The intelligentsia and censorship

During the Soviet times, „…it was the spirit, meaning and essence of the intelligentsia that was wiped out“ (Tolstaya 318).

In her text Tolstaya speaks of the banning and attempted eradication of the intelligentsia during the Soviet Union and the perestroika. „Everything that was considered the best in society and culture was declared the worst and systematically destroyed“ (Tolstaya 316). Is this destruction of the best in society and culture an effort to censor individualism in the different member states of the Soviet Union? Moreover, could this destruction of culture be an attempt to give more weight and significance to the ideology, making the ideology a substitute for culture? The banning and eradication of the intelligentsia could be seen as a way of taking offense and the use of censorship as expression of social paranoia. Also censoring and eradicating the intelligentsia, in a way, eradicated the spirit of the people of the Soviet Union. Tolstaya states that the intelligentsia felt responsible to voice the ‘people’ of the Soviet Union and hoped that by sacrificing themselves, the ‘people’ would become enlightened and stand up against their oppressors (319-320). So the censorship of the intelligentsia could definitely be seen as an expression of social paranoia. They were the independent enlightened mind of the Soviet Union, and thus the biggest threat to the regime. Furthermore, as Coetzee states taking offense is a demonstration of loss of power. Thus that when the oppressors took offense to the influence of the intelligentsia, they also admitted that the intelligentsia had significant power and influence. However, one could also argue that by ‘sacrificing’ for the good of the people, the intelligentsia also applied a sort of self-censoring. They hoped that by sacrificing their own voice they would be able to voice the people.  Is this kind of censoring of the intelligentsia also a sign of a decaying system that is trying to kill the enlightenment in an effort to save what still can be saved?

Coetzee, J.M.. “The Work of the Censor: Censorship in South Africa.” Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996, 185-203.

Robbe, Ksenia. ‘Resisting Censorship” Leiden University, The Hague,February 2015. Workgroup Presentation

Tolstaya, Tatyana. “The Perils of Utopia: The Russian Intelligentsia under Communism and Perestroyka.” Development and Change 27 (1996): 315-329.