Western Civilization II / Unit 11 WC2 1019 short lesson, about 20 seconds
The Intelligentsia: Novelists Under a Secret Police
Captions available
The idea
Russia's intelligentsia, nearly all nobles, produced modern Russian literature: Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Chekhov. Under Nicholas I's police an intellectual was close to a criminal, and Dostoevsky himself went into exile. The anchor's point: treating thinkers as criminals made criminals of thinkers.
In practice
The Russian "soul" as a literary theme.
Where people slip
Anchor-only; the witnesses do not treat the intelligentsia.
Your place on the trail
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