The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia

by Philip Pomper

The second edition of The Russian Revolutionary Intelligentsia remains the best brief discussion of the key figures and movements among Russia's intelligentsia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It includes discussions of the Decembrists, nihilists, populists, and Marxists. This classic in intellectual history provides equal attention to theory and practice and contains an entirely new chapter covering the troubled last years of Nicholas II's reign, the leadership and personality of Lenin and Trotsky, the February Revolution, and the subsequent Bolshevik triumph in the October Revolution. It also includes more information on women's roles in the movement and women's education in nineteenth century Russia. Also considered are the roles of the movement's non-Russian participants. Particularly important, in this revised edition Professor Pomper reexamines the intelligentsia movement in light of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Genres: History, Russia

251 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Dr. Philip Pomper, Ph.D. (University of Chicago, 1965; M.A., 1961; B.A., 1959) is William F. Armstrong Professor Emeritus of History at Wesleyan University. His major fields are Russian History, Modern European History, and Psychohistory. He became an associate editor of the journal History and Theory in 1991.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a helpful and concise account that traces the roots of the Russian Revolution of 1917 back to the rise of the intelligentsia classes in the 19th century. While not a particularly "readable" or engaging text, I do believe it does its job in explaining the complicated and divergent social groups and political movements throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries in Russia. I appreciated the author's presentation of these groups as well, which was refreshingly free of the bias that many American authors often impose onto their accounts of Russian history, especially in connection with polemical movements such as Socialism and Communism.

I think this text also provides a gateway for conversation into what was to come next in the saga of Russian government: the rise of Stalinism, and the continuation of the Soviet Union. Equally pertinent would be the application of these questions and debates to the social and political situation in modern Russia. Many have asked whether a nation as physically expansive and culturally diverse as Russia could ever be led by one effective government system, and it is a question which still plagues our society. Given what Pomper seems to suggest in this text, perhaps it would be possible to reach such an equilibrium between the common people, the educated classes, and the government leaders if freedom of expression were to be encouraged, rather than repressed.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up on a whim in a used bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas. Because I'm only cursorily familiar with a lot of the people & philisophical movements behind the various revolutions in 19th & 20th century Russian political thought, my current read-through is mostly about building background knowledge.

Meanwhile, the central question the book has planted in my mind, as I read about the way secret, intellectual discussions funneling nihilism, Marxist socialism, populism and orthodox religion into social action, is this one: Is it inherently danerous for intellectual men to sit in a room and discuss their designs of a more perfect society? Or is such a situration dangerous only in a state where such discussions are repressed?