ABSTRACT

The most conveniently used definitions have always had about them somewhere the flavor of religiosity that has been closely associated with the intelligentsia from the time the term was first used--R. Ivanov-Razuranik "spiritual brotherhood," for example. The religious spirit of the secularizing, modernizing intelligentsia is sufficiently a commonplace. The degree to which the philosophes and encyclopedistes, in attacking the authority of religion, used a religious terminology, essentially religious conceptions, and were imbued with a religious fervor and spirit, is well known. In tone and practice, the generation of N. G. Chernyshevskii and N. A. Dobroliubov was far less tolerant of religion and churchly practice than the intelligenty of the previous generation had been. The obscurantist forces to be desacralized for the advancement of knowledge and the improvement of the quality of life are no longer identified even with the Church, let alone religion.