Chaadaev’s “Apology of a Madman” expresses a patriotism that falls into neither the ideology of the Slavophiles or those who wished to emulate the European world. It acknowledges the problem of Russia’s “vague” national character, the lack of deep-rooted traditions that allowed Peter the Great to impose his reforms with the success he had.

His conclusion somewhat echoes the savior complex of the slavophiles: “I believe that we have come after the others so that we can do better than the others.”

But he is careful not to align himself with them. Before declaring his love for Russia, his belief in its potential, he first enumerates all its problems and flaws, its unique situation: “alone of all the peoples of the world, we have not given anything to the world, and we have not learned anything from the world.” His potentially subversive message, especially given the country’s totalitarian history, is that it is not possible to be truly patriotic by blindly glorifying one’s country, exalting it based on nothing real. Instead, one has to look for its defects to see how they might be fixed or used to its advantage—as Russia, with no ideas of its own during the European Enlightenment, might learn from the mistakes of other nations and advance more quickly.

(Apologies if this isn’t the most lucid post—I’m still getting over an illness and not completely sure I remembered my Latin well enough for the title: “I will raise a monument”?)