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Сумасшествие, слабоумие или социальный невроз? Поэт Александр Квашнин-Самарин
This article, for the first time, reconstructs the biographical history of a dilettante writer Alexander Kvashnin-Samarin (1809-1884?). In January, 1837, the Emperor's court servant Zavitaev wrote a delation to the 3rd Department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery (Russian secret police) informing that retired lieutenant Kvashnin-Samarin had written a politically reprehensible poem. After an investigation Kvashnin-Samarin was several times exiled from St.Petersburg (or returned to the place of previous exile), but every time, he persstently escaped. The subject of this article is the numerous attempts of the 3rd Department's employees, up to its head Alexander Graf von Benckendorff, to define a psychiatrical status of Kvashnin-Samarin that was allegedly a reason of his "wrong" behavior: in the documents of the 3rd Deaprtment, he was called "half-insane", "moron" etc., but they cannot give a final definition to him and to his actions. Literary works by Kvashnin-Samarin, in spite of their naive and amateurish style, can be understood as a a valuable historic sourse and in some features, unrpedictably forecast the Russian prison literature of the 20th century.