A.S. Izgoev’s vision of intelligentsia

Abstract

A special footnote was added to the article “Educated Youth (Notes on its Life and Senti­ments)”, included in the famous collection of essays Vekhi (1909), in which author A. Iz­goev expressed his disagreement with a “common platform” of the collection, outlined by M. Gershenzon in the introduction. What was the reason for Izgoev’s rejection of the as­sertion that an individial’s inner life is the only foundation on which a society can be built? If Izgoev had criticized the ideas on intelligentsia proposed by some of Vekhi’s con­tributors back in 1903, why did he agree to become one of Vekhi’s contributors himself and, moreover, why did he defend Vekhi from accusations of conservatism after the publication of the volume? In our opinion, answers to these questions can be found in Izgoev’s theory of intelligentsia. The present paper is an attempt to reconstruct that theory. Izgoev believed that the conception of intelligentsia proposed by narodniks (in particular, N. Mikhaylovsky) and by neoidealists (N. Berdyaev and S. Bulgakov) was incorrect be­cause it did not take into account the material interests of this social group. Intelligentsia earns an income by teaching and doing research, and with a lack of freedom of speech and thought in the state cannot execute its functions because the latter require a spiritual freedom. Representatives of intelligentsia can unite to fight for freedom. This is benefi­cial for the intelligentsia itself and contributes to the progress of the whole nation. De­spite Izgoev’s disagreement with treating intelligentsia as a higher-class group that does not pursue its material interests, he, as other authors of Vekhi considered it to be the only group that was capable of transforming Russia into a democratic and law-governed state.