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Updated: July 16, 2025
Alexander II was not alone in hoping that the Act of Liberation would usher in a new era of prosperity and tranquillity for Russia. Many of the most radical of the Intelligentsia, followers of Herzen, believed that Russia was destined to outstrip the older nations of western Europe in its democracy and its culture.
By a strange fatality the confidence of the inarticulate millions upon which we have hitherto prided ourselves has been turned into bitterness and hatred hitherto unknown amongst large sections of them at the very moment when we have for the first time regained in a large measure the confidence of the intelligentsia, and we have to reckon with the possibility of popular disturbances which may call for strong action just when on broad grounds of policy any resort to force must be specially undesirable.
All the passengers, first, second, and third class, grand dukes, intelligentsia, and laborers saw the danger and shouted warning but the officers neither saw nor heard.
The attempt made by a young student to assassinate Alexander II, on April 4, 1866, was seized upon by the Czar and his advisers as an excuse for instituting a policy of terrible reaction. The most repressive measures were taken against the Intelligentsia and all the liberal reforms which had been introduced were practically destroyed.
The actual purpose, however, as understood by all these respected folk, though they ventured to do little more than hint of it to one another, was to establish with the help of the trio a patriotic movement; in short, to strike a blow at the intelligentsia. Yakov Poltinin took Ostrov with him to visit the families of the patriots.
It is science that makes the difference between our intellectual outlook and that of the Chinese intelligentsia. The Chinese, even the most modern, look to the white nations, especially America, for moral maxims to replace those of Confucius. They have not yet grasped that men's morals in the mass are the same everywhere: they do as much harm as they dare, and as much good as they must.
Professor Pares' book, which is perhaps the most penetrating and well-balanced of all and contains most valuable chapters on the Intelligentsia, does not, unfortunately, deal with the years of reaction which followed the dissolution of the First Duma. Mr. Baring's book may be recommended especially for the later chapters which deal with the causes of the failure of the Revolution.
The cheap effect of his cadenced prose, his dreary and monotonous rhetoric, his sensational way of treating "essential problems" were just what the intelligentsia wanted at the time; it is also just what nobody is likely to want again. Another writer of "problem stories" was Artsybashev. His notorious Sanin is very typical of a certain phase of Russian life.
Here is one extract: "In general, the whole manner of life of the intelligentsia was terrible; a long abomination of desolation, without any kind or sort of discipline, without the slightest consecutiveness, even on the surface.
It has been said that there are practically speaking no class distinctions in the English sense of the word, in Russia; there is, however, a very real distinction between the intelligentsia and the peasants. The intelligentsia are the few million educated Russians who control, or seek to control, the destinies of the 145 million uneducated tillers of the soil.
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