Russian Intelligentsia in the Age of Counterperestroika

Political Agendas, Rhetorical Strategies, Personal Choices

Dmitri N. Shalin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000020700
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book examines the phenomenon of intelligentsia as political discourse, civic action, and embodied practice, focusing especially on the political agendas and personal choices confronting intellectuals in modern Russia.

Contributors explore the role of the Russian intelligentsia in dismantling the Soviet system and the unanticipated consequences of the resultant changes which threaten the very existence of the intelligentsia as a distinct group. Building on the legacy of John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas, the authors make the case that the intelligentsia plays a critical role in opening communications, widening the range of participants in public discourse, and freeing social intercourse from the constraints nondemocratic political arrangements impose on the communication sphere.

Looking at current trends through a variety of different lenses, this book will be of interest to those studying the past, present, and future of the Russian intelligentsia and its impact not only in Russia, but around the world. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Russian Journal of Communication.

‘Intelligentsia’: the vanished concept and its aftermath

Lev D. Gudkov

1 Preliminary notes

Yuri Levada and his team took a keen interest in the Russian intelligentsia. Their ongoing research was stimulated by the need to identify those forces that can initiate changes in the Soviet system and transform it into a more open and democratic society. In this context, the intelligentsia was reputed to be an elite group capable of articulating new moral and behavioral norms, disseminating them throughout society, and influencing the most receptive social strata. This outlook, consistent with the traditional view of the intelligentsia in Russia, comports with the well-known model of ‘transmitting ideas’ in social and cultural anthropology, as well as with the models of sociocultural change found in the works of Abraham Moles and Norbert Elias’ theory of the ‘civilizing process.’ Empirical sociological studies that we conducted before and during perestroika and its aftermath lent credibility to this approach. Between 1985 and 1990, the consolidation of national elites in republics of the Soviet Union had been facilitated by the flurry of publications in national languages. In Russia, informal public associations spearheaded by scientists, teachers, journalists, writers, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia facilitated a similar transformation.

Public opinion polls, made possible after the founding of VCIOM (the Russian Public Opinion Research Center), demonstrated that the vector of change was directed by the most advanced societal groups – highly educated young residents of major Russian cities demanding institutional reforms, the foremost of which were ending the Communist Party’s monopoly and establishing a market economy. After the collapse of the USSR, the mass support for political reforms of Gaydar’s government, which was led chiefly by academics and political scientists, gave more weight to this interpretation. However, at the end of 1991, doubts as to whether the intelligentsia was really ‘the elite’ arouse, with the doubts increasing through this decade (Gudkov & Dubin, 1991, pp. 97–99). It soon became clear that the ‘intelligentsia,’ or the educated class, finding itself incapable of putting the proclaimed course of reforms into practice, was yielding leadership to the former Communist/Soviet or economic nomenklatura (now operating under a different name).

This forced us to reconsider the interpretation of the intelligentsia as the ‘elite.’ In the standard sociological definition of ‘elite,’ this category is identified as fulfilling three main social functions: symbolic, normative (integration), and goal setting. Each time the issue of ‘true elite’ comes up – whether we talk about aristocrats, patrician bourgeoisie, rational bureaucrats, professional political leaders of parliamentary parties, or other types, attention is directed not only to the values they espouse but also to its member’s ability to cooperate with other groups, strata, and classes. This function of elites presupposes a society with the separation of powers, an independent judicial system, a government operating under rule of law, and human rights. The authority of the elite is grounded in its performance, which is judged to be exemplary (in moral or status/class terms) or efficient in achieving goals (the ‘best’ solutions in business, politics, academia, art, and sports). In other words, the influence of the elite in modern society is based on their function, or the ability to represent symbolically society in its diverse achievements. Education is an important feature of ‘elitism,’ but not the only or decisive feature that sets an ‘elite’ apart. For the intelligentsia, by contrast, the educational achievement is a defining trait.

The semantics of ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘elite’ defer in important respects. To begin with, the concept of intelligentsia presupposes a society that is rigid, amorphous, and passive, that contains an undifferentiated population held together by sovereign authorities, chiefly by the bureaucracy and the police. Change in such a society occurs only at the behest of government and in the interest of the state, i.e. as ‘a revolution from above.’ The intelligentsia’s role in this scheme of things is to enlighten the population and help people articulate their interests, which they are deemed to be incapable of understanding on their own. The intelligentsia’s primary function is to raise awareness of the right or fair organization of the state, which according to this paternalistic outlook is the only agency with the power to order citizens’ lives justly. Endemic to this approach is the notion that change doesn’t come piecemeal, that a complete overhaul of the corrupt and inapt government is required to bring about a just society. This change is to be accomplished by the intelligentsia seizing the initiative from bureaucracy and acting as its antithesis. Thus, the concept of intelligentsia is built on a highly negative attitude toward the state and authority, and it furnishes no apparent means for implementing its lofty mission.

Characteristically, the discourse about intelligentsia bypasses the question of what social interests and classes should drive social change, which intellectual, institutional, or cultural resources the intelligentsia could deploy to ensure that the masses receive and assimilate its ideas. The intelligentsia’s influence is not contingent on its political or social savvy as much as on its capacity to spread ‘enlightenment,’ to increase the overall number of educated people and instill ‘cultured’ habits in the general population. Promoting literacy, enlarging the reading public, increasing attendance in theaters and museums, these are the signs by which the intelligentsia measures its impact on society and gauges the progress toward cultural amelioration.

In and of itself, however, a growth in the number of educated people unaccompanied by structural changes doesn’t bring about the desired results. Indeed, the last 10 years of Putin’s regime revealed the opposite trend: a marked increase in the number of people with higher education diplomas coincided with the strengthening of centralized power and the emergence of a dictatorship unconstrained by checks and balances, unresponsive to society, propped up by the mass culture of urban consumers satisfied with themselves, their lives and their ‘national leader’ whose militaristic policies and imperial rhetoric of ‘Russian revival’ keep the country enthralled. The swelling numbers of such ‘intelligenty’ – Solzhenitsyn called this group obrazovanshchina or educationally half-baked – demanded a certain level of respect, and when this respect failed to materialize, they succumbed to a compensatory traditionalism and anti-Western resentment – a toxic mix which played into Putin’s authoritarianism.

Discussions about the intelligentsia in Russia are cyclical in nature, dying down and flaring up with new force at certain historical junctures. The current interest in this topic is symptomatic: it points to social stagnation, rigid state rule, weakened civil society, and diminishing opportunities for political participation. By the same token, interest in the intelligentsia falls sharply when a repressive system disintegrates.

From a sociological vantage point, the ‘intelligentsia’ is an appellative structure invoked by a group claiming an identity as the national elite. The concept includes firstly the idea of its presumptive mission as an agent of change and secondly the criticism of and opposition to a government bureaucracy unable to carry out the desired changes or resisting undesirable ones. Faith in their mission is a unifying principle that attracts well-educated people who tout their social and moral convictions as superior to the official ones. Occupations in which intelligenty are employed – they can be businessmen, merchants, officials, landlords, IT workers, or raznochintsy¹ – have no apparent connection to the vaunted qualities claimed by the intelligentsia.

As an ideological concept, ‘intelligentsia’ is tethered to the myth of modernization in an authoritarian country achieved by moral people with academic knowledge, preoccupied with the ‘fate of the country,’ and capable of discerning a path of national development. Political participation is downplayed here. The struggle centers on the ‘enlightenment’ of the forces vital to the country’s future – ‘the government’ or ‘the people.’ This myth explains several things simultaneously; it articulates the relationship between a country bound for modernization and its counterparts, frames the agenda of the ruling class, explains the nation’s social structure and its internal connections, and it nourishes the hope for a better future by invoking an ideal or proximate model achieved in another, usually ‘European,’ state.

This myth structures the social space and time, providing a framework for the self-definition of educated people who set themselves apart from general population while aspiring for ‘modernity, prosperity, and progress.’ The semantics of ‘intelligentsia’ are not made up of easily discernible characteristics associated with social or professional groups or institutions. The virtual structure of such a collective identity precludes the institutional codification of elite functions and roles. If we begin to apply this concept to institutional relationships and treat the intelligentsia as a social stratum or ‘sotsialynaya prosloyka’ of workers, as it was designated in Soviet textbooks, then we end up with the bureaucracy, a hierarchical social organization subservient to the authorities and fulfilling an easily definable function of perpetuating the system rule. An attempt study the gap between the intelligentsia’s self-appointed role and its actual functions, to examine this ‘ersatz elite’s’ multiple failures, meets resistance from the educated majority anxious to preserve its exulted identity.

2 In search of the ‘elite’

The collapse of the USSR dealt a blow to the status that the intelligentsia had secured in the 1960s–1980s when it oscillated between servility and accommodation to the authorities. Public opinion polls, conducted by the Levada Center since 1988, show that the intelligentsia lost its authority in society with the onset of Yeltsin’s reforms and with it the ability to control the media and influence the government.² Amidst all the social changes following the fall of communism, the disappearance of intelligentsia went largely unnoticed.

Conversations about the Soviet intelligentsia display a fallacy common to retrospective examinations. Characters belonging to a specific time are removed from their historical context and reinterpreted in hindsight from the vantage point of subsequent history (frequently, in light of the group’s demise) and with the benefit of knowledge unavailable to their peers. We need to bear in mind the problematic tendency to judge the intelligentsia as a group based on the actions of a few, with the moral and intellectual achievements of specific individuals credited to the entire group. In the process, the virtual majority is endowed with exceptional qualities and anthropomorphic features such as ‘conscientiousness,’ ‘responsiveness,’ ‘humanity,’ and ‘spirituality.’ The concept of the ‘intelligentsia’ is overloaded with connotations, reflecting the illusions and prejudices of various groups and times. Throughout all the fluctuations in semantics however, the concept of intelligentsia has retained a core set of values associated with ‘reason,’ ‘understanding,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘morals,’ ‘culture,’ and ‘authority’ – characteristics claimed by those who position themselves as members of the ‘intelligentsia’ and ‘people of culture.’ To a large extent, these ideas reflect the epigonic reception of the European Enlightenment and education.³ As such precepts got assimilated, they were simplified and harnessed to the bureaucratic needs of ‘educating the people.’ It was this circumstance, the necessity of acting as intermediaries between the state and the people that created the illusion of ‘intelligentsia’ as a distinct social group.⁴ Try to describe the nineteenth century ‘intelligentsia’ as a social group, and you will end up emptyhanded.

We can separate the problem from its ideological veneer only by considering the position and function of educated groups in Russia in a system of changing institutional frameworks – institutions for the prod...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Communication, democracy, and intelligentsia: an introduction
• 1. ‘Intelligentsia’: the vanished concept and its aftermath
• 2. Intelligentsia, intellectuals, and the social functions of intelligence
• 3. Subjective notes on the objective situation among Russian intellectuals
• 4. The post-intelligentsia and the Russian catastrophe of the twenty-first century
• 5. Russian intelligentsia in the age of counterperestroika
• 6. Intelligentsia exhumed: nationalist trends among contemporary Russian intelligentsia
• 7. Intelligentsia and cynicism: political metamorphoses of postmodernism
• 8. Literature and power in the new age: institutions and divisions
• 9. Reading as a heroic feat: the intelligentsia and uncensored literature
• 10. The intelligentsia and emigration: strategic prospects, unrealized possibilities, and personal risks
• 11. The illusion of freedom: propaganda and the informational swamp
• 12. Intelligentsia and the Gospel according to Mathew
• Index