SUBVERTING TRADITION: RUSSIAN INTELLECTUALS AND REVOLUTION IN PETER STRUVE’S PHILOSOPHY
The paper examines the views on the role of intellectuals in the history of Russian political life proposed by a philosopher, economist, politician, and publicist Peter Struve. «Intelligentsia» is characterized by Struve as a special cultural layer of Russian society. Two historical factors contributed to its formation: centuries of political rights deprivation and uncritical perception of Western socialist ideas. Against this background, double estrangement – of polity and religion - gradually developed in the minds of intellectuals. According to Struve’s historic «diagnosis», each participant of the revolutionary events at the beginning of XX century should have shown a responsibility sense: political power, intelligentsia, and people.