For Russia the year 1837 began with the death of the poet Alexander Pushkin in a duel, and ended with a fire that destroyed the Czar’s Winter Palace. These two happenstance events in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg frame a series of extraordinary changes that occurred that year throughout Russia. For historian Paul Werth these events amount to a “quiet revolution”, one that changed Russia and provided it with features—religious, cultural, intellectual, institutional, political, and ethnic—that are visible to this day.

Paul W. Werth is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The author of numerous studies on religion, religious freedom, and the role of religious institutions in Russian imperial governance, his most recent book is 1837: Russia’s Quiet Revolution, now available from Oxford University Press. Twice he has given conference presentations in verse.

 

For Further Investigation

Paul Werth, "To know Russia, you really have to understand 1837"

Chaadaev, Peter, translated by Raymond T. McNally. The Major Works of Peter Chaadaev. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969