Whither the Intellisentsia?

These days it is becoming ever more common in our endless discussion on culture to hear that the social type known as the "Russian intelligentsia" is historically doomed.


It has long since become a commonplace, banal, to say that the very word "intelligentsia" cannot be translated from Russian into any other language. More exactly, it cannot be transplanted to any other socio-cultural soil. It has become just as banal to affirm that the basic difference between the Russian "intelligent" and the Western, European or American intellectual lies in his attitude towards his role in society, towards his own definition of his historical and social function. Whereas the Western intellectual, as we Russians think, confines his mission to the preservation and accumulation of civil and cultural values, we raise that mission to the level of messianism, and consider ourselves first and foremost the bearers, guardians and propagator's of moral values.


This is felt in full measure -- and used to be even more marked -- in literature. We have a tendency to use this to explain the greatness of the Russian 19th century classics, from Pushkin to Chekhov, but first and foremost, of course, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. The Russian tradition of preaching and teaching created the Russian literary genius; this is accepted without question by most people.


In most recent times, against the backdrop of the enormous changes connected not just with the collapse of the communist order, but also with the breakup of the last great empire, a new attitude towards this paradigm has arisen, which has already become widely known. The inferiority complex which is in large part characteristic of Russo-Soviet psychology and which has intensified with its crash, has among many other manifestations shown itself in a change of the value sign attached to the above difference.


So now one hears more and more often: enough messianism, enough teaching, it is enough to appeal to the consciences of our fellow countrymen! It is time to stop being intelligentsia, that is, arrogant high priests of national ethics, combining the roles of clergyman, political agitator and moralizing storyteller. It is time to become honest intellectuals, that is, highly educated and professional workers, who know their business and do it well. Culture, science, the organization of a civilized way of life and aesthetic leisure -- these are worthy pursuits for an intellectual.


We rather categorically affirm all of this, basing our certitude on indisputable things, or things seeming indisputable in our country today, such as the inevitability of transition to a free-market economy and a pluralistic society and, more broadly, the inevitability of entering "world civilization".


I think there are two factors operating here: an inadequate level of information about that same "world civilization", in any case as it exists today, and our eternal inclination to forcibly change our own nature.


Lets begin with information. Does there really exist in the West that type of cold intellectual, occupied only with his own profession, which we have set as an example for ourselves? I think that after the '60s this character has changed quite a bit, if not disappeared altogether. Was it cold professionals who made the youth, radical-left, racial-ethnic, ecological, feminist, sexual and other revolutions? Revolutions which, if they were not crowned with a direct seizure of power, at least, it seems to me, did not meet with defeat -- they changed the face of Western society in the last quarter century.


Was it intellectuals, aesthetes and technocrats indifferent to their social mission who have in recent years established in American and European university circles a type of new spiritual establishment -- with strong shades of pacifism, social democracy, feminism and all other egalitarian nuances? Is it simply hirelings of intellectual labor who constitute the core of all protest groups and movements? No, today the cultured, highly educated part of that same Western society deserves the high honor -- if honor it be -- of calling itself the intelligentsia in the old Russian sense of that word, with all of the corresponding reproaches. After all, we hear more and more often in our country now the well known accusation: It was the Russian intelligentsia that hastened the Bolshevik revolution.


As for our tendency to experiment with transforming our nature, it shows up clearly in the discussion described. We rail against proselytism and messianism with all the zeal of proselytizers and messiahs. It never occurs to us that the sign of a free society is the freedom of all its groups to follow their own traditional paths or to change them naturally, on an individual level. In a free society traditions are stable in the cultural and intellectual spheres first of all, which in no way hampers the dynamic renewal of the pragmatic side of life. The mutual exchange and penetration of ideas only strengthens and stimulates the preservation of a national tradition.


It seems to me today that, in spite of all of the terrible zigzags, we are moving toward a free society. and we should not forcibly shove our way into "world civilization", of which, I think, we never ceased to be a part -- we must diligently preserve our place in it. If this place is marked by, among other distinctions, the uniqueness of our intelligentsia, which has had an influence on the image of the world intellectual elite, then this is not our worst distinguishing feature. Just so long as the sermon does not become propaganda, just so long as the messiah does not aspire to the role of political leader.


Alexander Kabakov is an author and journalist who writes for Moscow News.