In those days, writes Loren R. Graham,
almost no one thought seriously that the Communist Party’s supervision of intellectuals would extend from the realm of political activity to that of scientific theory itself. Party leaders neither planned nor predicted that the Party would approve or support certain viewpoints internal to science; indeed, such endorsement was fundamentally opposed by all the important leaders of the Party.78
Zhores Medvedev even calls the years 1922 to 1928 ‘the golden years of Soviet science’.79 (However, the ‘hundred flowers’ that bloomed in that period were soon ‘uprooted’ by the Stalinist bureaucracy.)
Culture, no less than science, became in the twenties a sort of politically neutral zone. This was not because it had no connection with politics — on the contrary, politicization of culture in the twenties went a long way — but because at that time in the cultural field it was not obligatory to take up a position on one side or the other of the barricades. Culture was a ‘no-man’s-land’, not in the sense that ‘no man’ was there but simply that everyone could be there, and there was no ‘boss’. A third way, though impossible in politics, was possible in spiritual life. Censorship existed but was still fairly liberal, so that a neutral position was permitted in this sphere.
Literary groups with different aesthetic and philosophical platforms began to appear. A definite quickening of social life undoubtedly occurred, and discussion was carried on pretty openly. Independent and semi-independent journals were published: Mysl' Ekonomist, Golos Minuvshego, Novaya Rossiya, Russky Sovremennik, Sovremennik, Byloe, Novaya Epokha, Volnaya Zhizn', Slovo Is tiny, Vestnik Literatury — and also almanacs: Krug, Kovsh, Zhizn Iskusstva. The Petrograd philosophical journal Mysl' freely published the writings of idealists and positivists who made no pretence at all of loyalty to Marxism. ‘Our journal’, wrote the editorial board,
will serve quite impartially all and every tendency in philosophy, provided only that in these tendencies there is a sense of living search for truth and living thought, not inert marking time in abandoned and outlived positions.80
No political restrictions were imposed. To be sure, Mysl' and Ekonomist were soon suppressed, but some of these journals survived right down to Stalin’s victory and the complete crushing of every form of opposition. Symbolic, in a way, of the twenties were the journals and newspapers produced in the prisons. Numerous unreliable people continued to be held in custody, but they were still allowed freedom of speech and of the press. Journals appeared with expressive titles: Mysl' za reshetkoi [Thought Behind Bars] (Irkutsk), Mysl' zaklyuchennogo [Prisoners’ Thought] (Vitebsk, Omsk and elsewhere), Golos zaklyuchennogo [The Prisoners’ Voice] (Kharkov, Penza, and elsewhere), and others. Quite critical views were expressed in the pages of these journals (and where could the writers be sent for such views?).81 All this compels most historians, even those with a very hostile attitude to the revolution, to write of the ‘situation of relative freedom’ that existed in Russia in the twenties.82
‘After the revolutionary storm came a lull,’ wrote I. Lezhnev in the independent journal Novaya Rossiya,
the bloody fog of war and revolution lifted and went away. The face of the earth could be seen again, and we were at last given our first favourable opportunity to comprehend events in their true historical perspective.83
The new situation enabled one, as was thought at that time, ‘to meditate calmly and historically upon what had happened, to clarify for oneself the lessons and indications of the revolution, and to draw from these appropriate conclusions.’84
Relations between the Bolsheviks and the intelligentsia were, as before, uneasy, but also extremely ambivalent and contradictory. They could be defined as ‘conflict plus co-operation’. The new rulers strove to come to an understanding with members of the intelligentsia, to win their confidence, offering them the maximum of creative freedom within the limits of the revolutionary dictatorship. But their intention was itself contradictory, and it was quite natural that the intelligenty viewed the Bolsheviks with a distrust which was sometimes well founded.
It must be said that the attitude of the Bolsheviks themselves towards the Russian intelligentsia was sometimes condescending, sometimes contemptuous, sometimes condescending with a nuance of contempt. ‘The Russian intelligentsia’, wrote Meshcheryakov in 1922,
did not love the autocracy. Before the 1905 Revolution they even hated it, and fought against it heroically, not sparing their lives. In this struggle they drew together with the proletariat. Along with this the intelligentsia acquired some elements of a socialist world-view. They wrote the word ‘socialism’ on their banner. But in the great majority of cases they intepreted ‘socialism’ purely in their own, ‘intelligentsia’ way. They dreamt of socialism as something very far away, and saw it as beautiful, dazzlingly white and pure, just as, from a distance, the snow-covered Alpine peaks seem virginally pure.85
All this evokes not the slightest sympathy so far as the Bolshevik Meshcheryakov is concerned: he is a man of practical action, with no time for sentiment. For him the intelligentsia is merely a variety of the petty bourgeoisie:
They do not work for wages but independently of the entrepreneur, receiving payment for their labour either directly from the person they serve or from the capitalist to whom they sell not their labour-power but the finished results of their labour. This circumstance renders such strata of the intelligentsia close… to the petty bourgoisie.86
Consequently, they are drawn to socialism, not by class interests but by ‘study or moral feeling’.87 This last-mentioned fact not only fails to win Meshcheryakov’s approval, it even seems to him suspicious. For Pokrovsky the intelligentsia’s sacrifices in the past inspire no respect: if it did not support the Party in 1917-18, it is nothing but a ‘swamp’ and there is nothing to respect it for.88