INTELLIGENTSIA
589
in our society that have been most swiftly "Europeanized" are becoming
increasingly hostile to each other, but both are equally part of the
social superstructure and equally distant from the bases of the people's
existence. The first grouping is composed of those in charge of the
material technology of the state ; its members are open to the maximum
pressure of the West and their power of resistance is minimal. The
second grouping derives its consciousness from a new stratum - the
intelligentsia - created by European influences. These influences are
making their way incomparably more slowly among the great national
masses plunged in darkness as if at the bottom of the ocean; and
though the water of the upper layers has already started reflecting the
rays of the rising sun, at the bottom the process of change still proceeds
in an extremely retarded fashion.
The intelligentsia was a national antenna thrust into European
culture. The state both needed and feared it. At first it was forcibly
educated by the state, which later held the whip over the heads of
those whom it had educated. Since the time of Catherine II the intel–
ligentsia has steadily become more and more hostile to the state, to class
privilege and to the propertied classes in general. We know that the
determining factor is the poverty, crudity and ugliness of a regime
taking its practices from Arakcheyev
7
and its notions of conduct from
men like Khlynov.
"You will excuse me, but I don't like that trait in you," says one
of the characters in an Ostrovsky play to the merchant Khlynov.
"And what is that trait, may I ask?"
"Your behaving like a pig."
Ho\\' can swinish behavior be condoned by a person whose intellect
has assimilated higher things? Actually, in the light of modern European
conceptions, ideas and ideals, everyday Russian traits stand out all the
more glaringly and intolerably. For this reason the younger generation
coming from the old estates, who have ceased leading a vegetable
existence and have entered the sunlit atmosphere of European ideology,
have cut themselves loose completely from their previous class traditions
and the inherited "respectable" faith. This they have accomplished
almost without any internal struggle; and after measuring the spiritual
abyss separating their new consciousness from the half-zoological exis-
7 Arakcheyev (1769-1834) was an influential minister under Alexander I ,
who was hated for his martinctlike strictness and the cruel use of his delegated
powers, as in the administration of the infamous "military resettlement" col–
onies that he set up.
