Degradation of the Word or the Adventures of an Intelligent in Viktor Pelevin’s Generation II

Abstract

This paper addresses the concept of the intelligentsia and its transformation in the post-Soviet period. I present a brief overview of the multiple and problematic ways of defining the intelligentsia, and then turn to a novel that I see as a chronicle of the post-perestroika intelligentsia, Viktor Pelevin’s Generation П. I suggest that the intelligentsia, the milieu in which major Russian cultural myths originated and developed, is itself best understood in terms of cultural myth—a cultural construct reflecting the group’s self-image. A major component of this image is the intelligentsia’s reliance on culture, and especially literature, as both a source and justification for its view of the world and its role in it. In Pelevin’s novel, the career of a poet turned advertising writer—copywriter— parallels the post-perestroika cultural crisis in Russia and the degradation of the Word, which, in turn, symbolizes the demise of the intelligentsia.