Abstract
This paper investigates the multifaceted universe of Russian intelligentsia and addresses the following, troubling, questions: What caused pro-democratic political dissent to weaken among the intelligentsia in the aftermath of perestrojka? Why has the young generation of Russian public intellectuals undergone a radical metamorphosis of their value system and plunged into political passivity and conformism? Freedom has historically been a prima facie value for the Russian liberal intelligentsia. By the mid-1990s, however, much of the intelligentsia came to be associated not with advocacy of individual liberty and human rights but with the failure of liberal democracy in Russia. This paper focuses on how the generation of the 1960s liberal intelligentsia, or shestidesjatniki, who played an active role during perestrojka, gave way to a generation of the “sons,” who, characterized as Western-style intellectuals, became spin doctors and political technologists, replacing the original ideals and high moral stance of their predecessors with nihilistic nonchalance. It is argued that the demise of dissent in post-Soviet Russia derives from the younger generation of intellectuals’ view of the attainment of political power by the generation of shestidesjatniki during perestrojka and the first El’tsin term as the latter’s moral fall and abandonment of the intelligentsia’s traditional role as an outside critic of the state.
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Notes
Julien Benda cited in Kuzman (2002, p. 65).
The translation is mine.
On the waning role of intellectuals in the public sphere, see Furedi (2004).
Andrei Nemzer cited in Voronkov (2005, p. 173).
Kagarlitky cited in Petro (1991, p. 111).
See Zaslavskaia (1988).
Vladimir Pastukhov, cited in Kagarlitsky (2002, p. 51).
The Democratic Union Program, Archive of the Democratic Union, 1989, [http://www.ds.ru/oldprog.htm].
Declaration of the Democratic Union of Russia, December 19, 1993, [ http://www.ds.ru/ust.htm].
The first contested election in many years to the Congress of People’s Deputies was an event of a truly historical significance. See Sheinis (2003, pp. 31–44).
For an excellent analysis of this crisis, see Huskey (2001).
Buildings belonging to the CPSU became property of the new democratic government. For example, the buildings of the Vysshaia Partiinaia Shkola were given to the Russian State University for the Humanities where one of the reformers, Iurii Afanas’ev, was the dean, and a palace of the Vysshaia Partiinaya Shkola was given to the International University of Gavriil Popov, another radical democrat.
Popov (2003). The article appeared in commemoration of a 10-year anniversary of the shelling of the White House.
See Memetov (1996).
Many scientists went into business and utilized their know-how in the private sector. Thus, once unpromising biologist Mikhail Iur’ev abandoned genetics to become an entrepreneur and one of the richest men in Russia. Iur’ev is the author of a notorious article “Fortress Russia” where he advocates complete isolationism (autarchy) of Russia and warring anti-westernism. Iur’ev ([2004] 2005).
Contributing authors to Inoe were Sergei Kurginian, Andrei Fadin, Vadim Tsymburskii, Mikhail Gefter, Teodor Shanin, Aleksandr Panarin, Simon Kordonskii, Vladimir Makhnach, and Petr Shedrovitskii. See Sergei Chernyshev, ed., Inoe, Moskva, 1995.
Vladimir Putin, 1999 policy manifesto “Russia at the Turn of the Millenium,” January 1, 2000, [http://www.pravitelstvo.gov.ru].
Surkov (2006).
Pavlovskii cited in Kagarlitsky (2002, pp. 126–128).
Novaia Iunost’, Vol. 34, No. 1, 1999, p. 4.
Pavlovskii (2005).
Lev Trotskii, cited in Sabov (2001, p. 5).
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Acknowledgements
This article draws on a paper that was presented at the 7th Aleksanteri Conference, on 30 November, 2007 (Helsinki, Finland) which is based on earlier research at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (University of Geneva, Switzerland). I would like to thank the Académie Suisse des sciences humaines et sociales (Bern, Switzerland) for the travel grant that made my attendance at the Aleksanteri Conference possible. I am also very grateful to Dr. André Liebich for all his invaluable comments throughout this project.
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Peunova, M. From dissidents to collaborators: the resurgence and demise of the Russian critical intelligentsia since 1985. Stud East Eur Thought 60, 231–250 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9057-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-008-9057-8