Almost from the outset, however, noble members of 'society' questioned the moral worthiness of the educated raznochintsy. Noble instructions to the Legislative Commission of 1767-8 defined the raznochintsy not simply as non-nobles, an established legal-administrative usage, but also as new service nobles in the derogatory sense of social upstarts. This derogatory usage acquired broad resonance in the nineteenth century, when major literary figures such as Nikolai Gogol and Ivan Turgenev depicted the raznochintsy as social and cultural inferiors. For P. D. Boborykin, a noble journalist prominent in the 1860s, the raznochintsy likewise represented social and cultural inferiors who nonetheless participated in the literary, theatrical and musical life of St Petersburg.14 Whatever their contributions to the empire's military might and cultural glory, and these received recognition already in the eighteenth century, the raznochintsy in no way represented the best 'society'.
But the noble Boborykin also used the category raznochintsy in a more neutral sense to describe participants in a socially diverse urban cultural milieu. Out of this milieu there emerged in the middle of the nineteenth century an identifiable group of non-noble radical intellectuals enshrined in Russian cultural memory as 'the raznochintsy'. Associated with the likes ofV G. Belinsky, N. G. Chernyshevsky and N. A. Dobroliubov, the educated raznochintsy of the i840s-70s combined literary careers with social radicalism and political opposition. As in the past, some members of Russian 'society' disdained the raznochintsy, seeing in their radical ideas and alternative lifestyle, a threat to morality and civilisation. To others, the raznochintsy represented a generation of 'new people' who would lead the country through a revolutionary transformation to a bright and joyous future. Regardless of how the raznochintsy were judged, their presence in the consciousness of Russia's educated
12 M. Raeff, 'Transfiguration and Modernization: The Paradoxes of Social Disciplining, Paedagogical Leadership, and the Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Russia', in H. Bodeker and E. Hinrichs (eds.), Alteuropa - Ancien Regime - Friihe Neuzeit: Prohleme und Methoden der Forschung (Stuttgart, Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1991), p. 109. See also A. Netting, 'Russian Liberalism: The Years of Promise', unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University (1967), p. 20.
13 M. M. Shtrange, Demokraticheskaia intelligentsiia Rossii v XVIII veke (Moscow: Nauka,
i965).
14 Wirtschafter, Structures of Society, pp. 98-101.
classes contributed to the formation of another sociocultural identity, the intelligentsia, which has remained an 'institution' of Russian society to the present day.15
On-going scholarly research shows that the conceptual and historical reality of the intelligentsia, no less than that of the raznochintsy, cannot be subordinated to any single collective meaning.16 Historians situate 'the origins of the Russian intelligentsia' in a variety of social milieus: the educated and increasingly disaffected service nobility of the eighteenth century; the idealist philosophical circles that formed around the universities, salons and 'thick' journals of the i83os-4os; and finally, the radical raznochintsy and nihilist movement of the 1860s.17 One historian counts over sixty definitions of the 'intelligentsia' in the scholarship of the former Soviet Union, the most common being a social group composed of individuals 'professionally employed in mental labour'. Echoing the official classifications of Soviet society, this definition equates the intelligentsia with the technically specialised professions of modern times.18 Clearly, the possibilities for definition and redefinition are numerous. Suffice it to say that any effort to summarise or critically evaluate the massive historiography on the intelligentsia can hardly do justice to the complexity of the phenomenon or the diligence of its scholars.
15 On the continuity of the intelligentsia 'counterculture', seeJ. Burbank, 'Were the Russian Intelligenty Organic Intellectuals?' in L. Fink, S. T. Leonard and D. M. Reid (eds.), Intellectuals and Public Life: Between Radicalism and Reform (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 97-120.
16 As a collective term, intelligentsia appeared in Russia from the i83os to the i86os. Wirtschafter, Structures ofSociety,pp. 101-2,125-33; O. Muller, Intelligencija. Untersuchungen zurGeschichteeinespolitischenSchlagwortes (Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1971); andmost recently S. O. Shmidt, 'K istorii slova "intelligentsiia"', reprinted in Obshchestvennoe samosoznanie rossiiskogo blagorodnogo sosloviia, XVII-pervaia tret' XIX veka (Moscow: Nauka, 2002), pp. 300-9.
17 I provide here only a handful of references. M. Raeff, Origins of the Russian Intelligentsia: The Eighteenth-Century Nobility (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966); M. Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961); D. Brower, 'The Problem of the Russian Intelligentsia', SR 26 (1967): 638-47; D. Brower, TrainingtheNihilists:EducationandRadicalisminTsaristRussia(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975); A. Walicki, A History of Russian Thought from the Enlightenment to Marxism, trans. Hilda Andrews-Rusiecka (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979); V Nahirny, 'The Russian Intelligentsia: From Men of Ideas to Men of Convictions', Comparative Studies in Society and History 4 (1962): 403-35; V Nahirny The Russian Intelligentsia: From Torment to Silence (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983). For fuller historio- graphic treatment, see Wirtschafter, Structures of Society, pp. 93-150; Wirtschafter, Social Identity, pp. 86-99.
18 S. I. Khasanova, 'K voprosu ob izuchenii intelligentsii dorevoliutsionnoi Rossii', in G. N. Vul'fson (ed.), Revoliutsionno-osvoboditel'noe dvizhenie v XIX-XX vv. v Povolzh'e i Pri- ural'e (Kazan: Izd. Kazanskogo universiteta, 1974), pp. 37-54; V R. Leikina-Svirskaia, 'Formirovanie raznochinskoi intelligentsii v Rossii v 40-kh godakh XIX v.', Istoriia SSSR (1958) no. 1: 83-104; V R. Leikina-Svirskaia, Intelligentsiia v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka (Moscow: Mysl', 1971).
In current popular and scholarly usage, it often seems as if almost any educated or self-educated individual in Russia in the nineteenth or early twentieth century can be identified as an intelligent (pl. intelligenty), a member of the intelligentsia. But to warrant inclusion in the intelligentsia, a person also needed to possess a critical mind, a secular code of ethics, a commitment to social justice, a strong sense of individual dignity and cultural refinement or, as in the case of the nihilists of the 1860s, a distinctive lifestyle. An educated person who did not become a social radical or political oppositionist still could take an active interest in the reform of government and the welfare of the empire's population. Possessed of social conscience and political awareness, such a person might be called an intelligent and placed in the ranks of the intelligentsia. Membership in the intelligentsia is perhaps best represented as a sociocultural ideal or identity that encouraged the individual to define personal morality and personal interests in social terms. The intelligent worked for the betterment of society, whether or not this effort served the needs of his or her family and immediate community. To be an intelligent did not require adherence to any particular political movement, but it did imply a critical attitude toward conditions in society and government. Equally crucial, it implied a desire to change those conditions.19