Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity

Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity
Author: Svetlana Klimova
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-09-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9004440623

This monograph considers the problem of the Russian intelligentsia’s self-identification in its historic-philosophical aspect and compares the spiritual and biographical opposition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in the 19th and 20th century.

Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity

Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity
Author: Svetlana Klimova
Publisher: Value Inquiry Book
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9789004440609

Russian Intelligentsia in Search of an Identity considers the problem of the Russian intelligentsia's self-identification in its historic-philosophical and historic-cultural aspects. The monograph traces the rise of the intelligentsia, from the 18th century to the present day, problematizing its central ideas and themes. In this historical context, it proceeds to investigate the distinctive intellectual, spiritual and biographical opposition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in relation to the character and fate of the Russian intelligentsia, with its patterns of thought, ideology, fundamental values and behavioral models. Special attention is given to the binary patterns of the intelligentsia's consciousness, as opposed to dialogical and holistic modes of apprehension.

Dead Again

Dead Again
Author: Masha Gessen
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1997-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781859841471

The author examines "the ways in which intellectuals are finding an identity in the new Russia."--Cover.

Russia in Search of Itself

Russia in Search of Itself
Author: James H. Billington
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2004-03-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0801879760

Billington describes the contentious discussion occurring all over Russia and across the political spectrum. He finds conflicts raging among individuals as much as between organized groups and finds a deep underlying tension between the Russians' attempts to legitimize their new, nominally democratic identity, and their efforts to craft a new version of their old authoritarian tradition. After showing how the problem of Russian identity was framed in the past, Billington asks whether Russians will now look more to the West for a place in the common European home, or to the East for a new, Eurasian identity.

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia

Ayn Rand and the Russian Intelligentsia
Author: Derek Offord
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2022-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350283932

This book examines the writings of the American novelist Ayn Rand, especially The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), which Rand considered her definitive statement about the need for an unregulated free market in which superior humans could fully realize themselves by living for no-one but themselves. It explores Rand's conception of American identity, which exalted individualism and capitalism, and her solution for saving the modern American nation, which she believed was losing the spirit of its 18th- and 19th-century founders and frontiersmen, having been degraded morally and economically by the rampant socialism of the mid-20th-century world. Derek Offord crucially goes on to analyse how Rand's writings functioned as a vehicle in which she, a Russian-Jewish writer born in St Petersburg in 1905, engaged with ideas that had long animated the Russian intelligentsia. Her conception of human nature and of a utopian community capable of satisfying its needs; her reversal of conventional valuations of self-sacrifice and selfishness; her division of humans into an extraordinary minority and the ordinary mass; her comparison of competing civilizations – in all these areas, Offord argues that Rand drew on Russian debates and transposed them to a different context. Even the type of novel she writes, the novel of ideas, is informed by the polemical methods and habits of the Russian intelligentsia. The book concludes that her search for a brave new world continues to have topicality in the 21st century, with its populist critiques of liberal democracies and acrimonious debates about countries' moral, social, and economic priorities and their identities, inequalities, and social tensions.

Social Identity in Imperial Russia

Social Identity in Imperial Russia
Author: Elise Kimerling Wirtschafter
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 1997-10-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501757571

A broad, panoramic view of Russian imperial society from the era of Peter the Great to the revolution of 1917, Wirtschafter's study sets forth a challenging interpretation of one of the world's most powerful and enduring monarchies. A sophisticated synthesis that combines extensive reading of recent scholarship with archival research, it focuses on the interplay of Russia's key social groups with one another and the state. The result is a highly original history of Russian society that illuminates the relationships between state building, large-scale social structures, and everyday life. Beginning with an overview of imperial Russia's legal and institutional structures, Wirschafter analyzes the "ruling" classes, and service elites (the land-owning nobility, the civil and military servicemen, the clergy) and then examines the middle groups (the raznochintsy, the commercial-industrial elites, the professionals, the intelligentsia) before turning to the peasants, townspeople, and factory workers. Wirtschafter argues that those very social, political, and legal relationships that have long been viewed as sources of conflict and crisis in fact helped to promote integration and foster the stability that ensured imperial Russia's survival.

The Russian Intelligentsia

The Russian Intelligentsia
Author: Christopher Read
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 557
Release: 2024-02-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350035408

The Russian Intelligentsia is the first single-volume history of a small but tremendously influential group of Russian intellectuals who achieved world renown in a variety of spheres. While previous accounts have addressed the history of individuals within this collective, Christopher Read offers the first explanation of the intelligentsia as a group. Read traces the vast debates that broke out between, and within, a multitude of intellectual factions, and contextualizes the ideas of the group within the framework of cultural, social, political, and economic development from the late 18th century to the present day. This comprehensive yet accessible account demonstrates how the Russian intelligentsia morphed from one incarnation to the next, and effectively situates this change and continuity within a pan-European context. It considers the role of the intelligentsia throughout its origins, its transformation during the Russian Revolution, and since the collapse of communism, and highlights the beliefs of key figures such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Pavlov, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Mikhail Gorbachev. In doing so, Read provides an essential guide to a fascinating aspect of Russia's social and cultural history.

Metamorphoses in Russian Modernism

Metamorphoses in Russian Modernism
Author: Peter I. Barta
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9789639116917

Examines metamorphoses in the works of prominent representatives of the divided Russian intelligentsia: the Symbolists; the most famous emigre writer, Nabokov; Olesha, the 'fellow traveller' attempting to find his place in the Soviet state; the enthusiastic poet of the Bolshevik movement, Mayakovsky; and finally, Russia's greatest film director, Sergei Eisenstein. It is futile to try to understand Russian civilisation let alone predict its future without considering the intellectual, social and emotional reasons why it is not at rest with itself. It is to this end that this volume hopes to make a contribution.

The Myth of the Russian Intelligentsia

The Myth of the Russian Intelligentsia
Author: Inna Kochetkova
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2009-12-22
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1135181810

This book examines the phenomenon of the Russian intelligentsia as a cultural story or myth; it focuses on one of the most important and influential groups of Russian intellectuals – the 1960s generation or ‘Sixtiers’ – who devoted their lives to defending ‘socialism with a human face’, authored Perestroika, and were subsequently demonized when the reforms failed.

Post-Soviet Literature and the Search for a Russian Identity

Post-Soviet Literature and the Search for a Russian Identity
Author: Boris Noordenbos
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2016-06-09
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137593636

This book examines a wide range of contemporary Russian writers whose work, after the demise of Communism, became more authoritative in debates on Russia’s character, destiny, and place in the world. Unique in his in-depth analysis of both playful postmodernist authors and fanatical nationalist writers, Noordenbos pays attention to not only the acute social and political implications of contemporary Russian literature but also literary form by documenting the decline of postmodern styles, analyzing shifting metaphors for a “Russian identity crisis,” and tracing the emergence of new forms of authorial ethos. To achieve this end, the book builds on theories of postcoloniality, trauma, and conspiracy thinking, and makes these research fields productively available for post-Soviet studies.