The Revolution

Abstract

Theoretically, the Russian writer was an independent critic of the state. When the state acted, the writer submitted its policies to careful scrutiny; when, as was more frequent, the state did nothing, writers attempted to goad it into activity. But, while regularly in opposition to the authorities, the writers of the nineteenth century found themselves increasingly critical of Russian society and found in its ignorance, backwardness, violence, litigiousness and Oblomovism, plenty of material for literary expression. Caught in a limbo between society and the state, such writers began to be regarded as an intelligentsia¹ whose rootlessness was treated as a unique vantage point from which to articulate the ‘social interest’ as a whole. To the frequent charge that the intelligentsia ‘lacks conviction’, its members liked to reply that ‘on the contrary, only we are free to have intellectual convictions’, untramelled by social or financial position. Despite the numerous cases of compromises with the authorities, the notion developed that the intelligentsia occupied the unique position of custodian of cultural and ethical values against the infringements of the state. Although the term cannot be equated solely with ‘left-wing’ opposition, it was in politics that it had the most vital consequences, the outcome of which, it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say, was the Russian Revolution itself.

A Russian writer should never live in friendship with a Russian Government

Gorky, 1902