The Intelligentsia: Taming Nihilism. From “Thaw” to “Perestroika”

Abstract

This article is a fragment of a work devoted to the issues of
figurative representation in Russian cinema. The article briefly analyzes
the evolution of the scientist's image, from the period of the “thaw” to the
beginning of “perestroika”. The author's theoretical approach is based on the
definition of nihilism given by N.Berdyaev in his article “Russian Socialism
and Nihilism”. According to the author of the article, one of the directions
of the policy of the Soviet government in relation to the intelligentsia was to
use the features of nihilism, which are the essence of the Russian and Soviet
intelligentsia. Of course, this policy is reflected in the cinema. The article
describes two stages in the cinema of the Soviet period: the “thaw” and “70s –
early 80s”. Characterizing the image of a scientist in the era of the “thaw”, the
author notes that this is a scientist who has ideals, who does not compromise –
everything in the name of the goal, he won’t tolerate meanness and dishonesty.
The article traces the changes taking place in the representation of this
image in national cinema over more than two decades. The author concludes
that the lack of people who can seriously care about the public good leads to
the fact that in the difficult historical period there were no champions capable
of maintaining confidence in the reality of ideals in the state. Protecting
society from moral decay, which was the main task of the intelligentsia, was
removed from the agenda. The feeling of its own marginality, sectarianism,
heresy, not only its habitual removal from the life of the state, but also its
anti-state stance as a principle of behavior, all of it led to the fact that in the
90s., focused on themselves and their well-being as the material embodiment
of what equaled the public good according to the understanding at the time,
the intellectuals could not offer anything except another round of nihilism
in relation to Soviet history and quickly left the historical scene and almost
disappeared from the screens as a meaningful image.