Nikolai Ivanovich Nadezhdin (Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 Николай Иванович Надеждин) ( - ) was a Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n literary critic and Russia's first ethnographer.

Born in the Zaraisk District of Ryazan

Ryazan

Ryazan is a city and the administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Oka River southeast of Moscow. Population: The strategic bomber base Dyagilevo is just west of the city, and the air base of Alexandrovo is to the southeast as is the Ryazan Turlatovo Airport...

 guberniya

Guberniya

A guberniya was a major administrative subdivision of the Russian Empire usually translated as government, governorate, or province. Such administrative division was preserved for sometime upon the collapse of the empire in 1917. A guberniya was ruled by a governor , a word borrowed from Latin ,...

, Nadezhdin graduated from Ryazan Seminary in 1815 and Moscow Religious Academy in 1824. From 1824 to 1826 he was a professor of literature and German at Ryazan Seminary, but he was expelled because of his interest in the classics and moved to Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, where he became a private tutor and began a career in literature. "Nadezhdin's conception of the classical age was itself romantic. Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...

 was the new Plotinus

Plotinus

Plotinus was a major philosopher of the ancient world. In his system of theory there are the three principles: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. His teacher was Ammonius Saccas and he is of the Platonic tradition...

, Napoleon the new Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

, Schiller the new Vergil; and the implication was clear that the Russians were the new Christians. Nadezhdin had read Gibbon

Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament...

's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and, in his lectures at Moscow University in the early thirties, he likened Russia to a new band of barbaric hordes swarming over the collapsing West."

Nadezhdin was an ally of the Pushkin crowd who was also completely committed to the apparently antithetical principles of personal criticism, personal attacks, and personae. Starting with his work in the late 1820s in the Herald of Europe and moving on to his editorship of both Telescope and its companion publication, Rumor, Nadezhdin made his critical name not as Nadezhdin but as the "Ex-Student Nikodim Nadoumko," resident of Patriarch's Ponds...

...He began his career by publishing a series of scurrilous, though at times witty, articles against the Poets... He attacked Russian romanticism from the point of view of Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...

's German romantic idealism, denying all ideological significance to the Russian pseudo-romanticism... In a thesis on romantic poetry submitted to the University of Moscow in 1830 he advocated a synthesis of classicism and romanticism. In 1831 he started a monthly magazine, the Telescope, where he continued his policy of belittling in the light of philosophical standards the achievement of Russian literature. In 1836 the magazine was suppressed for publishing Chaadaev's Philosophical Letter. Nadézhdin himself was exiled to the North and not till some time afterwards allowed to return to Moscow. After that he renounced literature and devoted himself exclusively to his archæological and geographical studies.

In 1845 he participated in a secret commission set up by Tsar

Tsar

Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...

 Nicholas I

Nicholas I of Russia

Nicholas I , was the Emperor of Russia from 1825 until 1855, known as one of the most reactionary of the Russian monarchs. On the eve of his death, the Russian Empire reached its historical zenith spanning over 20 million square kilometers...

 dealing with heretical currents in Russia. He contributed the volume concerning the Skoptsy. He depicts his subject matter as a dangerous brotherhood threatening to overthrow the Tsar.