ABSTRACT
The intelligent’s isolated position in the country, his rootlessness, the harsh historical circumstance, his lack of serious learning and historical experience, all this has stimulated the psychology of this heroism. Generally speaking, spiritual habits instilled by the Church account for more than one of the better traits of the Russian intelligentsia, which it loses the more it departs from the Church: for example, a certain Puritanism, a rigorous morality, a unique asceticism, and a strictness with regard to personal life. Rejecting Christianity and its norms, our intelligentsia accepts along with atheism—or rather, instead of atheism—the dogmas of the religion of man-Godhood in one or another of the variants elaborated by the Western European Enlightenment, and then turns this religion into idolatry. Heroism strives to save mankind by its own powers and by external means; hence their expectional regard for heroic acts that embody the program of maximalism to a maximal degree.
