A Remarkable Decade: The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia Summary and Analysis

This essay takes its title and subject from Pavel Annenkov, who in the 1870's, published a memoir of his friendship during the 1840's with some of the formative figures of the Russian intelligentsia, especially Vissarion Belinsky, Ivan Turgenev and Alexander Herzen. Annenkov was an eager intellectual tourist rather than a serious thinker or critic. The group of intellectuals and writers who emerged from the university between 1838 and 1848 did three important things. They spread ideas that directly contributed to the Russian Revolution (even if it did not proceed as they imagined). They created the atmosphere of ideas reflected in the great Russian novels of mid-century by Tolstoy, Goncharov and Dostoeveky. Finally, they invented a particular type of social criticism.

These friends of Annenkov were the "intelligentsia...