Liberal Intellectuals: Then and Now
By Byron Matthews

Much about the "liberal intelligentsia" of 1850s Russia seems oddly familiar. Its members were mostly literary types, writers and editors from gentry backgrounds; deeply critical of the inequalities of Russian society, their reform proposals drew heavily on the experiments and theorizing of European socialists. But far from the unfettered celebrity enjoyed by liberal intellectuals in today's America, the Russians were underground critics. Subject to continual surveillance as enemies of the Tsar, their publications censored, their discussion circles infiltrated, Russian liberal intellectuals lived under constant threat of arrest, Siberian exile, or worse. It seems all the more remarkable, then, that attitudes and perceptions among America's liberal intellectuals would so closely resemble those of their earlier Russian counterparts.

During the Crimean War (1853-56), for example, the Russian intelligentsia was firmly defeatist, "even more or less hoping for a victory of [Russia's adversaries] as a blow against the intolerable regime of Nicholas I."* Substitute George Bush II, and versions of this stance toward the War on Terror are not hard to find among our own intelligentsia, even with reference to the attacks of September 11. The Chomskyite litany is numbingly familiar: The list of our nation's crimes is so long, and its current leadership so evil, that the world can only benefit from our injury or defeat. For some of our liberal intellectuals, as with their earlier Russian brethren, there seems to be nothing that promises greater hope than the humiliation of their own nation and its leaders.

In terms of a then-popular distinction between 'strong' and 'weak' types, the Russian liberal intelligentsia of the 1850s was decidedly weak. "Its members always behave in a similarly pusillanimous fashion when the time comes to take some decisive action... faced with the challenge of putting their exalted ideas and feelings to the test of practice, they hesitate, stumble, and fall into confusion." As a current example of such indecisiveness consider the acclaimed Mid-East specialist who, after weeks of eloquently making the case for regime change in Iraq on the editorial pages of his prominent liberal newspaper, suddenly went wobbly just as the invasion die was cast. The episode surely tells us something about why liberal intellectuals have had more success as newspaper columnists than as military commanders.

The indecisiveness of the Russian liberal intellectual was thought to arise in part "because he is burdened with the enlightened values of humanity and civilization and is morally torn by the problem of attempting to live up to them." The burden of superior values is commonly claimed by liberal intellectuals today, also. But being morally torn is not conducive to decisive action. Superior values confronting an imperfect world may produce only paralyzed irresolution; as opportunity wanes, the liberal intellectual stands immobilized by doubt, having failed to find a morally perfect choice. Members and admirers of the liberal elite will often portray this inability to get off the dime as a virtue by attributing it, incorrectly, to some elevated appreciation of complexity, subtlety, and nuance not shared by those of simpler mind and lesser ideology.

The 1850s Russian intellectual was also seen, by virtue of his education, to be endowed "with the capacity promptly to understand suffering in all its aspects, and to experience within himself the misfortune and unhappiness of others." This conceit is often heard today, that enhanced empathic sensibilities obligate the liberal intellectual to "feel your pain," as it was once expressed. Such exquisite sensitivity to the sorrows of humanity may inevitably give rise to the perception that things are everywhere bad and always getting worse, that progress is a delusion. Thus, perhaps, are provoked the liberal intellectual's permanent dissatisfaction with the world and his constant impulse to iron out its imperfections.

Finally, the Russian liberal intellectual was said to possess "one outstanding quality: he is capable of understanding himself and, when the occasion demands it, of recognizing the poverty of his own moral substance." The self-absorption of the liberal intellectual would be a familiar observation today even if Bill Clinton were not out promoting his book. More rarely noted is the risk that self-examination may reveal one's own lack of moral substance. Perhaps we find there a clue to the mystery of the liberal intellectual's remarkable ability, in every era, to leave behind the wreckage caused by his latest efforts, and to proceed without a backward glance toward some new project for the compulsory improvement of his fellow man.

How can we account for these shared attitudes between groups so widely separated by time and culture? Part of the explanation may lie in their similarly disadvantaged political positions, in both cases at odds with prevailing ideological currents and relegated to an outsider role. We might wonder, then, if the liberal worldview would survive a successful ascent to political power. Or would most of it be shed along the way in favor of, say, opportunistic morality and lack of concern for human suffering? We do know that when the originally liberal and humanitarian Russian intelligentsia finally took power in 1917, the results were catastrophic in those precise directions. Conservatives understandably find the perspectives and attitudes of today's liberal intellectuals, acting as outside critics, to be often unhelpful or misguided, and occasionally infuriating. But perhaps that role of external critic is the most benign one for the liberal intelligentsia to occupy.

*Quotations are from Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859, Princeton, 1983.

Byron Matthews, a sociologist retired from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and a partner in an educational software company, lives near Santa Fe, NM.