Breichen Madej

Breichen Madej: The Russian Intelligentsia

How would one go about defining the Russian intelligentsia? Several characteristics which sum up this group are as follows:

they all disagreed with Russia’s social order (they felt as though the social order was unjust, and sympathized with the poor and oppressed people of Russia, particularly the peasantry)
they were very critical of the Russian autocracy (specifically of how the government was handling the problem of the oppressed peasants)
they considered it their duty to speak out and protest for the peasants, and hoped to spark a revolution in which the peasants would fight for their own rights

Looking at the historical events and position of the peasants, we can see that the Russian government was not working effectively, efficiently or fairly, especially concerning the peasants’ position. The serfs were liberated in 1861, and reforms were supposedly taking place – but nothing was changing due to Russia’s outdated and obsolete political system. The peasants’ expectations were not met with their liberation and supposed new reforms.

One of these new reforms on the government’s part was creating zemstvos (established in 1864), which were local administrative groups whose members were elected by landowners, urban groups and peasant communes. Though this idea sounded good in theory, the zemstvos were slow-moving and didn’t initiate any real changes concerning the peasants’ position. These groups were part of the intelligentsia though, and did make educational improvements; just no drastic changes to society.

Though the motives of the intelligentsia were the same (to initiate political and social reform), there were many levels within this group which each took different actions in order to implement their ideas. These levels ranged from bomb-throwing radicals to political members of the zemstvos, as mentioned above.

An example of intelligensia revolutionary groups was the society Land and Freedom (formed in 1876), whose original goal was to organize and inspire the peasants for an uprising against the government. After this uprising, it was thought that the old political system would crumble and a new one would take its place. Because the peasants did not respond to this, another group with a new goal was formed - The People’s Will - whose ultimate goal was to overthrow the absolutism that they thought was ultimately holding them back. This was a violent revolutionary group whose goal was to be achieved by any means possible - a direct battle with the government and the head of Russia. This is an example of the most extreme side of the intelligentsia.

The intentions of the intelligentsia in general were good, but they never really made any real reforms in the late 19^th century, due to one basic problem: they had idealistic moral ideals, but tried to use subjective, defined and relative means in order to implement these ideals. The extremist group The People’s Will did finally assassinate the tsar Alexander II in 1881, but the political and social reforms they were hoping for did not come about. It wasn’t until later in the early 20^th century when the Russian Revolution took place and the desired changes eventually happened.