natureofthe AlexanarTan reforms-above all their purely formal emancipation of the peasantry, whose actual lot may in fact have worsened-seemed a perfect illustration to the extremist generation of what to expect from
liberal reformers.
In addition to encouraging political extremism, the nihilism of the sixties virtululy'promuted tliejewru^a^ew^orthodoxy the new analytic and reaTistjg^approach in science and literature, frose replaced poerry^aV^fe main vehicle of literaryexpression (a change whicrTPetrasnevsky had called indisp^n^abTeTm- flfiSiianprogress at the last meeting of his ill-fated circle in 1849). There was a sudden passion for meticulously realistic presentations of scenes and problems from everyday life. A decade of strident insistenceoTrTnesocial responsibility of the artist-from Chernyshevsky's
??? 1U tiHV/ SHORES
Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality in 1855 to Pisarev's Destruction ? Aesthetics in 1865-resulted injhe establishment of a kind of 'censorship of the left' alongside tW 'f fhp tsaiigj ??';??. Subtly_bu,t effectively the realistic story and
plays of the aristocratic century as the major literary milieu of the new culture in St. Petersburg. Buckle's History of Civilization in England, with its attempts to explain cultures by climate, geography, and diet, was extraordinarily popular; and the beginnings of jLourely materialist_Russian school of physiology can be traced to the publication in 1863 jjQvan
Sechem^TteJleTeeYTSfThiri^^ the lead of Claude Bernard
(whose detailed descriptive study of the human heart was written while Sechenov was studying under him in Paris), Sechenov attempted to make a purely physiological study of the brain. He piovid^dJhjsJa amp;s for the famed
Pavlovian theory of conditioned_?eJex^jwu1^1iis_ia^?njtiQn that all move
ments traditionaflyjiescnb_eil^jfjalmitar^^^material
reflexes in the strictest sense of Jh^jvord34
J ~~B^^^E^^_mQSLla^^JSS^SL^^^Bs was tne emergence of
P
tfae intelligentsia as a self-conscious and distinct sociaTgroup and*'ffs~crea-~ tion of the ?^~35??^?^^^? ^^??^?1?1??^????^? ideaTn'aTa'haIP hidd^nhigher intelligence rules the world was, as we have seen, a common-* place of higher order Masonry; and Schwarz had actually introduced /'Various forms of the Latin intelligentia and intellectus into the Russian language in this exalted sense in the early 1780's. The Pocket Dictionary of the Petrashevtsy added the word 'intellectual' (intellektual'ny) to the Russian vocabulary, suggesting that it had the all-embracing meaning of the Russian word for 'spiritual' (dukhovny). This lofty conception of the ruling force of intelligence and the intellect was given a distinctly historical cast by Pisarev in his insistence that 'the moving force of history is intelligentsia, the path of history is marked out by the level of theoretical development of intelligentsia.'35
??? alsoi~a~specific group elt a certain sense of
But_the striking new feature about the use of the term 'intelligentsia'^ in the sixtie^jsjhatitjr^mtjuit^ of^pEopfeTThis grouowas essentially those who
unity-through^fietiation becaaSe~5T^e»-^ti^ation in the iconoclasm of
the slxtleirTlteT^sl^^a liaTa'*'g7T~ac-
cented on the last syllable, and conceived as a member of this intelligentsiia) was used by the novelist Boborykin to describe his own sense of estrangement from the petty concerns of provincial life after returning to Nizhny Novgorod from Tartu, the freest university in the Russian empire in the 1850's. One of ^h5_reasonsJo?th ?j;HejQa^ojnofthe intelligentsia frornjhe ordinary folk of Russia was revealed in the verb that was derived from the
name of this_prolific writer: boborykat' ('to talk endlessly^). But the_eyer-
prophetic Herzen ????????????????^alienation
and jjjg_gyCTJLUal fate of thTmtelligentsia in the pages of the Be?TSjulyL 1864. Having been long since rejected by the young generation, Herzen characterizes them as
. . . non-people^ne;^od}_:_._^Jntell^entsia _. ._. democratic Jojds (shliakhta'commanders, and teachers . . . you ????? nothingr.'. . You have not yet thought about what Holsteln-Arakcheev, PeIelib~u'r^-TsarrsT^erS5c- racy means, soon^ you will feel that it means a redIcaj^jgnj^etrine cudgel. You shall be destroyed lrOhe abysTT'TTandjjgcm _your_grave. . . . there will look on, facing each other: from above a bodyguard the EmperoT^rSseainjjflnsiffo'wers ^????^???????^??^^^^ the worfdT and from below^Jhe^^ojlingj^fenjcjflus- ^^eaLof^ the peo?le_ in which^yoSTsBaTl'vanish without a trace.36
Thus the intelligentsia are the leaders of the coming democracy who are destined to be devoured by it. They are alienated both from the ordinary people and from all the 'self-willed' political authorities of the present, transitory world of repression.
The intelligentsia are not self-willed because they are dedicated men, as Shelgunov-a leading participant in the ferment of the sixties-stresses in his almost simultaneous article of May, 1864.
The intelligentsia of the XVIII century was purely bourgeois. . . . Only the intelligentsia of the XIX century, schooled in generalization, has posed as the aim of all its efforts the happiness of all . . . equality.37
That whichdeepened and intensified the sense of common dedications, within this aUenateo^iielllgeuiSTa- trasjtS growing belief that progress'was~an,‹‹l ????????????????. Following Pisarev's articles in 1865 on 'The Historical Ideas of Auguste Comte' and several serialized works of the late sixties, such as Mikhailovsky's 'What is Progress?' and Lavrov's Historical Letters, the nascent intelligentsia can be said to have found new encouragement and umty in the broad vision' oFprogress presented by Auguste ColmteT* Comte's idea that all of human activity moved' from theologythrough meta-phy'siCs~fo''a positive~or scientiHC stage encouraged them to believe that all sociaT problems would SQonJbfi resolved by the last and most promising of the positive sciences--the science of society^ Thus, the appeal which Comte haU^HdresseaTn'vain to Nicholas I to overleap the West by adopting his new 'religion of humanity' elicited, in effect, a belated response a decade later from the alienated intelligentsia. They were excited by his appeal for a new aristocracy of talent rather than privilege, which would hasten the in-
