The net effect of Idealism was to inspire Russian intellectuals with a self-confidence which they had never possessed before. Mind was linked with nature, both participating in a relentless unfolding of historical processes; compared to this vision, what were mere governments, economies, armies and bureaucracies? Prince Odoevskii thus describes the
THE INTELLIGENTSIA
exaltation he and his friends experienced on being first exposed to these heady concepts:
What solemn, luminous, and joyful feeling permeated life once it had been shown that it was possible to explain the phenomena of nature by the very same laws to which the human spirit is subject in its evolution, seemingly to close forever the gap separating the two realms, and fashion them into a single receptacle containing the eternal idea and eternal reason. With what youthful and noble pride did we at that time envisage the share which had been allotted man in this universal existence! By virtue of the quality and right of thought, man transposed visible nature within himself and analyzed it in the innermost recesses of his own consciousness: in short, he became nature's focal point, judge and interpreter. He absorbed nature and in him it revived for rational and inspired existence... The more radiantly the eternal spirit, the eternal idea reflected themselves in man, the more fully did he understand their presence in all the other realms of life. The culmination of the whole [Idealist] outlook were moral obligations, and one of the indispensable obligations was to emancipate within oneself the divine share of the world idea from everything accidental, impure, and false in order to acquire the right to the blessings of a genuine, rational existence.11
Of course, not all Russian intellectuals succumbed to such ecstasy. Idealism had also more sober followers, as, for example, among academic historians who took from Hegel little more than a general scheme of development of human societies. But in some degree, in the reign of Nicholas 1 (1825-55) Idealism was an all-pervading philosophy of the Russian intelligentsia, and its influence persisted well into the second half of the nineteenth century, after its principal tenets had been repudiated and replaced by materialism. The first, 'Idealist', generation of the Russian intelligentsia was recruited almost exclusively from the ranks of dvoriane, especially the comfortably situated 'gentry'. But the social preponderance of dvoriane was a historic accident caused by the fact that in the first half of the nineteenth century they alone had the leisure and wherewithal for intellectual interests, especially of such an esoteric kind as demanded by Idealism. Even then, however, intellectuals from other estates were welcomed into the group whenever they chanced to appear, among them Belinskii, the son of a commoner, and V.P.Botkin, the son of a merchant. After the accession of Alexander 11, as the country's estate structure began to dissolve, there was a steady inflow of non-dvoriane youths into the ranks of the intelligentsia. In the 1860s much was made of the sudden emergence as an intellectual force olraznochintsy, i.e. persons not attached to any of the standard legal categories, such as sons of priests who did not follow their fathers' footsteps (e.g. Nicholas Strakhov and Nicholas Ghernyshevskii), children of lower rank, non-hereditary civil servants and officers, and so
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forth. The slow but steady spread of educational opportunities increased the number of potential dissidents. In secondary schools until the reign of Alexander in, the proportion of commoners in secondary schools rose uninterruptedly at the expense of dvoriane, as Table 2 shows; and since between eight and nine out of every ten secondary school graduates went on to the university or another institution of higher learning, it is clear that with each passing year the composition of all the student bodies became more plebeian. TABLE 2 Social Composition of Students in Russian Secondary Schools, 1833-85 (inpercentages).12 Vear Dvoriane and Clergy Tax-paying chinovniki groups
The free professions, virtually unknown in pre-Reform Russia, flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century. It is estimated that between i860 and 1900 the number of professionally trained persons in Russia grew from 20,000 to 85,000."
The educated class, from which the intelligentsia recruited its membership, thus steadily expanded and in expanding changed its character: what had been a small band of rich youths with troubled consciences and patriotic aspirations, became a large pool of people of all estates for whom intellectual work was a way of making a living. In the 188os, Russia, already had a large intellectual proletariat. Nevertheless, to the end of the old regime, descendants of the old service class set the tone: the majority of the leaders of Russian opinion always came from well to do dvoriane or chinovniki of the upper ranks. It is they who formulated the ideology of a resentful mass of the intelligentsia.
The intelligentsia had to have institutions which would bring the like-minded together, allow them to exchange ideas and to form friendships based on shared convictions. In nineteenth-century Russia there were five such institutions.
The oldest of these was the salon. The open house maintained by rich landlords, especially in their spacious Moscow residences, provided an ideal setting of informal contact for people interested in public affairs. Although most of the aristocracy attending salons were preoccupied with gossip, match-making and cards, some salons were known to attract the more earnest and even to have a certain ideological colouring.
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The controversy which later divided intellectuals into 'Westerners' and 'Slavophiles', for example, first broke out in salon conversations and only later found its way into print.