in subsequent Russian history, it is important to consider the first steps on the path of critical questioning that was to lead Russia to form an intelligentsia, a 'new Soviet intelligentsia,' and perhaps something even beyond that in the post-Stalin era.
The Alienation of the Intellectuals
The alienation of the intellectuals in modern Russia was, from the beginning, not so much a matter of conflict between different classes and factions as of conflicting feelings and impulses at work within the same groups and even the same individuals. The conflicts inside these disturbed groups.and individuals were, in a sense, minor compared with the great sense of distance that was felt between those who participated in the conflicts and those who did not; between what came to be called intelligentsiia and meshchanstvo, 'intelligence' and 'philistinism.'
The inner conflict that first created the modern Russian intelligentsia was a personal and moral one within the ruling aristocracy. This fact created a peculiar psychological compulsion for passionate personal engagement in ethical questions, which was to become a key characteristic of the alienated intellectuals.
The personal moral crisis for the ruling aristocrat of Catherine's era was not, in the first instance, created by economic and political privilege but rather by the new style of life within the aristocracy itself: by the vulgar hedonism and imitative Gallomania of their own increasingly profligate lives. Much of this self-hate was sublimated into biting denunciations of foreign forms and customs, which led in turn to an increased, if hyper-sensitive national self-consciousness by the late years of Catherine's reign.
But there was also much introspection and self-criticism. Russians ex-
pressed distress that 'the wworship of Minerva was so often followed by the feasts of Bacchus,' and soought to discover how the wisdom of Minerva might be applied to problersms of practical conduct. Still, however, the need was felt for some external 1 source of their perversion; and one was soon found in the symbolic figure» of Voltaire, who was said to have 'made animal life the sole aim of man.'a'54 Voltairianism came to be viewed as a force leading into self-indulgent ii immorality.
As was so often to I be the case subsequently, thoughtful Russians tended to unite around whaat they rejected rather than what they accepted. A convenient object for thliis collective hatred was provided by Theodore Henri Chudi, the principal ft foreign agent of the Francophile Shuvalov family and a major vehicle for the s importation of French culture into Russia.
Chudi was one of the : more odious sycophants in the Russian imperial entourage. He was a Swiss 5 actor who had first come to Russia as a minor figure in the new imperial t‹ theater. After adopting a more impressive name (Chevalier de Lussy) and ; a synthetic French noble ancestry, he made a successful career at court asis a gigolo and glorified gossip columnist-editing the first French-language jcjournal on Russian soil, he ??????? litteraire. On its pages, he frankly adimitted that he would be 'lost without frivolity.'
I am French, one wouuld expect it, the frivolity of my work announces a man of my nation. To this first quality, I could add the title of Cosmopolitan.65
Under such unfortunate auaspices was introduced the term 'cosmopolitan,' which became a classic tersrm of invective in Imperial and Soviet Russia alike. Sensuality, superficialklity, and cosmopolitanism were interrelated sins -all equated with the viruus of Voltaire and with bearers of the infection like Chudi.
The first dim outlines ? of a deeper moral reaction to Voltairianism was evidenced in the theater: tithe central ideological arena of Catherine's era. The importance of the emerrging Russian theater derived not solely from the sheer numbers of the playys, operas, ballets, and pantomimes that were written and performed-inncluding those of the imperial playwright and patron herself. Its importanace lay in the fact that in a world where the court life of the aristocracy had b become stylized and theatrical, the impersonal, formal theater tended to boecome by ironic transposition the only public arena in which the deeper ? concerns of the aristocracy could be dealt with in poUte society.
The alienation of the «intellectuals in many ways begins with the growing antagonism of serious playwrights toward the increasingly frivolous, largely musical theater of CCatherine's later years. A typical comic opera of
the 1780's, hove Is Cleverer than Eloquence, made fun of professors, philosophers, and enlightenment generally, ending with the chorus:
However people deceive, However reason jokes,
Truth proclaims to everyone:
Love will out-deceive you all.
Catherine forced the entire Holy Synod to sit through another, Le Philosophe ridicule; and her own profligacy was extolled in The New Family Group, which ended with a chorus to happiness at last freed from 'either longing or monotony':
As you wish, so shall you live We will never interfere .. .Be
One sees the beginning of the reaction in Alexander Sumarokov, the director of the St. Petersburg theater, whose tragedies, comedies, and opera libretti provided the mainstay of the repertoire throughout the eighteenth century. Though always operating within the framework of secular enlightenment, Sumarokov tried to lead Russian taste back from hedonistic Voltairianism to Fenelon, Racine, and the Stoic philosophers of antiquity.
He gave Russian tragedy a disciplined fidelity to the classical unities of time and place and at the same time a bias for instructive moralistic themes. The aim of tragedy was 'to lead men to good deeds,' 'to cleanse passion through reason.'57 His short sketches and fables also sought to edify, and his writings did more than those of any other single figure of the age to provide Russian aristocratic thinkers with a new lexicon of abstract moral terminology. Far less religious than a natural scientist like Lomonosov, this natural philosopher attached the supreme value to reason, duty, and the common good. Even when writing 'spiritual odes,' he was calling for a new secular morality of aristocratic self-discipline.
To some extent, Sumarokov's ideal was that of 'the immortal Fenelon' in Telemaque: vaincre les passions. This pseudo-classical poem was the first French work to become a smash literary hit in Russia. It was translated several times, and inspired a Russian continuation: the Tilemakhida of Tred'iakovsky-just as the Telemaque had been offered by Fenelon as a kind of continuation of Homer's Odyssey.
The search for links with the classical world led Sumarokov and other philosophically inclined Russian aristocrats to Stoic philosophy. The play that had been staged in Kiev in 1744 on the occasion of Elizabeth's pilgrimage to the Monastery of the Caves was The Piety of Marcus
Aurelius.68 The vanquished villain in the play was Anger, just as it was invariably passions like self-seeking and carnal love in the plays of Sumarokov. Falconet's statue of Peter was originally modeled on the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, and was popularly referred to as Marcus Aurelius; Fonvizin's translation of the contemporary Elegy of Marcus Aurelius appeared in 1771; and La Harpe cited Marcus Aurelius as a model for all kings in his
