by James Millar
STEVEN ROSEFIELDE
CHAADAYEV, PETER YAKOVLEVICH
(1794-1856), Muscovite philospher and social critic.
Peter Yakovlevich Chaadayev is most famous for the publication of his “First Philosophical Letter” in 1836 in the journal Telescope, which shockingly provoked the subsequent debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers. The Russian intellectual Alexander Herzen declared Chaadayev’s letter to be “a shot that rang out in the dark night” that “shook all thinking Russians.” Count Benkendorf, chief of the Third Section (the secret police) under Tsar Nicholas I, considered Chaadayev’s work to be that of a madman, and so Nicholas I had Chaa-dayev officially declared insane and ordered that all copies of the Telescope journal be confiscated. Chaa-dayev was placed under house arrest for about a year. The government ordered him to never publish anything again.
Chaadayev had written his “First Philosophical Letter Addressed to a Lady” as part of a series of eight “Philosophical Letters” not in Russian but in French, which he considered to be “the language of Europe.” However, the editors of the journal Telescope published only the first letter in a comparatively weak Russian translation. Chaadayev designed his “Philosophical Letters” as a criticism of the history of Russian culture in general, and the effects of religious institutions in his country. He idealized the history and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, in order to point up the shortcomings of the Russian Orthodox Church. In particular, he lashed out at Russian serfdom and autocracy. He declared that Russians had made no impact upon world culture. Russia had no important past or present; it belonged neither to the East nor the West. He worried about the malignant growth of contemporary Russian nationalistic propaganda, which might lead Russians to construct some foolish past “golden age” or “retrospective utopia.” In such a case, Russians would not take advantage of their unique cultural situation, and their cultural history might only serve as an example to others of what not to do.
Most Russians know Chaadayev simply as “a friend of Alexander Pushkin,” or as a pro-Catholic ideologue. In fact, he did remain Pushkin’s friend until the poet’s death in 1837, but he never became a Roman Catholic. Chaadayev remained Russian Orthodox all of his life. In 1837 Chaadayev wrote his “Apologia of a Madman,” an ironic claim that
CHAGALL, MARC
Russia did indeed have a genuine history but only since the time of Peter the Great. Despite the fact that Russians had no “golden age” to fall back on, they should retain the ability to submit to outside cultural forces and thus have a potentially great future.
After 1836 Chaadayev continued to write articles on cultural and political issues “for the desk drawer.” Chaadayev defies categorization; he was not a typical Russian Westernizer due to his idiosyncratic interest in religion; nor was he a Slavophile, even though he offered a possible messianic role for Russia in the future. He had no direct followers, aside from his “nephew” and amanuensis, Mikhail Zhikharev, who scrupulously preserved Chaadayev’s manuscripts and tried to get some of them published after Chaadayev’s death. Chaa-dayev’s lasting heritage was to remind Russian intellectuals to evaluate any of Russia’s supposed cultural achievements in comparison with those of the West. See also: PUSHKIN, ALEXANDER SERGEYEVICH; SLAVOPHILES; WESTERNIZERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chaadayev, Peter. (1969). The Major Works of Peter Chaa-dayev: A Translation and Commentary by Raymond T. McNally. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Chaadayev, Peter. (1991). Philosophical Works of Peter Chaadayev. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. McNally, Raymond Ted. (1966). “Chaadayev’s Philosophical Letters Written to a Lady and His Apologia of a Madman.” Forschungen zur osteuropaischen Geschichte XI (Berlin 1966):24-128. McNally, Raymond Ted. (1971). Chaadaev and his Friends: An Intellectual History of Peter Chaadaev and His Russian Contemporaries. Tallahassee, FL: Diplomatic Press. the next year. Over the next three years, he attended art classes at Nikolai Roerich’s Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and at Savely Zei-denberg’s private art academy. He also studied under Mstislav Dobuzhinsky at Elizaveta Zvantseva’s art school. In 1910 Chagall left for Paris and settled in the Russian artist colony, La Ruche, in Mont-martre. After the opening of his first personal exhibition at the gallery Der Sturm in Berlin in 1914, Chagall made a trip to Russia; the outbreak of World War I made a return to Paris impossible.
Chagall was an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian Revolution and was made the first Commissar for Fine Arts in Vitebsk in 1917. He formed the Vitebsk Popular Art School in 1919 and invited Dobuzhinsky, El Lissitzky, Pen, and Ivan Puni (Jean Pougny) to join the faculty. At the same time, Vera Yermolayeva, also teaching at the school, invited Kazimir Malevich to become a member of the staff. Malevich and his followers formed the Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) group, devoted to Suprematism and essentially hostile to Chagall’s leadership. In 1920, after a power struggle, Chagall resigned his directorship and moved to Moscow, where he worked in the Moscow State Yiddish Theater and the Habimah Theater as a set designer and muralist.
Growing increasingly disenchanted with the turmoil of the new communist state, he left Russia in 1922, immigrating to Berlin. After a year, he returned to Paris to find that many of the paintings he had left there were missing. However, he was still able in 1924 to mount his first major retrospective at the Galerie Barbazanges-Hoderbart. He moved to the United States in 1941, fleeing Nazi occupation, returning in 1948. See also: KANDINSKY, VASSILY VASSILIEVICH; MALEVICH, KAZIMIR SEVERINOVICH
RAYMOND T. MCNALLY
CHAGALL, MARC
(1887-1985), (Mark Zakharovich Shagal), artist.
Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Russia (now in Belarus), a major center of Jewish culture. In 1906 he attended Yehuda Pen’s School of Drawing and Painting in Vitebsk, moving to St. Petersburg
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bessonova, Marina. (1988). Chagall Discovered: From Russian and Private Collections. New York: H. L. Levin. Compton, Susan. (1990). Marc Chagall: My Life, My Dream, Berlin and Paris, 1922-1940. New York: Prestel. Harshav, Benjamin. (1992). Marc Chagall and the Jewish Theater. New York: The Guggenheim Museum.
MARK KONECNY
CHANCELLERY SYSTEM
CHANCELLERY SYSTEM
From the 1470s, new demands (Novgorod’s annexation, service and land registration, diplomacy) impinged upon the Muscovite court; its few literate officials multiplied and specialized. Embryonic offices between the 1530s and 1550s evolved into departments, “chancelleries” (izby, later prikazy), generating their own desiderata, becoming a significant (even dominating) element in Muscovite government-shaping the court and autocracy. From the 1530s to 1700, the “chancellery system” (prikaznaia sistema) became a full-fledged early modern state bureaucracy, in some ways more developed than its European counterparts, with differentiated offices and a professional administrative staff. It did not contend with estates, incorporated towns, ecclesiastical institutions, or parliamentary organs.
Warfare was the primary impetus to the chancellery system; its personnel and documentary language were nonecclesiastical, unlike those of medieval Europe. Chancellery parlance (prikaznoi yazyk) was basically standard Middle Russian, with some Mongol-Tatar fiscal and diplomatic terminology and very few Latinate words.
The chancelleries’ primary interests were military affairs, diplomacy, taxation, and justice; education and social welfare virtually were absent. Seventy-six percent (117) of the chancelleries handled civil administration, 12 percent (18) royal court affairs, 8 percent (12) the tsar’s personal matters; and 4 percent (6) the Patriarchate. Tsars and their cliques fashioned new bureaus at the start of a reign, and became acculturated to bureaucratic norms.
The authorities furbished chancelleries as needed. One hundred thirty-six (90%) of the 153 chancelleries operated during the 1600s. While Ivan IV’s military administrative, tax, provincial administrative, and justice reforms caused the chancelleries to flourish, his Oprichnina temporarily inflicted harm. Its separate cha
ncelleries suffered a fate similar to that of the regular state (Zemshchina) bureaus; in 1570 he murdered the state secretaries and clerks of both after 1572, new military, financial, and judicial chancelleries appeared; the chancellery system broadened its control over the countryside. The Time of Troubles bludgeoned this system as rival throne claimants divided administrators. Moscow lost countryside control; the Poles shut down the chancelleries. Mikhail Fyodorovich’s first years witnessed many new court chancelleries, temporary military chancelleries, and ad hoc social grievance bodies (e.g., against dominance by unduly powerful individuals [“strong people”] and tax exemptions for magnates, well-to-do merchants, and monasteries). Dyak (clerk) corruption and bribery were conspicuous in the 1630s and 1640s; Alexei Mikhailovich’s later reign and the 1649 Ulozhenie (Law Code) dampened these excesses.
Alexei’s adviser Boris Morozov created several military chancelleries. Fyodor Alexeyevich’s gifted courtiers Yuri Dolgoruky and Ilya Miloslavsky engendered financial and publication chancelleries and the May and November 1680 financial- and military-administrative reforms. They streamlined chancelleries by merging subordinate chancelleries into the Military (Razryad) and Foreign Affairs (posolsky prikaz) Chancelleries and the Chancellery of the Grand Treasury (prikaz bolshoi kazny)-the culmination of bureaucratic pyramiding from the 1590s. The 1682 Musketeers’ Revolt partially unraveled the 1680 measures. Before 1700, Peter I’s regime created six chancelleries; three of them inaugurated the Petrine navy. Peter then dismantled the chancelleries; other institutions, culminating in the colleges, replaced them.
The Kremlin enclosed most chancelleries. They housed tribunal hearings, clerks’ writing tables, and document storage. Bigger chancelleries (Military, Foreign Affairs, Service Land [pomestny prikaz]) had separate buildings.
Historians have exaggerated in criticizing the Muscovite bureaucracy for its numerous offices and interference in one another’s jurisdiction. Red-tape (volokita) aside, all knew where to go, though they might petition tribunals many times. Chancelleries of the realm possessed five hierarchies: The Military Chancellery, during interims of no major wars (when it manipulated all chancelleries), directed all military-related chancelleries; the Foreign Affairs Chancellery oversaw territorial chancelleries governing recently annexed non-Russian lands; the Chancellery of the Grand Revenue (prikaz bolshogo prikhoda), supervised Northern Russian tax collection chancelleries (cheti, chetverti); the Chancellery of the Grand Court (prikaz bolshogo dvortsa) controlled the ill-understood royal court chancelleries; and the Patriarch’s Service Chancellery (patriarshy razryad) oversaw five bureaus in the Patriarchate.
Nine chancelleries existed in the 1550s, 26 in the 1580s, 35 in the first decade of the 1600s, 57
CHAPAYEV, VASILY IVANOVICH
in the 1610s; and 68 in the 1620s. Sizes of chancelleries varied enormously. The pomestnyi prikaz multiplied its staff the most: by 12 in 60 years, from 36 clerks in 1626 to 446 clerks in 1686. The Razryad reached 125, and the posolskii prikaz 40 clerks; temporary chancelleries (sysknye prikazy) had as few as 1 or 2.
At least 24 chancelleries (15%) functioned over a century. Under Romanov rule, 102 bureaus (75%) existed either 20 years or less (at least 80 years), highlighting Muscovite leadership’s short-term versatility and perennial “matters of state” preoccupations. Mean chancellery longevity was 33 years, 84 years the median.
Chancellery jurisdiction was territorial or functional: one region, (e.g., Siberia) or one pan-territorial function (e.g., felony administration, collection of prisoner-of-war ransom monies). Larger chancelleries, for division of labor, had territorial or functional “desks” (stoly). The 1600s razryad had up to 12. Desks could be subdivided into povytia (sections).
Muscovy had no serious Roman law tradition. Chancellery officials’ scribal virtuosity and ability to plan macro-operations (e.g., fortified lines, fortress construction, land surveys, tax assessment) were impressive, though they lacked the education of European chambers’ lawyers and jurists, Ottoman kapi-kulu administrators, and Chinese dynastic bureaucrats. Monasteries mostly handled charity (alms and sick relief). Starting in the early 1700s, the state supported education and social welfare.
All chancellery officials from boyar to clerk took rigorous oaths (e.g., personal behavioral issues, secrecy). The chancellery work force was steeply hierarchical. Tribunals (sing. sudya or judge) of 2 to 6 men (usually 4) heard court trial cases and decided other business. Counselor state secretary (dumny dyak) was the highest, professional tribunal rank. Boyars and okolnichie, administrative nonprofessionals, infiltrated tribunals from 1600, subverting joint decision making. Solo decision making by the chief chancellery tribunal director became de jure in 1680.
Duma tribunal members by the 1690s garnered at the expense of the dyak and podyachy a greater share of cash salary entitlements (oklady) than in the 1620s. Those of boyars and okolnichie ranged between 265 and 1,200 rubles (617-ruble mean), and 300 and 760 rubles (385-ruble mean). Wardens, bailiffs, watchmen, guards, furnace-men, and janitors were chancellery staff.
Prerevolutionary historiography described the evolution and structure of the chancelleries, their employees, and social interaction. Soviet historiography until the 1950s and 1960s neglected Muscovite administrative history in favor of topics explicitly related to class conflict. See also: ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; DYAK; IVAN IV; KREMLIN; NOVGOROD THE GREAT; OKOLNICHY; OPRICH-NINA; PATRIARCHATE; PODYACHY; TIME OF TROUBLES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Peter B. (1978). “Early Modern Russian Bureaucracy: The Evolution of the Chancellery System from Ivan III to Peter the Great, 1478-1717.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Plavsic, Borovoi. (1980). “Seventeenth-Century Chanceries and Their Staffs.” In Russian Officialdom: The Bu-reaucratization of Russian Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century, eds. Walter McKenzie Pint-ner and Don Karl Rowney. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
PETER B. BROWN
CHAPAYEV, VASILY IVANOVICH
(1887-1919), soldier and Russian civil war hero.
Were it not for the eponymous novel and movie, historians would not likely have remembered the name of Chapayev, the unlettered commander of the Red Army’s Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division during the Russian Civil War. He was instrumental in defeating Alexander Kolchak’s “White” forces in the summer of 1919, but was killed in the action.
Dmitry Furmanov, the Chapayev brigade’s political commissar, published a thinly-fictionalized memoir about Chapayev in 1923. A proto-Social-ist Realist novel, Chapayev was an immediate bestseller and turned Chapayev into an overnight hero. Furmanov’s book spawned a veritable “Chapayev industry” of songs, games, and jokes. Although Chapayev was still in print a decade after its publication and selling well, there can be little doubt that the immense popularity of the 1934 movie Cha-payev extended the legend’s life.
CHAPBOOK LITERATURE
Made by two unknown directors, Georgy Vasiliev and Sergei Vasiliev, Chapayev debuted on November 7, 1934, on the seventeenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Reputed to be Stalin’s favorite movie, Chapayev was also the biggest box-office hit of the 1930s, selling over 50 million tickets in a five-year period. Even foreign critics and ?migr? audiences loved the movie, which starred Boris Babochkin as the brash commander.
Regardless of what the historic Chapayev was “really” like as man and hero, on the printed page and on the screen, he was an antidote to the dreariness and conformity of Soviet life. Furmanov was not a particularly gifted writer. His novella is plainly written and disjointed. The “Vasilyev Brothers” were competent directors but no more than that. Their movie is a rather primitive example of the early sound film. As many critics have noted, Cha-payev is an archetypal “cowboy,” a free spirit who supports revolution, but in his own way. The paradox is that Chapayev is an unruly model for “homo Sovieticus,” especially with the emphasis on manas-machine in the 1930s. It is important to remember, however, that for Stalin, Chapayev was the perfect hero-a
dead one. See also: CIVIL WAR OF 1917-1922; MOTION PICTURES; SOCIALIST REALISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kenez, Peter. (2001). Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin. London: I. B. Tauris. Luker, Nicholas, ed. (1988). From Furmanov to Sholokhov: An Anthology of the Classics of Socialist Realism. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.
DENISE J. YOUNGBLOOD
CHAPBOOK LITERATURE
Chapbook literature (Lubochnaya literatura, narod-naya literatura) refers to inexpensive books produced for lower-class readers, which were often associated with Moscow’s Nikolsky Market, center of the chapbook industry in late imperial Russia.
The proliferation of chapbook literature in nineteenth-century Russia was linked to the steady rise of literacy after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 and the appearance of a mass market for affordable reading material. As had earlier been the case in Britain, France, and the German states, the growth of the reading public in Russia was paralleled by the expansion of the commercial publishing industry, which produced increasing numbers of titles intended mainly for newly literate lower-class readers. In the first half of the nineteenth century, chapbook publishing was centered in St. Petersburg, but in the second half of the century, the most successful chapbook publishers were the Moscow firms of Sytin, Morozov, Kholmushin, Shaparov, and Abramov. By 1887 over three million copies of 336 chapbook titles were published, and more than 21 million copies of 2,028 titles in 1914. The chapbooks were usually written by people of peasant or lower-class origins, and sold by city hawkers or rural itinerant peddlers.
Folktales, chivalrous tales, spiritual and didactic works, historical fiction, war stories, and stories about merchants were the predominant subjects of commercial chapbooks for most of the nineteenth century, but by the beginning of the twentieth century, stories about crime, romance, and science accounted for a large share of the chapbook market. Lurid tales of criminal exploits were extremely popular, featuring heroes such as the bandit Vasily Churkin or the pickpocket “Light-fingered Sonka.” Sonka eventually migrated from the pages of the chapbooks to the silver screen, becoming the heroine of a movie serial. Other stories celebrated individual success in achieving material wealth through education and hard work. Serial detective stories of foreign origin or inspiration, especially those recounting the thrilling adventures of the American detectives Nat Pinkerton and Nick Carter, enjoyed tremendous success in the late 1900s.