The Problem of the Russian Intelligentsia

Abstract

Historians have little reason to believe that the so-called intelligentsia corresponded to any real group of men in Russian society. It is true that the term has been used very frequently in the past one hundred years, but it has been denned in so many ways and been the subject of such bitter partisan debate that it has lost any objective meaning. Historians in the West can hardly communicate on the subject any longer, for no two of them seem to give the term quite the same meaning. The confusion extends even to terminology. The Russian word intelligentsiia has passed directly into the English language as a collective noun. But what then is the term for the individual—intelligent or intellectual? Some historians carefully use the Russian noun; others accept the English noun as the approximate equivalent.