ABSTRACT
The friendship circles of the generation of the “remarkable decade” have been traditionally conceived of by Western and Russian authors alike as a “holy union” of fellow believers, a “brotherhood of warriors,” bound together by a doctrine and alienated from society at large. Indeed, this conception of the circles has been repeatedly offered as a standard definition of the Russian intelligentsia. We have attempted to show, however, that the circles of the first freelance literati in Russia were neither organized solely on the basis of allegiance to ideological tenets, nor were their members conscious of being alienated from the mass of indifferent humanity. As Herzen phrased it:
We were not like the emaciated monks of Zurbaran, we did not weep over the sins of the world, we only sympathized with its sufferings, and were ready for a smile for anything and not depressed with forebodings of our sacrifices in the future. Ascetics who are forever austere have always excited my suspicion; if they are not pretending, either their mind or their stomach is out of order.1
