Slavophile and Westernizer: Two Types of the Russian Intelligentsia (Linguistic Aspect)
The concepts of “intelligentsia” and “intellectual”, on the one hand, and “Slavophilia (Slavophile)” and “Westernization (Westernizer)”, on the other hand, described in the article, are ideologemes in the socio-political vocabulary. When they interact, there emerge complex conceptual and semantic unities. By its inner form, the word “intelligentsia” borrowed from Latin, means “the highest degree of consciousness, self-consciousness”, and the first spokesmen for the self-consciousness of the Russian nation were Slavophiles and Westernizers. The word intelligentsia was first recorded in Russian dictionaries in 1836 in the meaning of “noble, European-educated society”. This society also included most of the Slavophiles and Westernizers - educated and critically minded people. Despite the absence of direct coincidences in the definitions of the words “intelligentsia, Slavophil, Westernizer”, their connection as ideological concepts becomes obvious, and “Slavophile and Westernizer” find themselves in the semantic field of the concept of “intelligentsia” as an antonymous pair. The attitude towards the intelligentsia, as well as towards its individual groups, in Russia always turns out to be emotionally marked, as evidenced by the transformation of the meanings of the lexemes “intelligentsia, Westernizer, Slavophile” from neutral or positive to negative and dismissive. In modern society, the opposition between Slavophile and Westernizer views persists, reflecting the historical dualism of the Russian culture, which manifested itself at all historical stages of its development. Of scientific interest is not only the problem of the semantic transformation of the concepts of “Slavophile, Westernizer, intellectual, intelligentsia” in their relationship, but also their use as certain symbols with opposite connotations of the same word, depending on certain ideological attitudes.