Intellectual Culture: The End of Russian Intelligentsia

Authors

Dmitri N. Shalin, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Editors

Dmitri N. Shalin

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

First page number:

1

Last page number:

68

Abstract

No group cheered louder for Soviet reform, had a bigger stake in perestroika, and suffered more in its aftermath than did the Russian intelligentsia. Today, nearly a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his plan to reform Soviet society, the mood among Russian intellectuals is decidedly gloomy. "The intelligentsia has carried perestroika on its shoulders," laments Ury Shchekochikhin, "so why does it feel so forlorn, superfluous, forgotten"? G. Ivanitsky warns that the intellectual strata "has become so thin that in three or four years the current genocide against the intelligentsia would surely wipe it out." Andrey Bitov, one of the country's finest writers, waxes nostalgically about the Brezhnev era and "the golden years of stagnation when . . . people could do something real, like build homes, publish books, and what not."

Keywords

Intellectuals; Perestroĭka; Political stability; Politics and culture; Russia; Soviet Union

Disciplines

Asian History | Cultural History | European History | Intellectual History | Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures | Political History | Slavic Languages and Societies | Social History

Language

English

Repository Citation

Shalin, D. N. (2012). Intellectual Culture: The End of Russian Intelligentsia. In Dmitri N. Shalin, 1-68.
Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/russian_culture/6