Reemergency and self-identity: On two variations of the salvation for intelligentsia in Russian literature

Abstract

This paper deals with the strategies of overcoming the ruin in the intelligentsia discourse of the Russian literature. Two conflicting ways of saving the intelligentsia - reemergence and self-identity (resistance to circumstances) - are analyzed using the example of penal servitude experience and its textual transformation by Dostoyevsky. Both ways had fundamental differences and coexisted in the state of permanent conflict. The ideas of reemergence and self-identity (resistance to circumstances) became the integral part of the intelligentsia discourse of the Russian writers in the XIX and XX centuries. Two ways of overcoming own death defined not only the views of writers on the intelligentsia, but the intelligentsia-related plots in the literature.