характера в продуманное сочинение; оно не является беспорядочным нагромождением уже существовавших толкований известного иконографического образа, как предполагали другие исследователи. Изучение крупных гимнографических сочинений Шаховского, первый опыт которого представлен в данной статье, дополняет представление об интересах и литературных способностях русского книжника-интеллектуала первой половины XVII века и ставит новые вопросы о специфике религиозного восприятия, образования и культуры в России задолго до реформ Петра I.