THE NEW TREASON OF THE INTELLECTUALS
Belotserkovsky's piece in this issue is deceptively modest . Though
it makes no claim to a new theory of Soviet dissent , it seems
to
me to point
to
a
revolutionary change in the role of intellectuals. For if Belotserkovsky is
correct when he says that the true dissenters are the scientific not the literary
intellectuals, this not only goes against all our notions of what is going on in
Russia but it marks a break with the Western tradition ofdissent, with our very
idea of dissent . What it suggests is a reversal in a totalitarian society of the
classic roles of the scientific and literary intelligentsia.
In our own society, in America and Europe, we tend to assume that
intellectuals associated with the arts and the humanities take the lead in
criticizing the government and the system, while those connected with the
sciences are more neutral, less political, more involved with their own
disciplines . Most literary people, for example, do not feel at home with the
government; on the other hand, few of the soft or the hard scientists feel
compromised when they are consulted or employed by the government. The
reason for this split obviously has had much to do with the fact that the literary
intellectuals have been more concerned with values and ideas, and with their
relation to the rest of society .
It
is, in fact, the peculiar combination of
thinking about existence as a whole while feeling outside the mainstream that
has distinguished the modern sensibility .
Now it is startling to discover that the situation is just the opposite in the
Soviet Union. But Belotserkovsky's analysis, which relates the intellectuals
to
the forces of Soviet society, makes their ambiguous position not only plausible
but inevitable. We have been so accustomed
to
thinking ofwriters as outsiders
we forget that Soviet writers, however critical or discontented with official
restrictions, are really part of the intellectual and political elite . And the fact
that they deal with language and ideas while subjected
to
all kinds of pressures
as well as censorship must mean that they are constantly compromising.
