The Thinking Reed

A few days before the events connected with the Yel’tsin affair, the Financial Times correspondent in Moscow, Patrick Cockburn, wrote that, to all appearances, the intelligentsia’s influence in the life of our country was ‘likely to diminish at the very moment when they have largely obtained the freedom of expression denied them for so long’ (3 November 1987). Actually, the rise in the level of education and political awareness of the Soviet population has perceptibly quickened in recent years. The Soviet Union of the mid-1980s was already not what it had been under Stalin or even under Khrushchev. The profound modernization of society which went on throughout the Brezhnev period constituted, in fact, one of the most important social preconditions for Gorbachev’s perestroika. However, this does not mean, in the least, that the Stalinist past has been completely overcome. As before, there exist in our country influential forces which are interested in a return not just to the state of affairs under Brezhnev but, so far as possible, to the way things were in Stalin’s time. The struggle going on in society assumes, to a considerable extent, the form of a cultural confrontation between those groups which appeal to traditional authoritarian ‘values’ and the supporters of socialist democracy. In these circumstances a very important role on the Left is being played, as before, by the ‘intelligentsia factor’. Society is changing, and culture with it. New problems and new possibilities are arising. But it is quite clear that the mission of Russia’s radical intelligentsia, traditionally hostile to authoritarian and bureaucratic structures, and coming forward as custodians of democratic and socialist ideals, is far from exhausted.

Without a radical design for the future there can be no revolutionary practice. And such a design is, in its turn, impossible without the development of a new political culture, without a change in social consciousness. This task cannot be accomplished by politicians and social activists alone. Without help from writers, playwrights and poets they will not win their battle.

The intelligentsia is changing along with society. The future of culture is the future of the country. Many generations of Russia’s best people have given their labour and their lives so that this country should be free. A defeat for the present movement for socialist democracy would not only be a catastrophe for our society, it would mean the downfall of all Russian culture, with its historic values, its continuity and traditions. The outcome of this struggle is by no means dependent on the intelligentsia alone, but, as before, the role they have to play is an important one.

Boris Kagarlitsky, 23 November 1987

PART ONE The Thinking Reed

Introduction

This work is an attempt at an examination, as objective as possible, of some pressing problems of the cultural-political process in our country. The reader may judge the degree of objectivity attainable by someone who is not a detached observer or a historian of remote periods, but a contemporary.

However, this question may be asked at the outset: What does the author actually mean by ‘cultural-political process’, or, in other words, what is the book about? This very question confronted me while I was writing, and only, it seems, when I had finished the book did I find — more or less — the answer to it. Consequently, I might quite naturally invite the reader to seek the answer in the book itself, but it would be too cruel to force him or her to traverse, even in a shorter time, the entire path which the author had to follow. So some very important explanations are called for right at the start.

Culture is itself one of the most complex of concepts. Some American scholars who have analysed the different points of view that exist where this question is concerned have arrived at the not very comforting conclusion that there are ‘plenty of definitions but too little theory’.1 Culture is an ‘evasive’ concept — like time, man, or nation. To begin this book with yet another ‘formula’ would be not only hopeless conceit but also a futile procedure. Instead of engendering definitions, a better idea would be to take a closer look at the essence of the problem which is studied in this book.