Sociality – or Death: Belinskii's Phenomenological Realism and the Emergence of the Russian Intelligentsia

Abstract

This paper formulates a new perspective on Vissarion Belinskii's seminal role as the leading figure in early Russian realism–while attempting to account for the unique, culturally‐specific evolution of realism in Russia, particularly its fundamental interconnection with the rise of what we now call “the intelligentsia.” Within this context, Belinskii's distinct mode of realism–epitomized in his call for “sociality or death”–can be termed “phenomenological,” because it derived so much from the narrative logic of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, as a continuous striving for self‐realization. In this sense, Belinskii's influence hinged on his constructed, phenomenological metanarrative of Russian literary history: a philosophical narrative that established a logical evolution within Russian literature and explained the emergence of realism as a rational necessity. The conceptual foundations of Belinskii's metanarrative can be traced back to his period of intense immersion in Hegel's philosophy as a member of the Stankevich circle, when he and the others looked to Hegel's philosophy as a practical guide to personal self‐realization. Ultimately, however, Belinskii transposed this narrative of self‐realization onto the logic of Russian literary history. Accordingly, the realism of the Natural School marked the culminating moment when Russian literature finally attained self‐realization, legitimacy, cultural autonomy. The entire process, moreover, was contingent on the emergence of a certain kind of unified, self‐conscious reading public–which became the basis for what we now know as the intelligentsia. Thus, Belinskii's realist agenda was ultimately focused on fostering the development of this “imagined community,” which entailed establishing a stable and autonomous niche for intelligentsia discourse within the competitive field of literary production, as well as shaping the distinct socio‐historical sense of self that engendered the intelligentsia's defining propensity for conscientious social action.