Intelligentsia Like a Challenge: the Identity of the Russian Intelligentsia in the 21st Century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the problem of the Russian intelligentsia identity formation in the 21st century. The authors trace a historical path that the Russian intelligentsia has gone through. Russian philosophers of the 20th century rated this path as tragic, noting that the intelligentsia itself wrote its own history, having captured it in great cultural texts well known in Russia and in the world. The need to understand oneself, one’s purpose, to understand the peculiarity of the situation in Russia and the world is an expression of the intelligentsia’s self-consciousness. Cultural memory, allowing the intelligentsia to maintain its own integrity, plays a leading role in shaping the identity of the intelligentsia. It allows for its own integrity to be maintained. The Russian intelligentsia is a socio-cultural type, including the complex mix of ideas and values which has been shaped since the end of the 18th century in difficult historical conditions. From the beginning, the intelligentsia tried to solve the problem of Russian modernization through enlightening, initiating social changes and participating in them. The Russian intelligentsia formed a special character - psychological traits and behavior, opposite to the type of European intellectuals. Until now, the Russian intelligentsia argues about itself, becoming sometimes closer to European intellectuals, but affirming sometimes its singularity. Nevertheless, in modern Russia there is a widespread perception that the intelligentsia is being replaced by a class of intellectuals - professionals, experts, and public intellectuals which strive to influence the formation of public discourse and the discourse of power. In the course of post-Soviet transformations, the intelligentsia began to lose not only the role of public and political actor, but also the role of the moral elite. The consequences of this process are destructive for younger generations and society as a whole. The study conducted by the authors of the article shows that the discourse of intelligentsia is changing as well as the discourse about it, although the intelligentsia is being constructed in a process of permanent dispute about the past, present and future of Russia. At the same time, intellectual identity is being formed in this dispute. So, it would be wrong to perceive the Russian intelligentsia as an unchanging phenomenon. Its openness to cultural and social changes allows us to talk about the formation of the intelligentsia of the 21st century. The study also reveals that the attitudes towards the intelligentsia expressed by the young generation of educated Russians living in an open, global world, are changing. The new vision of the intelligentsia is similar to its European perception as an intellectual elite. At the same time, a desire of young Russians to turn to the values historically constituting the moral code of the Russian intelligentsia, is observed. Thus, it cannot be said that the intelligentsia has disappeared from Russian public life; instead, the intelligentsia identity is a cultural challenge for the younger generation of modern Russians.