In understanding the future of the Russian Intelligentsia, it is important to trace its origins and the height of its influence in the nineteen and twentieth century. Unlike the early European men of letters, who were independently engaged professionally in disseminating ideas, early Russian intelligentsia was a phenomenally single-minded class of people frustrated with the notion of being born in Russia. As Pushkin wrote: "it was the devil himself who had me born, intelligent and talented, in Russia". Pushkin, like many other intellectuals of his day, struggled under the constant stress of the national pride and Russian identity. He romanticized Russian traditions and reinvented folk customs in his writings to justify the value of the Russian soul. Such struggle with embracing the Russian origins led Russian intellectuals to form a social group that shared a unique social identity.
This group originally emerged from the dissident members of the nobility, such as Radischchev (one of the first Russian authors to criticize socio-economic conditions in Russia at the time of Catherine the Great, which earned him an exile to Siberia). The group grew and solidified in the later years to criticize the inhumanities of serfdom and to oppose the fundamental iniquities and barbarities of tsarism. Scientists, painters, authors, professionals, teachers and lawyers in particular, represented the critical Russian intelligentsia. The intensity of their criticism evolved over time from subtle remarks of Turgenev in the “Fathers and Sons” and reproduction of the pain and suffering of the lower society by Repin in his painting “The Barge Haulers”, to the stern sermons of Tolstoy, followed by fervent anti tsar movement of the emotionally committed Decembrists, to a final militant action of Lenin that ultimately lead to political violence and assassination of the tsar and his government officials.
Ironically, the new Bolshevik government had an intolerant policy against the articulate, intellectual criticism. It began enforcing such policy by suppressing newspapers (initially as a temporary measure that later became permanent). Lenin considered the Constitutional Democrats the center of a conspiracy against the Bolshevik rule and, soon after the October revolution, began mass arrests of professors and scientists, deporting the very Socialist Revolutionaries in an attempt to eliminate Russia’s past in order to build the future on a clean slate. This new policy quickly alienated a large number of the intellectuals who had originally supported the overthrow of the tsarist order. The suppression of democracy resulted in a strong opposition from academics and artists, who felt betrayed in their beliefs that revolution would bring a free society. Many Russian intellectuals emigrated shortly after the revolution, publishing attacks on the new government from abroad. This resulted in government denying any further exit permits to artists and other creative minds, who wished to leave Russia. Lenin saw the old Russian intelligentsia as a rival to his party’s goal to bring revolutionary consciousness to the working class. In his view, intellectuals generally came from nobility and served bourgeois interests, unfit for the communist society. This notion was carried out by the communist party by persecution of intellectuals throughout the Soviet period, reaching the height of its limits under Joseph Stalin.
Stalin tightened the reigns of the government, making controlled decisions at the top party levels, with little, if any, input from below. Thereby, the communist party formed its own elite class, which determined the state objectives and carried them out in dictatorial isolation. The government inflicted a police terror upon the population, resulting in million casualties of innocent people. The secret police efforts were especially concentrated on the members of the old Russian intelligentsia, whose creative efforts were strictly censored, deporting many to Siberia.
During the World War II, members of the Russian intelligentsia, who fought to defeat Hitler, returned home as veterans to confront the repression of the Stalinist society. As a result, a new generation of intellectuals was born that resembled the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia. This new group was ignited by the Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalinism in 1956.
In the early 1970s and late 1980s, the soviet government temporarily opened its borders to those wishing to leave and, not surprisingly, many disenchanted Russian intellectuals immigrated to the countries with democratic governments. Those, who stayed behind, pursued their dream of a democratic socialist society, devoting their lives to defending ‘socialism with a human face’ and ultimately contributing to the political disintegration of the communist regime under the Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika program. By then, it was too late to hold the soviet society together. Interestingly, after the fall of the Soviet Union, many members of the Russian intelligentsia have forsaken their commitment to democracy to support Boris Yeltsin, who introduced militant action and economic reforms which impoverished a large part of Russia.
And now, with Putin in charge of the Russian government, it remains unclear whether the Russian intelligentsia will rise again to pursue their dream of democracy in Russia. The traditions of the Russian intelligentsia are dying out. It almost seems as though it is no longer fashionable in Russian to take an active part in the opposition movement. They are also not embracing the traditions of the Western intellectuals in keeping their distance from authorities and the government. Rather, the new Russian intelligentsia is embracing the authorities, leaning on them for success. As an incentive for their support, the United Russia party has given party membership cards to famous actors and musicians. It may very well be that the Russian intelligentsia no longer considers it an option to criticize, especially when any criticism or opposition is likely to be suppressed with an iron hand.
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