Svetlana Klimova
INTELLIGENTSIA IN THE SEARCH
FOR SELF-IDENTIFICATION.
DOSTOEVSKY – TOLSTOY
The monograph is focused on Russian intelligentsia self-identification that is considered both in the philosophical and in the cultural perspective. The text consists of two parts. The first one deals with the formation of the intelligentsia, beginning from the 18th century to the present, the problematization of the most important themes and ideas is displayed; the second one reveals a specific intellectual, spiritual, vital opposition of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to the Russian intelligentsia history, status, and fate. Both writers, while holding diametrically opposite world outlooks, were quite critical towards the intelligentsia’s ways of thinking, its ideology, basic values and behavior patterns.
A special attention is paid to the intelligentsia’s “binary consciousness” that “works” pendulum-like, shifting from some specific values to the opposite ones and back, as well as some of its representatives’ holistic (all-embracing) worldview that is quite contrary to the dialogic one. It is not only reflection exercise, but the value content of intelligentsia’s ideas as well. The ideas within that worldview from time to time change up ground, sometimes up to the quite opposite ones. Dostoevsky reconstructed the negative image of an intelligentsia member and, paradoxically, reproduced the same binary oppositions approach in his own worldview. Tolstoy, in his philosophy and life-faith, tried to return to the culture of interpersonal dialogue and integrity.
The work may be of interest to the students of Russian philosophy, philologists, all interested the Russian thought.
