ABSTRACT
The revolutionaries emerged from a new segment in Russian society created by the spread of education and Western ideas. The Russian intelligentsia’s main concern, by contrast, was politics, frequently to the exclusion of everything else. The Russian intelligentsia’s main concern, by contrast, was politics, frequently to the exclusion of everything else. The intelligentsia was a polyglot group that varied within a given generation and from one generation to another. The theories and programs developed by the revolutionary intelligentsia tended to be absolutist, unrealistic, or both. Peter Lavrov’s criticism of revolution by conspiracy and dictatorship appealed to an intelligentsia chastened by the Nechaev episode. The ultra-elitist tendency exemplified by Chernyshevsky and Tkachev was a minority opinion in every phase of the Russian revolutionary movement, as it was in the 1870s, when Lavrov’s influence was paramount. Influenced by German idealism, which stressed the uniqueness of each individual nationality, the Slavophiles looked backward into Russia’s history.
