What Is the Intelligentsia? Author(s): Martin Malia Source: Daedalus, Vol. 89, No.

3, The Russian Intelligentsia (Summer, 1960), pp. 441-458 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20026591 Accessed: 04/12/2009 22:45
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MARTIN What

MALIA

Is the Intelligentsia?

of the quahties engaging is the moral passion with which they attacked the great questions of the human condition, and their pursuit to a life no less than in logical conclusion?in ruthlessly the heady answers such exalted thought?of inquiry invariably brings. It is this the two giants of the tradition, and quahty which Tolstoy in spite of so much that separates them, have in com Dostoevsky, mon and which gives Russian hterature of the last century its unique In lesser character and power. figures this same moral quest is often as but with a na?ve, utilitarian bluntness that expressed just intensely is conveyed such classic titles of their works as Who Is To by Is To Be Done?, Who Are The Friends Blame?, What of The Peo some of them Like Marx, whom to a shat followed ple? eventually outcome of their searchings, wished "not just to under tering they stand the world, but to change it." and their moral utilitarianism Still, they had first to understand, was founded on an exacerbated ultimately faculty of introspection. Their initial question was always, "Who are we?"?as as individuals, as men in a barbarous A more pragmatic Russians, thinking society. the same question was, "What is the way of putting intelligentsia?" The number of works so entitled is legion, with almost as many dif ferent, ardent answers. The subject of this essay, then, is one of the classic questions of modern Russian it is al life, yet about which to say since it is as rich as that life new, ways possible something itself. Russian intellectuals The term intelligentsia was introduced into the Russian language a minor novelist named in the 1860's cur and became by Boborykin, rent almost This fact is of more than anecdotal immediately. signifi cance, for it suggests that the group so designated did not acquire 441

To

blase Westerners

one of the most of the old regime

MARTIN MALIA of its identity until that time. Yet almost all author full awareness ities would agree that the origins of the group itself went back to into Russia introduced the "circles" of the 1830's and 1840's, which in the form of German turn of mind the ideological philosophical idealism. Still, the fact that there was a term for the group under there was none under Nicholas Alexander I, indicates a II, whereas of in its development that coincides with the beginning watershed after 1855. the Great Reforms in his greatest novel, gave the classical It was Turgenev who, to describe "fathers" these two stages: the aristocratic terminology difference the intellectual "sons." Very roughly, and the plebeian ideahsts and material the two was the difference between between once both were what Napoleon ists; nevertheless, contemptuously of A third stage came after the assassination dubbed "ideologues." II in 1881 with the advent of a more heterogeneous Alexander body sometimes baptized the "grandsons," or the various Populist, Marx ist, and even neo-Kantian groups of the end of the old regime, who but who revived in different ways the legacy of their predecessors, as remained ideological. just thoroughly to the that is fundamental of the ideological It is this primacy as a whole; should not be taken the intelligentsia, therefore, group ever the word to mean Indeed, opposition. just the revolutionary either since it came into being has had two overlapping meanings: Pisarev's whom think independently?of all men who "critically extreme and the most realists," or "nihilists," were only thinking the intellectuals of the famous manifestation; or, more narrowly,
opposition, whether revolutionary or not. "Fathers," "sons," and

are all and might intelligentsia, unmistakably "grandsons," therefore, "classical intelligentsia." for convenience's sake be designated are candidates for There are two other groups, however, which on the would inclusion under the same rubric. Some writers subject all oppositional consider as intelligentsia figures since the end of the under Cath and Novikov century, including Radishchev eighteenth I. Yet here we find under Alexander erine II and the Decembrists nothing a consensus, had certain although were not yet their successors, they status, therefore, they are equivocal a and though "proto-intelligentsia," not be central them here, they will it is clear that after 1917 Finally, approaching these figures change. Although Marxism 442 and that indicates in common with of this the real thing. Because as no more than best considered some account must be taken of this characteristics suffered for such a a in itself

drastic

to the story. the term intelligentsia no makes provision

What
the Soviet regime has as one of the intelligentsia the proletariat gether with no however, longer has any cause all questions have now class,

Is the Intelligentsia?

it calls the what officially proclaimed of the socialist order, to three pillars and the toiling peasantry. The term, connotations "critical" thought, be of

been answered; still less does it have In addition, the "classical" and "proto-"intelligentsias. it should be all those who "toil" with their minds instead of with their simply that is, the technological, hands, liberal-professional, managerial, or of the state. Only administrative, merely white-collar personnel a to this definition, the Party presents for, as we partial exception shall see, it has preserved of the intelligentsia's something spirit, if not of its personnel. is so differ the Soviet intelligentsia Otherwise, as to deserve a ent from its predecessor as Trot separate name?such or as a "new class"?and sky's "bureaucracy" Djilas' just certainly, different mode of analysis. This discussion, therefore, will be limited to what has been called the "classical" and "proto-'mtelligentsias. In addition, it should be said that, since the subject is complex, much is inevit simplification able. In the remarks that follow, the emphasis will be on the more

radical and revolutionary elements of the intelhgentsia, if they who, were no means cen the whole of the movement in the nineteenth by are a choice for special consideration in a general survey tury, likely reason that for the practical they eventually had the greatest impact on history. The word itself most probably is no more than the intelligentsia Latin intelligentia?discernment, understanding, intelligence?pro nounced with a Russian accent.* Yet such bold use of a term for an a abstract mental faculty to designate specific group of people ob a very exalted notion of that and viously implies group's importance, or intellectual its members?intelligenty, "the intelligent ones"? are more in the than intellectuals sense. Whether clearly ordinary or their name in merely "critically thinking" actively oppositional, as the embodied dicates that they thought of themselves "intelli or "consciousness" of the nation. In other gence," "understanding," an sense of from the words, they clearly felt exceptional apartness use an old in which of German society they lived. To qualificative in its more the intelhgentsia idealism which lucid moments under in a diluted stood only too well, and which now sociological meaning a great vogue in America, were in "alienated" enjoys they clearly tellectuals of some sort.
* See Note, p. 458, the Glossary, 667-668.

supplementing

pp.

443

MARTIN MALLA even in such of course, exist everywhere, States. In Britain they ful and the United the injustice that keeps them "outsiders." seem to have more money, In America, where they formerly they to Paris and its Left Bank and got 'lost"; at present, and emigrated to California and somewhat more democratically, they hitch-hike the most that re "beat." In each of these cases, however, become Alienated intellectuals, societies as Britain in anger against sults

sound minate

in college and a few novels, which behavior is picturesque for identity and its the next generation's classrooms quest inspire Still and convention. revolt against parents, authority, consequent even when in the peace of society is never fundamentally disturbed, stress matters go to the point of voting for Henry times of exceptional a small Communist or Wallace party. forming intellectual was far deeper, how of the Russian The alienation In any society, ever, and its social impact infinitely more devastating. an alienation take thought who individuals seriously experience the ideal and the real, or be arises from a tension between which to become and what tween what the individual wishes society per was to its ulti to be. In Russia this phenomenon mits him pushed can of what It led to the formation mate only be development. a "class." Lest this term a separate social category, termed indeed, seem too strong, it should be pointed out that not only did the intelh "real" assume a distinctive name, but other, more indubitably gentsia it connoted as justified. this name and the apartness classes accepted did not concede the To be sure, the other classes and the government to be the incarnate consciousness of Russia, pr?tention intelligentsia's as a fact and, with time, as a of its existence but they took account
force.

the intelligentsia Indeed, so real was this force that for decades on the autocracy a was able to exert greater than political pressure as the gentry or the more palpable classes such that exercised by the collapse of the old order came, when Moreover, bourgeoisie. was able to the furies of one faction of the intelligentsia exploit and worker anarchy to the extent of assuming absolute power peasant in the "real" than it, before being dissolved over all classes more created by its own success. No class in Russian history conditions on the destinies of that nation or has had a more momentous impact In defining indeed of the modern world. it, therefore, we would do to its characteristics, rather than to at well to bend our categories to reduce it to the familiar and the known with minor adjust tempt ments for "alienation." is absolutely that the Russian This does not mean intelhgentsia 444

What

Is the Intelligentsia?

sui generis in modern history. Both in its headily temper ideological it is in many ways to the and in its impact on the world comparable ro of the Enhghtenment and to the German French philosophes mantic 1770 and 1840. Indeed, it bor thinkers of the years between ideas from one or another offshoot of rowed most of its fundamental these traditions. Nevertheless, is sufficiently the Russian intelhgentsia from all similar groups of intellectuals to be treated as a different a social category, distinct and thus to make necessary thorough to account revision of our usual notions of class in attempting going for it. It is precisely of the confusion the failure to make this revision that explains much in discussions of the intelligentsia. No recognized to the of social analysis, either those known system intelligentsia itself or those elaborated since by modern sociology, makes provision for a "class" held together only by the bond of "consciousness," on the "critical thought," or moral passion. Most writers problem, that the intelligentsia must be founded have concluded therefore, on something other than ideology alone. One suggestion, made at the end of the last century by the Populist, Mikhailovsky, is that the were "conscience-stricken since large but noblemen," intelligenty were numbers of the intelhgentsia clearly not noble, this does not school of thought, represented most melo get us very far. Another were holds that the dramatically by Berdiaev, largely intelligenty sons of priests and that their cult of absolute reason was a demonic of the absolute faith of in fact, however, perversion Orthodoxy; only a came from the of the intelhgentsia minority clergy. A more sophisticated version of these two approaches consists of an attempt to a separate rather than a deriva the intelhgentsia give tive position in the old-regime system of legal "estates" which existed in Russia down to 1917. In this view ( the most among widespread the intelligentsia itself under Alexander were II) the intelligentsia the raznochintsy, that is, "people of diverse rank," or no "people of estate in particular." this meant those stray individuals Concretely, who were left over after Peter the Great, who gave the Russian es tate system its final form, had exhausted all the more obvious social, or bureaucratic In other words, the notion of economic, categories. in the Russian was, by definition, not very meaningful raznochintsy estate system, the sys particularly century, when by the nineteenth tem was to the intelhgentsia also Moreover, beginning disintegrate. came from all the other es and more clearly recognized meaningful tates: the gentry, the the and even eventually clergy, merchantry, 445

MARTIN MALIA it was made up of the peasantry. Therefore, raznochintsy only in the sense that it was from all estates in general and from no one loose estate in particular, and that as its members moved away from their estate of origin they became d?class?. One of the primary character istics of the intelligenty, then, was that they could no longer fit into the official estate system. The Marxist intellectuals were hardly more successful when their turn came to explain "who they were," for where does the intelhgent sia belong in the economic definition of class that divides society into feudal aristocracy, etc.? Still, the problem bourgeoisie, proletariat, was more or less a had to be faced, and since the intelhgentsia a the gentry and the people, "middle class" between Lenin made it as a valiant stab at defining in "bourgeois intelligentsia," although some way that was not considered that his explained he nonetheless of intelligentsia the proletariat. It is hard to type really represented see how he could have done much better, since in this system of classi cannot be fication the intelhgentsia but "middle class," and anything economic notion of a "capitalistic bour yet they fit no meaningful At the most, they could be only a but geoisie." "petty bourgeoisie," is not the this class, inMarxist of the assault against theory, vanguard that the intelhgentsia "feudal" autocracy clearly represented. Nor can the intelhgentsia be accounted for by refining the socio to say that a class is determined economic approach by the way its members make their living, and that intellectual work creates a dif ferent mentality than is created by manual labor or business. Such a can establish a classification the identity of class as op professional a or class. But by no means all members working posed to business of the Russian class were of r?volt?; quite a number professional them were and "integrated" professors, or law successful doctors, yers. Yet if this is so, why should other "intellectual workers" of very set themselves similar background apart as an intelligentsia? It is this confused of class definitions which is the catalogue leg of the question of the intelhgentsia, and it must be faced before acy to move in new directions. it is possible The intelligentsia's agonies of introspection, have not been in vain; there is however, entirely true in their that is partially much The intelligentsia speculations. came, in fact, from all estates in general and from no one estate in in the loose meaning of raznochintsy. It did begin in the particular, owed much to the clergy, and with time came to gentry, increasingly commoners be dominated of more and more indeterminate by origin. and Bakunin were unmistakably Herzen and gentry; Chernyshevsky as came Dobrohubov from the clergy; Zheliabov or just clearly 446

What

Is the Intelligentsia?

are harder or Chernov, or Stalin, Martov Lenin, Trotsky, Tkachev, of estates. At the same time, if to in a meaningful spectrum place was not very it clearly the intelhgentsia "bourgeois" economically, the gentry establish social position, between the middle occupied ment and the masses, that did not exist, or that at of a bourgeoisie there was something least was inarticulate. about it of a Finally, class of "intellectual workers" gravitating around the petty-bourgeois editorial offices of the "thick journals" in which they labored. Even the sum of these partial truths does not give the whole and we are still faced with the dilemma with which truth, however, we as a discrete started. Since efforts to define the intelligentsia phe seem to fail, the nomenon in and for itself inevitably only remaining it in terms of the "dynamics" of its position solution is to approach in Russian society as a whole. The classical approach to the problem has been through analytical let us now examine the con abstraction; crete historical conditions under which this "class" emerged. The historian

has aptly emphasized the extreme sim Khuchevsky as to those of West historical processes plicity compared ern countries, a fact which derives European largely from the rudi nature of the Russian class structure under the old regime. mentary into the nineteenth in effect Until well century there were only two classes in Russia, or at least only two that counted. There was the or in spite of its small num which aristocracy gentry (dvorianstvo), all the wealth, monopolized bers possessed almost all privilege, and in the hfe of the nation. Then there was alone participated higher the peasantry, which was important, not because of any active role in the national it was so dangerous, at least poten life, but because was both so and so huge?roughly tially, since it oppressed ninety To be sure, other estates existed as well? percent of the population. were the merchants numer and the clergy?but they insignificant even less Under such circumstances ically and counted for socially. the Russian could be only a very simple and brutal government affair: a military bureauc autocracy ruling through an irresponsible function racy, officered of course by the gentry, and whose principal was to maintain order internally and wage war externally. of Russian cen the eighteenth admirably throughout Poles, and Turks and suppressing Pugachev Its success, however, rested on a precarious and concealed an acute intrinsic instability. As equilibrium Pugachev said on his capture in 1774: "I am not the raven but the fledgling, in the heavens." and the real raven is still hovering There was yet system worked Swedes, tury, defeating and his peasant hordes. This 447

MARTIN MALIA structure: "critical thought." With great de Maistre remarked at the of the nine Joseph prescience, beginning the fermentation of ideas had barely begun in teenth century, when to order in the country was not the that the real danger Russia, as such but an eventual It was peasants c<Pougatchev d'universit?." from the conjunction of these two intuitions that the radical intelh soon be born: men reared on the gentsia would general theories of reach out to greet the hovering the universities would democratic storm of a new Pugachevshchina. would have to wait a long They come true, their dream would time, almost a century, but eventually it. if not exactly in the form that all of them had dreamed de Maistre was more nearly right than Pugachev: Nevertheless, storm to gather at the top, rather than the new democratic began at the bottom, of Russian society. The first rumblings were heard in II and under Alexander the last years of Catherine I among the most to what is often asserted, the the gentry. Contrary order, privileged cause of this was not "influence"?the primarily Western gallicization the reading of the philosophes, of the gentry, and conversion to the man. The trouble the gentry began because under Catherine rights of for the first time acquired those rights in fact. Until 1762 the gentry had been bound to serve the state in the same way the peasants were bound to serve their masters: were they in a sense the serfs, although highly privileged serfs, of the autocrat. Since in reality, however, in the they held all the levers of command were in time able to extort from army and the bureaucracy, they the monarchy the grant of unconditional personal liberty. After 1762 were free to "serve" the state or not to serve, as they chose; they and their property entirely as they they could dispose of themselves deemed fit. In consequence, the attitudes of free they developed men, a sense of personal dignity, of pride, even a touchy independ a word, all those endowments ence?in modern humanism claims for man. It is for this reason that they became Westernized, and took over such of their new individ ready-made justifications ideological as "natural reason," or, in "honor," Voltaire's uality Montesquieu's more extreme cases, Rousseau's democratic "rights of man." the monarchy remained autocratic, and the gentry's Nonetheless, was a new-found of tolerance rather than of product "humanity" at the mercy lived constantly of a ca imprescriptible right; they return to integral autocracy, such as in fact occurred under pricious if they had any sense of the logic that natural Paul. Still worse, reason commanded, they could not but be disturbed by the contrast their liberty and the servitude of the majority. With between each another 448 menace to this

What
new

Is the Intelligentsia?

raised by French tutors, amidst general principles generation, and ideas, and remote from "life," the sense of moral scandal at the of autocracy and serfdom grew more acute. How, spectacle they asked, can some be free unless all are free, and unless the very prin that menaces eradicated? ciple of servitude everyone?autocracy?is With each generation of freedom, the younger, better educated, more of the gentry generalized humane members from a sense of their own as individuals to the ideal of human dignity dignity for all. Such, by was the meaning of the protests of Novikov and Radish 1790,
chev.

This is not to say that a majority of the gentry felt this way. Most of them, particularly after they had inherited the family estate, had the "good sense" to reahze that the best way to insure their own inde in their "order," and to keep the peasants pendence was to maintain to preserve for which it was necessary the paternal police place, force of autocracy. There was, however, a minor in each generation of the young and sensitive who put before privilege ity principle an end to the and demanded state of affairs. It existing barbarious is this primacy of general ideals over immediate interests, and the alienation of the young gentry from their official class, consequent that made of them, by the reign of Alexander of the I, a pr?figuration no other bonds of cohesion Held than intelhgentsia. together by and a humane this gentry opposition, idealism, youth, sensitivity, to desperation to reform, at last reluctance goaded by Alexander's on a in 1825 embarked assault against autocracy and serf mihtary as dom. The Decembrists, came to be called, failed, but the they shock of their action precipitated the full development of the intel had adumbrated. ligentsia they reason for the principal refusing to call the Decembrists is that, in their supreme moment intelligenty although they placed ideals before the whole of their interests, ideas were by no means were hves. The Decembrists men of the world primarily army officers, and of action; moreover, in spite of their opinions, they continued to serve the state. Even their revolt was an affair among strictly with no participation and was gentlemen, by the people, designed to take over the rather than to it existing state from within destroy from without. The real came into under intelhgentsia being only Nicholas the next generation of young gentry idealists be I, when came from the state and were left with ideas alone totally alienated as their whole world. Perhaps After the close call for Russia's precariously balanced order that 449

MARTIN MALIA attended his accession, Nicholas, the majority of the together with of further betrayal by the gentry, was obsessed by the possibility anarchic menace educated of the elite, as well as by the permanent masses. as much as the now unreliable Thus, he excluded gentry in government, from participation and instead relied on possible more docile bureaucratic servants. in Iron discipline was enforced the army and the country at large, and captious and individualism were put down wherever the Emperor's Third Section "free-thinking" worse as "red" dis Matters their presence. detected only grew in 1830, and order erupted again, in the Pohsh lands of the Empire in 1848. The Russian mihtary then all over Europe autocracy quite and defended by such developments it could command. the more sensitive younger members to do with have no more of the gentry obviously would the state in 1812 the form of ideal than it would with them. Whereas highest ism had been to serve in the army, after 1825 to serve in Nicholas' was a national and international betrayal of all ideal "gendarmerie" was an exodus of the young ism and humanity. The result of this in the generation Whereas gentry from "service" to the universities. and the Decembrists, almost all the significant of Pushkin figures of Russian culture had been either army officers or men close to the and court circles of the capital?in other words, highly into official society?under and forever after, Nicholas, integrated no less than the writers the nonpolitical almost all such figures, received in and around the their decisive formation revolutionaries, universities and, in varying degrees, were at odds with official so ciety. was to transform The their noble impact of the universities into intellectuals from the gentry, from gentry intellectuals charges or from dilettante into professional writers, critics, and "ideologues" as important, the universities them from Just professors. changed sense into idealists in the everyday in the metaphysical idealists sense. came to believe that the Following Schelling and Hegel, they essence of the universe was idea, and that the whole of nature and indeed acquired meaning and reahty, only in the history culminated, of man, and that they, therefore, were the bearers "consciousness" Idea. Thus, their chief activity and their only sphere of the Absolute of free endeavor was exalted to the level of the first principle of life. made the more In short, the universities serious younger gentry a rootless "internal emigration" with no home but morally d?class?, its ideal visions. aristocratic 450 rightly felt mortally menaced its existence with all the vigor Under such circumstances

What
At

Is the Intelligentsia?

the same time the universities together these noble brought other young men from the lower orders, the clergy, the minor professional and bureaucratic classes, or the famous razno but in the loose if that term is taken not in its legal meaning chintsy, sense of all those who came to the university and the higher hfe of the mind from estates below the gentry. These men had risen only their way pre from poverty and social obscurity, making painfully or petty to attain to journalism, cariously by tutoring, translations, is liberty. and that "consciousness" which the dignity of knowledge had no other Even more literally than the gentry intelligenty, they could life than ideas. If worse came to worst, a Bakunin or a Herzen make it up with father and find refuge on the family estate; a Bel or a Dobrohubov, a to exist as if they wished Chernyshevsky, insky, to exist at all, had no choice if they wished "human beings," indeed This faculty alone con but to labor at the tasks of intelligentia. on them at the same time and the free ferred dignity, "personality," them to escape from the op dom of a livelihood which permitted men with did not make them dependent pression of their origins yet which on the state. "cursed Russian These new men came from Behnsky's reahty" of darkness," from provincial, and from Dobroliubov's "kingdom clerical and petty-bourgeois tyranny, and su squalor, patriarchal must in the manner be accumulated of (the epithets perstition in a word, from all the human degradation of sub-gentry the day), Russia. It is Dostoevsky who has given perhaps the most unfor if highly caricatured, of this type in his various portraits gettable, and Kirillovs. From this "under Raskolnikovs, Verkhovenskys, and the offended" to the "the humiliated world, ground" emerged and 'Tiumanity," "individuality," hght of the Idea, "consciousness," "critical thought." took their place beside the only Thereby they sons of the "human beings" who hitherto had existed in Russia?those who had already cast off the class privileges which had made gentry the two groups them free men?and embraced the Uni together Idea of Man. By the end of the reign of Nicholas versal Rational the mild frustration of the Decembrists had been generalized relatively into the most sweeping, denial of the real abstract, and intransigent in the name of the ideal. was It is all these things taken together that by the 1840's created what an at last purged of any other prin unmistakably intelhgentsia, and endowed with an exalted sense of cohesion than intellection ciple to the barbarous world around it. from and superiority of difference It is first of all in this abstract but nonetheless real ideological and 451

MARTIN MALIA sense that the intelhgentsia constituted a distinct

psychological "class" in Russian There

society.

class differences of a more were, nonetheless, significant sort within in the this fundamental moral unity. Although ordinary included men from all classes, it was in fact 1840s the intelhgentsia came from the dominated gentry. By the 1860's the by those who center of gravity had shifted to the raznochintsy. This change, by the gentry, broke the group's only privileged element, submerging an end to any to official society, and the last moorings thereby put It is this develop about its separate existence. possible ambiguity ment which precipitated the group's full awareness of its own iden and thus led, by the 1860's, to the adoption of the distinctive tity name of This change, moreover, gave rise to the intelhgentsia. "fathers" and the "sons." of the famous dichotomy of contrasts, the fathers catalogue and romantics, while the sons were ma philosophical of empirical science. terialists and devotees The fathers were in art for its own sake as the esthetes who beheved self highest realization of the individual; the sons were utilitarians who accepted a civic, art useful for the reform of society. The only pedagogical into Russia the great ideals of humanity, fathers introduced reason, to translate these ideals and democracy; the sons attempted liberty, into reahty. Finally, the sons were more bitter and irascible than their better-bred fathers. The filiation between the two generations, however, was equally to make "cursed Russian reahty" con for both wished unmistakable, even form to the universal Ideas of Man and Reason, though the to accomplish or fathers wished this primarily by "enhghtenment" ex and the sons preferred direct action. The filiation education, tends even further, for both beheved in the primacy of principles and the ideal vision of Justice over the intractability of everyday life, or what were the vulgar call reahty. This was true whether they or materialists, or ideahsts for, as any good empiricist positivist are could tell them, both idealism and materialism A metaphysics. in which world ideas derive rigorously is no less of an from matter ideahsts ideal data, unverifiable construct, than a world determined examination of sensory by scientific a priori Both views are by principles. founded on acts of faith and will, that To were rehearse the conventional

visions, passionate ideological are all the more for entertaining the illusion of being "irresponsible" founded on scientific rationality. Both fathers and sons, idealists and were men of and this bond materialists, ruthlessly logical ideology, 452

What
was
tween

Is the Intelligentsia?
differences be

far stronger
them.

than

the

social

and philosophical

There

was,

however,

a more as well:

concrete

common

denominator

the Russian educational system and among the intelhgentsia in the coun to. Roughly, down to 1825 all that counted what it led hfe was the "cadet schools," or the various mihtary try's educational state to train future maintained academies and technical by the officers from the gentry. Until 1825 almost everyone who counted? from these schools; of the Decembrists?came for instance, most after 1825 almost no one did. As of the same date, civilian education was only a very recent in Russia. To be sure, there was an Academy of Sci phenomenon ences that went back to 1725, and one university, that of Moscow, had been in 1755. But until the nineteenth founded century neither in and neither, the university, was impressive, institution, especially in counted for much of Lomonosov's achievements, spite exceptional as a disinterested venture in Russia national life. In effect, education

I. began under Alexander for the first time set up a After 1803 the Imperial government network of civilian educational establishments: five new universities were created; schools (gymnasia) were estabhshed in almost all high was even done for edu provincial capitals; something elementary diocesan which went back to Peter, were cation; finally, seminaries, The government reformed and modernized. did this in part because Alexander and his advisors friends on the "Official (his young and Speransky) shared the Tiumanism" which would to revolt: they sincerely beheved the Decembrists that was necessary to prepare Russia for freedom. The "enlightenment" it increasingly did this also because needed government competent to staff an ever more nonmilitary personnel complex bureaucracy. By the 1830's and the 1840's this system was for the first time in full Even Nicholas, in operation. though he hardly beheved enhghten not afford to abolish it as a matter. ment, could Indeed, to practical meet of his perfected the demands he was forced to bureaucracy, improve it. It was on the rungs of this uni gymnasium, ladder?seminary, the raznochintsy climbed to the light of day; without it versity?that It was the universities, could never have existed. moreover, they that brought the raznochintsy the young gentry into together with the "circle," or discussion of the 1830's and 1840's, and the group, or "student commune," cooperative living group, of the 1860's and later drive 453 Committee"

MARTIN MALIA one can definition The most down-to-earth give of the in is to say that they were the "student youth" trained in the telhgentsia various establishments of the "Ministry of National Enhghtenment." an was for the unlettered mass of the population, Indeed, intelligent with a gynasium or a university anyone training. con of the intelhgentsia The alienation may be put in equally was crete terms. In a society that throughout the nineteenth century a or a over education gymnasium university ninety percent ilhterate, was in fact an set its recipients which apart in thing, extraordinary an exalted but also an In the 1840's, in isolated position. extremely students in an empire any one year there were only 3,000 university in the 1860's there were of some 50 million inhabitants; only 4,500, and in the 1870's, just a httle over 5,000, out of a population of some was the embodied 60 million. the intelligentsia Quite literally then, In the Hegelian of Russia. "intelligence" language of the 1840's, they the penetration of the "darkness" of Russian life by the personified 1870's.
accumulation of mankind's "consciousness."

In addition to the schools, the only other "institution" which gave was the to the cohesion intel press. Those periodical intelligentsia lectuals who took their mission most seriously continued after grad uation?or hve the life of ideas on the pages of the expulsion?to "thick journals," which served as vehicles for almost all creative the old regime. culture under the emergence Before of pohtical in the 1870's, these journals were the intelligentsia's sole conspiracy means for making the ideal impinge on the real. the schools and the "thick journals," however, were very institutions for the accomplishment of the intelligent unsatisfactory sia's high mission. The schools were subject to continual harassment a and this often led to isolated protests government, suspicious by or from which followed. general disturbances, expulsions inevitably it is striking how large a number of from Belin Indeed, intelligenty, to Lenin, or ar and Stahn, were expelled sky and Herzen Trotsky, rested students. Then, after expulsion or return from exile, there was the further discouragement of censorship, the suppression of period in print. icals, and perhaps another arrest if one put too much Again it is noteworthy leaders of the intelhgentsia, how many from Cha a violent end to adaev to Chernyshevsky and Pisarev, experienced their journalistic careers. And once the "thick journals" were closed to them, the last recourse of the intelligenty was to turn from "critical or action. the thought" to revolutionary "Socially" occupationally was as as its own ruthless it was a "class" intelligentsia simple logic: Both 454

What
of expelled were driven

Is the Intelligentsia?

in desperation and censored students journalists, who extremes. to conspiratorial was one of an of the intelhgentsia Put less crudely, the dilemma of elites." This does not, however, mean "circulation unsatisfactory in of intellectuals that there was a quantitative "overproduction" could of the intelligenty Russia; on the contrary, the tiny contingent the constantly expanding bureaucratic easily have been absorbed by of the state or the growing range of the hberal professions. apparatus of "humanism" for the Rather there was a quahtative overproduction initiative offered by government individual of mature, possibilities as law and were service or such professions teaching, both of which meant the Education under the tutelage of the autocracy. largely a of pride and imagination?in of talent, of ambition, development tech But the state could accommodate of "individuality." word, only not "individuahty." nical competence, intellec In effect, the experience of the state with its would-be in different form the earher experience with servants repeated tual its military servants, the gentry. By raising each group to an excep in society, the autocracy created free tional position inadvertently men in an order based on at the top and servi obedience unreflecting Since by its very nature this structure was in tude at the bottom. of individual of accommodating any significant degree capable and revolt resulted. initiative, alienation and revolt of the "student youth," however, was The ahenation of the gentry. The than that of all save a minority much deeper to give substance to their had no concrete privileges raznochintsy were in the development of Moreover, cramped they 'Tiumanity." not just by the autocracy, but also by the un their "personality," re of the gentry, who steadfastly of the majority bending privilege fused to admit them into the estabhshment. Indeed, the ahenation arose much less from their sense of difference of the intelhgentsia from the masses than from their hostility to the majority of the gentry, to be poorly in their military educated whom they considered in ideas as such, brutal, boorish, and overbear schools, uninterested in their efforts at social the intelligenty, rebuffed ing. Therefore, and Rational fell back on their Human and essence, betterment, over a hostile world. their sole means of mastery ideology became was somewhat such self-realization abstract for Since, however, creatures of flesh and blood, many of the intelligentsia eventually turned their gaze from the top to the bottom of society. Aroused by to be the and niggardly what they considered emancipa incomplete tion of the peasants by Alexander II, they "went to the people" to 455

MARTIN MALIA far deeper than theirs, a learn the great human truth of a humiliation their own "rationality" paled into insignificance. truth beside which Their final ambition was to become the authentic of this spokesmen for its own "humanity" ended truth. The quest of the intelligentsia in the ultimate of "merging with democratic the people," pathos or narodnichestvo, Populism. students and ideological this handful of turbulent a role in Russian hfe? The to play so extraordinary journalists answer to this with which question hes in the idea of Kliuchevsky on the historical these considerations of the intelhgent development sia began, namely, the extreme simplicity of the Russian social struc no matter ture under In Western how the old regime. Europe, have been, there al and undemocratic authoritarian society might could give substance ways existed some sohd interest groups which to the generalized and practical meaning protest of the intellectuals. able In nineteenth-century Russia the almost total absence of such groups a great vacuum. It was into this vacuum that the intelhgentsia left in their extremism interests of by the concrete stepped, unfettered a in the existing order. Thus the intelh stake anyone with potential man in since gentsia could speak with absolute purity for general, no one to for in particular but themselves. had speak they Man in general, however, could also be the people, the great an In of all in Russian archic base and the simplest element society. of the serfs in 1861 and of the other Great of the Emancipation spite an old Reforms which followed, Russian society remained essentially and a lack of significant founded on sharp class inequalities regime, in particular The peasants remained as poorly inte social mobility. into the structure as before. Indeed, their first taste of free grated dom in 1861 simply whetted their appetite for definitive elevation to the status of full "human beings." Thus, it was the ever-present possibility ate masses official ways the elemental destructiveness of the desper of exploiting a that gave the Russian intelhgentsia leverage against alienated intellectuals elsewhere almost al society which But how was

lacked.

itwas the disintegration of the social system which Paradoxically, into being that at last gave it a chance had brought the intelhgentsia as Russian to act. So society remained simple, the intelhgentsia long failed to make contact with the masses because the very brutality of to it easy for the autocracy social relationships made keep the peas ants in hand. In the 1890's, however, under the impact of rapid in to develop Russian of the diversity dustrialization, society began 456

What

Is the Intelligentsia?

to the West; social classes common modern business, professional, on the state became in in no way dependent and other activities From 1906 on there was even a parhament, and creasingly prevalent. in modern Russian history. legal for the first time pohtics became for a free man was no longer Thus, the sole path to self-fulfillment action. It became possible for the less pure reason or revolutionary to adapt to the real world. Under intellectuals alienated the impact to have doubts about their of these changes the intelhgentsia began of their apartness. and the necessity By 1909, with self-righteousness this crisis of identity was thrust into the of Vekhi, the self-critique exiles, such as that open. By 1914 bands of die-hard intelligentsia around Lenin, were becoming anachronistic. increasingly grouped At the same time this diversification of society created an un in motion crisis for the government, for it set the masses precedented to bureaucrats in ways unpredictable trained under the old order. The still vital remnants of the radical intelhgentsia, however, who for decades had been reflecting on how to foment disorder, were better to cope with the new events. Indeed, this preoccupation prepared tactics was among the principal with of the "grand contributions sons" who emerged on the scene in the 1890's at the outset of indus to the trialization. and mentality They added httle general principles the "fathers" and the "sons," but they were elaborated by infinitely of accumulated about prac shrewder, with the wisdom experience, tical revolutionary Then in 1917, when the fortunes of the pohtics. seemed at their lowest ebb, war knocked apart Russia's intelhgentsia at last got its new old regime. The radical intelhgentsia expiring on which the most hardheaded, tactics-conscious Pugachevshchina, ones" rode to power. "intelligent this triumph the extraordinary With fortunes of the intelhgentsia as a group came to an end, for in the new it created society which the conditions that had called it into being no longer existed. None re theless, even though the body of the intelhgentsia died, much of the spirit. It has often been noted that the mained ordinary logic in Soviet Russia and that for over has not obtained of revolutions has retreats, no real Thermidor forty years, in spite of temporary come to put an end to ?ie This remark impetus. original ideological on the has not been founded, however, able staying-power continuity of the nucleus of intelligenty who established the regime, since most at its hands. of them eventually is this continuity Nor perished wholly which supphed by the equally unconventional yet real "new class" has come into being with the Party Rather, the bureaucracy. 457

MARTIN MALIA cohesion of the Soviet regime ismost clearly founded on the primacy, over for all "classes" who have held power in it, of abstract principles a ruthless will in life, and on bending reahty to the tenets of what it to the profane, appears but which, claims is a scientific materialism, as a passionate vision. ideological as vast is a problem How and why all this should be, however, as that of the and as difficult to encompass itself, and intelhgentsia one that can properly be the subject only of a separate study. Nev the there is one remarkable element of continuity between ertheless, and the "new class" of the Party which old "class" of the intelligentsia must be emphasized here. The brutal utilitarian use of the ideologi cal by the Soviets is no more than a sectarian version of the spirit of carried to a nee plus ultra by the the pre-Revolutionary intelligenty as a group, the more In spite of its demise of power. experience is with us still as a force. Its ideal vision, what radical intelhgentsia ever one may think of it, has become, in a debased but potent form, the very fabric of Russian reality.

A Note on the Derivation of the Word "Intelligentsia' idea of where the word "intelligentsia" No one has any documentable came from, but the derivation suggested here seems a plausible one. As has already been indicated, the word intelligentsiia emerged in the 1860's,
just when the lower-class of the

Whereas
foreign

the first foreign language of the gentry was French,

language raznochintsy, trained as they were

raznochintsy

came

to dominate

the movement.

the principal
in the seminar

ies and gymnasia, was Latin, the language of clerical learning (even in Greek Orthodox Russia) and of classical humanism. Indeed, Latin was usually their principal language of higher culture?they were obhged to their knowledge of modern Western speak it in the seminaries?and
languages Turgenev Bazarov, was was who poor. usually an excellent is of humble, For social example, reporter?when origin, in Fathers the wishes and Sons?and young intelligent an im to make

a foreign pression by using phrase, he does so in Latin, whereas the affluent and elegant upper-gentry in their mots family, the Kirsanovs, make French. Thus, Latin was something of a symbol for the cultural identity it is logical to suppose that they took of the raznochintsy. Consequently, a term from their school jargon to designate the value of intellection that
set them apart.

lower-gentry

This
in "-ent"

supposition
are extremely

is reinforced
rare

by the word
and all

intelligent.
are of foreign

Nouns
origin.

ending
Since

in Russian,

intelligent is not an invention of the gentry, it cannot come from the seem ingly hkely French adjective of the same spelling. Besides, the use of this as a substantive is adjective impossible in French, and the gentry knew that a well. On the other hand, since intelligent is unmistakably language product of the plebeian 1860's, it most probably comes from the Latin in the genitive?and adjectival substantive, [vir] intelligens?intelligentis hence is logically related to the quahty of intelligentia. 458