ABSTRACT
In 57 B.C.E., Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman consul and leading public intellectual, ran into heavy political headwinds. After turning down Caesar’s invitation to join the antirepublican forces, he was driven into exile where he brooded about the duty he owed to himself, his family and his country. Caesar’s Rome and Putin’s Russia are vastly different polities, yet the dilemmas Russian intellectuals and political activists face nowadays bear more than a fleeting resemblance to those that ultimately cost Cicero his life. The ensuing debate split the Russian intelligentsia into factions whose members’ violent disagreements bespeak profound fissure not likely to heal anytime soon. Liberal opponents of the invasion come from the same top tier of the Russian cultural elite, although their fortunes follow a different trajectory, reminding us what it’s like to fight the authoritarian regime from within. Sociologist and political activist Leonid Gozman ended up with a broken arm after the police roughed him up during an anti-Putin demonstration.
