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By no means
had the radically-minded intellectuals been satisfied by the reform
of 1861. Many believed that it left the peasantry as exploited and
as unfree as before. Far from hailing Alexander as a great reformer,
they accused him of being the swindler tsar who had left the peasant
to complete ruination by not providing him with enough land. They
saw that the legal freedom conceded to the peasants meant little
while they remained in grinding poverty. In their view, the Tsar had
betrayed the hopes of the people by not granting ex-serfs equal
economic and civil rights with other social classes. The radicals
argued that revolution was now the only way to achieve a genuine
emancipation and a fair land settlement. A large part of the
educated society was consumed by revolutionary attitudes. |
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In part,
this dissension was due to some relaxation of censorship and the
freer intellectual atmosphere permitted under Alexander II. But even
more important were significant changes in the social composition
of the educated society: it was loosing fast its exclusive ‘noble’
origin. Educational reforms had opened the prospect of higher
education to representatives of all social estates, contributing to
the blurring of the borderlines between noble and non-noble classes.
Children of peasants, townsfolk, clergy, impoverished gentry could
now enter universities, become educated and then go to join the
ranks of this peculiarly Russian phenomenon known as
intelligentsia. They
acquired new social identity and often lost links with their
original social milieu.
In the
mid-nineteenth century Russia members of the intelligentsia formed a
small and underprivileged group which enjoyed neither the material
wealth of the nobility nor the political influence of the
bureaucracy. They were brain wage-workers who relied for their
living on their education and intellect. Some became journalist, or
writers. Others were members of the professions, such as lawyers,
doctors and teachers. The ever increasing numbers of educated young
people earned a living in government employment as veterinarians,
agronomists, statisticians. It was in the milieu of this ‘thinking
minority’ where some of the more radical attitudes began to take
root leading to the appearance of dissidents and revolutionaries.
Some
historians interpret mid-nineteenth century Russian radicalism in
terms of different generations, one more radical than the next. In
this view, the generation of the 1840s were the
‘noble fathers’. On the
whole, the radicals of this generation, represented by such thinkers
as Alexander Herzen, were ‘idealists’ reluctant to use violence, who
pinned their main hopes on reform from above.
In contrast
to their more ‘idealistic’ forerunners, the new radicals of the
generation of the 1860s were more influenced by modern science and
materialism. They advocated revolutionary remedies for Russia’s
problems and were more willing to use extreme, violent means to
achieve their ends. They are usually referred to as the
‘plebeian sons’ since most
ardent radicals of the new generation came from the milieu of the
raznochintsy.
