Description - The Russian Intelligentsia by Richard Pipes
In 1990, after the fall of Soviet Communism, Andrei Sinyavsky went home to Russia. In exile for more than two decades, the writer known as Abram Tertz had suffered prison and oppression for his lacerating critiques of total power in such works as "On Socialist Realism" and "The Trial Begins". This text is a record of an exile's return - both a chronicle of poverty, crime and corruption, and a call for Russian intellectuals to rearm in a new struggle for freedom and democracy. In three essays, Sinyavsky creates a picture of today's Russian intelligentsia and its role as a conscience and critic of the fall of communism, as well as a portrait of economic and political stagnation under Yeltsin. The first essay revisits an historically troubled relationship: that of the Russina intelligentsia and the "masses" for whom it has traditionally spoken. Drawing parallels to the intellectuals under the Czar, he finds that contemporary writers and artists have lost touch with popular interests. This book reasserts the power of free thought and critical understanding in a society wrestling with democracy.
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