Previously in class we discussed a rise in the intelligentsia of the Slavophiles and Westernizers. In the Saunders reading for today we are presented with the intelligentsia again but a much more radical one. The previous radical intelligentsia, the slavophiles and the westernizers, share a fair amount of similarities to the intelligentsia of today’s reading. They both were deeply discontent with their society and sought to change it and they were both fairly ineffectual at it. The similarities end there however. The new radical intelligentsia did not debate the questions of westernizers or slavophiles but of socialism, statism, and terrorism. Despite their drastic change in ideology and occasionally successful act of terrorism the intelligentsia of the 1860s and onwards managed to accomplish nothing at best and at worst set Russia back in the case of reforms according to Saunders. They found themselves in the same situation as the previous intelligentsia and the Decembrists. Why did the new intelligentsia fail like their predecessors despite being much more similar to the actually successful revolutionaries of the Bolshevik party?
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I would characterize their failure as being related to a lack of military support. I’d say one of the major achievements of the Bolshevik revolutionaries was attracting disillusioned soldiers to their cause. This built them as not only a intellectual, but also a military organization.
I would not say that the radicals of the 1860s-70s failed, rather, they set the intellectual groundwork for the Russian Revolution. For instance, Trotsky in his early years was a Narodnost, and Lenin’s brother was executed due to the fact that he was a member of “The People’s Will”. Some have even claimed that Lenin was more influenced by Chernyshevsky’s “What is to be Done?” than the writings of Karl Marx himself.
I think Saunders answers this question in the chapter conclusion:
“They were relatively few in number, had few means of addressing themselves to large audiences… devoted most of their time to discussing abstractions, never dreamed of running the risks taken by the Decembrists, and weakened themselves by internal dissension”.
The very small number of these intelligentsia and the fact that they for the most part had no formal military training made it hard for them to even get a foot in the door. The Decemberist’s knew that they had the support of the people, but this new breed of intelligentsia went into it without getting their message across a wide enough area to allow them to guarantee a secure grasp on power. Their small numbers, coupled with the divisions already forming within their own movement made for a difficult situation.
Oddly enough, this is mirrored even further now, with the techno-intelligentsia. The bloggers and the like, or bands such as Pussy Riot or the bridge-defacers who upload their acts so the world can see, sre dissatisfied with the way things are but aren’t able to shift things all that much in the grand scale.