Russian Intelligentsia at the Turn of Epochs: Liberation Movement Participants of the Late 19th — Early 20th Centuries in Russia and Abroad

Abstract

This article is devoted to the generation of the Liberation Movement participants in Russia in the late 19th — early 20th centuries. The author seeks to analyse the peculiarities of the psychological and value attitudes of the said generation of Russian intellectuals who were the main participants of the Russian revolutions. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of new intellectual history. The analysis relies on personal letters of Russian intellectuals kept at the Hoover Institution Archive on War, Revolution and Peace (Stanford, USA), Bakhmeteff Archive Research at Columbia University (New York, USA), Leeds Russian Archive (Leeds, United Kingdom). The author also uses some memoirs of these intellectuals. He concludes that the mental attitudes of this generation were rooted in the 19th century and it was deeply affected by the collapse of its youth’s ideals in the 20th century. Participating in the Russian Liberation Movement, being deputies of the State Dumas and members of the parliamentary opposition, they were trying to create a new Russia. They continued to believe in democratic values and human rights throughout their whole life. But the majority of them realised that the Soviet state was an autocratic political project supported by many ordinary people. And they understood that global trends of development of the 20th century civilization were much more complex than they had thought before. At the end of their life, they understood the mistakes in their struggle for democracy in Russia.