conviction that the golden age lies not in the past but in the future."
Saltykov did not stand alone in his day as pupil of European socialists. Annenkov the critic wrote similarly concerning the powerful leaven of French socialism among the younger Russians. Identical, too, were the accounts given by J. J. Panaev, A. P. Miljukov, and other writers. From 1845 onwards there gathered round the publicist Butaševič-Petraševskii a circle of authors who became known as the Petraševscy. To this group belonged Dostoevskii, Bělinskii, Pleščeev, Apollon Maikov the poet and his brother Valerian the critic, Danilevskii, subsequently noted as a slavophil, and many others. The abolition of serfdom, the enfranchisement of literature and journalism, and the reform of judicial procedure, were standing topics of lively discussion. Petraševskii was an enthusiastic disciple of Fourier and Saint-Simon.[1]
The socialisation of literature was likewise indicated by the increasingly democratic tone of books and periodicals. In former days writers had belonged almost exclusively to the aristocracy, but now their ranks were recruited from the middle classes as well. Sons of impoverished nobles, sons of priests, officials, and merchants, became men of letters; and there were even a few proletarian authors, as for instance Polevoi. This democratisation of literature and journalism was deliberate, as we learn from Marlinskii as well as from Polevoi, and above all from Bělinskii.[2]
The democratisation of literature and journalism had, further, peculiar social significance for Russia, inasmuch as it led to the constitution of the intelligentsia as a distinct caste. Down to our own day the definition of this concept remains an unsolved problem of Russian criticism and philosophy, but its first denotation was the oppositional intelligentsia.
In those days the influence in Russia of English philosophical thought was small. As has been shown, English con-
- ↑ Petraševskii, writing under the pseudonym of Kirillov, published a Dictionary of Foreign Terms. This non-committal title was to cover a species of progressive political encyclopædia. but the completion of the work was prevented by the arrest of Petraševskii and his friends. Petraševskii died in Siberia, but his comrades survived and returned to Russia.
- ↑ In this sense the Russians frequently speak of the entry of the raznočincy (plebeians) into literature. Glěb Uspenski. gives a casual definition of a raznočinec as "one who stands outside the professions and classes." In the dictionaries we are told that the raznočinec is "one without personal nobility belonging to no guild, and exempt from taxation."
