RUSSIAN UNIVERSITIES AND THE RUSSIAN intelligentsia. Part 2
A.I. FetThis article is a continuation of the article "Russian Universities and the Russian Intelligentsia" Part 1, published in this journal, №3, 2016. The author discusses the problem of the Russian intelligentsia formation and the role, which the Russian university community played in the process. He also demonstrated the origins of the "groundlessness", which has always distinguished the Russian intelligentsia, and analyzed the reasons for its invariable opposition to any authority. The author proves the thesis that the revolutionaries of all stripes represented a semi-intelligentsia: instead of thick books, these people read the brochures, and they replaced the philosophy with the party ideology. Semi-intelligentsia played a leading role in all French Revolutions, and later in the Russian one. The article analyzes the destiny of Russian universities during the years of Soviet power. The years of "stagnation" meant already the agony of Russian universities, which had lost all the impulses to scientific activities. The experimenters were without instruments, theorists were without books ─ they were isolated from the world; they were under a bureaucratic ban. The author gives a brilliant analysis of the role and significance of the Russian intelligentsia in the Russian and world history. In his opinion, the main distinctive characteristic of the Russian intelligentsia was unselfishness. In the West, “freedom” and “equality” meant protecting group and class interests; in Russia, however, these words were understood as “brotherhood” with all oppressed people without any self-interest.