Session 5: Intellectuals and ‘Central Europe’

Session 5: Intellectuals and ‘Central Europe’
Chair: Bob Brecher

Russian Intellectuals of the First Half of the XIXth Century: Representations and Strategy of Behaviour
Tatiana Saburova
Omsk State Pedagogical University, Russia

The results of studying of Russian intellectuals’ history by reconstruction of their representations about the world are reflected in this paper.
Russian intellectuals’ temporal representations expressed aspiration to connect various times: the past, present and future. But asserting idea of connection of times, Russian intellectuals in the first half of the XIXth century could not fix a value of present time in public consciousness. They periodically turned their attention to the past or to the future time. In being replaced the determining past or the saving future, “the circuit of times” often was torn.
Russian intellectuals’ spatial representations included division of space into “own” and “alien”, “strange” spaces. This ambivalence of spatial representations was shown at the basic division of space into Europe and Russia. The both parts could be perceived as own and alien simultaneously. Europe could be perceived as a political, cultural reality and at the same time as a mythological construct. Europe was “own” space from the point of view of the mastering cultural values, ideas, theories in intellectual sense but it was “alien” space from the emotional point of view. Russia as a native land and sacral concept was perceived as the own space but it could become “alien” space in social, cultural, political sense. This perception could express in the fact of emigration from Russia. Development of rational knowledge and expansion of spatial horizons incorporated to creation and reproduction of myths about the West and Russia which were the myths about the future destruction or rescue.
Let’s especially note Russian intellectuals’ representations about state. They charged it with the reforms in Russia. An influence on power in various forms was defined as the major function of intellectuals. During reforms Russian intellectuals often incorporated to power but while they criticized reforms. Representations about power had a double basis: European scientific theories of power and myths about power as demiurge and a sovereign as a sacral figure. These representations not only didn’t exclude an opportunity of criticism of power but made this criticism more radical.
Operating in space of different cultural languages, carrying out cultural translation and the communications between Russian and European culture, between elite and national culture, a society and power, Russian intellectuals considered their role in this process. «Lost in translation”, this expression can be applied to Russian intellectuals of the first half of the XIXth century. As a result of it, idea of search of way became the main idea for them and not only their way but the way for Russia at all. Broadcasting the European culture in culture of Russian traditional society and mediating between the different cultural worlds, social groups and institutes, Russian intellectuals created own cultural world. It was a mythology of Russian intelligentsia.

Old Intelligentsia – New Intelligentsia – Pseudointelligentsia – No Intelligentsia: Self-definitions, Idealised Images, ‘faked’ standings and ‘outdated’ Categories among Intelligentsia in Lviv (Ukraine)
Eleonora Narvselius
Department of Ethnic Studies (Tema Etnicitet), University of Linköping, Norrköping, Sweden

The paper discusses continualities and discrepancies in the visions of intelligentsia’s social positions and cultural identifications as presented by the representatives of different generations in western Ukrainian city of Lviv. Intelligentsia is a notion widely employed in the public polemics concerning national projects in the post-1991 Ukraine. Simultaneously, it continues to be an important reference point for personal class and cultural affiliations. In Lviv this notion has been elaborated in the historical conditions of different political regimes, multiethnic urban environment and strivings of the nationally conscious intelligentsia living in the ‘Ukrainian Piedmont’ to define the ‘national package’ for the whole of Ukraine. These particular historical and social structural factors have conditioned the multilayered and contradictory understanding of the socio-cultural phenomenon behind the related notions (intelligentsia, inteligentnist’, inteligent, inteligentnyi).
The study has been conducted using, in particular, ethnologcal methods of data collecting and holistic-content method of narrative analysis. It has been informed by several converging theoretical debates from the fields of cultural sociology and cultural studies (e.g. Bourdieu, Sommers, Alexander) focused on issues of identity and action, cultural reproduction and innovation, and predetermination of actors’ agency and ideological production by their embeddedness into multiple networks of narratives and social relations.
One of the significant findings of the study is that, despite the wide-spread opinions about ‘intelligentsia’s death’ in the post-1991 Ukraine, the cultural autonomy, scientific and cultural authority, service to community and principles of ‘civility’ are still presented as important hallmarks which in everyday life define choices and dispositions of the representatives of both younger and older generations of the educated urbanites. Simultaneously, it is possible to detect a constellation of meanings conveyed by the word ‘intellectual’ whose actualization became facilitated by the post-1991 conditions. It is, namely, cultural and ideational relationship with western paradigms of thinking, adherence to liberal values and emphasis on individual intellectual achievement unconstrained by the demands of (moral, cultural etc.) solidarity with one’s community. In the changing socio-cultural conditions, this recently re-established pattern of meanings connoted in the term may provide with positive reference for one’s personal and collective identification in a post-soviet city.

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Slovene Intellectuals in Emigration: Between Myth and Loyalty: Slavdom and Dynasty
Irena Gantar Godina
I nstitute for Slovenian Emigration Studies, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana

Slovene intellectuals living in Slovenian ethnic territory or elsewhere within a multinational state of Habsburg Monarchy (the so-called temporary or atypical emigration) up to 1918 seemed to be trapped into mutually exclusive tasks: their first, a very pretentious task was to work upon the strengthening of the Slovene national identity which began already at the end of 18th century. A strong German nationalism in the Monarchy after 1848 motivated Slovene intellectuals in implementing the, then very actual, Slav idea and solidarity. They understood it as a necessity, as a counter-reaction not only to German nationalism but also, especially after 1868, to aggressive Italian nationalism.
Their second task was “imposed” by the Austrian authorities: the majority of the then Slovene intellectuals were more or less “state officials”, that is, gymnasium and university professors, lawyers, etc., thus their employment depended on their loyalty to the state. After 1848 when Germanisation and its implementation all over the Monarchy became a “must”, Slovene intellectuals, were somehow forced to deny their pro-Slavic convictions to assure employment within their narrower homeland. Those who were found “suspicious” of their too openly demonstrated, be it Austro-Slavism, Pan-Slavism or Russophillism, were “sanctioned” by being refused employment at home. This caused, among others, their permanent emigration and, last but not least, their assimilation.
Despite their distinct Pro-Slavic orientation, the Slovenes accepted Austria as a natural fact, although it did not offer any guarantee of equality. Even if they acted against the existing regime, they acted in a legal way and at the same time swore loyalty to the dynasty and the Emperor. They were aware of the fact that only the Austrian borders offered them protection against the aspirations of Italian nationalism, which seriously threatened the integrity of Slovene national territory after 1870.
The myth of the redemptive Slavic mutuality along with the myth of supportive cooperation with Russia, and, after 1908 the idea of South-Slavic Austria, intertwined with the concept of inevitable existence of the Monarchy. All up to 1918 it remained an essential and constituent part of the then Slovene political, cultural and scholar ideology.