ABSTRACT
‘Intelligentsia’ is a Russian word, first used apparently in the ‘sixties by a novelist as a substitute for Pisarev’s ‘proletariate of thought’. By Chekhov’s time it had developed at least three different but connected meanings. For the sons of the gentry, officials and professional men the path to higher education was not so well blazed, unless they were destined for the services. Then they might be fortunate enough to be admitted to the Corps of Pages, or one of the twenty-five Corps of Cadets, which prepared boys of 10 to 17 for a dozen military or naval academies. The development of secondary education had run a course parallel with that of university education. The aim of education was defined as the maintenance of orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality. In each school an ‘inspector’ was made responsible for the discipline and morals of the pupils, and as in the universities later he served also as a check on the staff.
