A History of Russian Thought

The history of ideas has played a central role in Russia's political and social history. Understanding its intellectual tradition and the way the intelligentsia have shaped the nation is crucial to understanding the Russia of today. This history examines important intellectual and cultural currents (the Enlightenment, nationalism, nihilism, and religious revival) and key themes (conceptions of the West and East, the common people, and attitudes to capitalism and natural science) in Russian intellectual history. Concentrating on the Golden Age of Russian thought in the mid-nineteenth century, the contributors also look back to its eighteenth-century origins in the flowering of culture following the reign of Peter the Great, and forward to the continuing vitality of Russia's classical intellectual tradition in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. With brief biographical details of over fifty key thinkers and an extensive bibliography, this book provides a fresh, comprehensive overview of Russian intellectual history.

Preface; Part I. Context: 1. Introduction William Leatherbarrow and Derek Offord; 2. The political and social order David Saunders; 3. Russian intelligentsias Gary Hamburg; Part II. Intellectual Currents: 4. Russia's eighteenth-century Enlightenment Gareth Jones; 5. Conservatism in the age of Alexander I and Nicholas I William Leatherbarrow; 6. Nihilism Richard Peace; 7. Tradition and counter-tradition: the radical intelligentsia and classical Russian literature Gary Saul Morson; 8. Religious renaissance in the Silver Age Ruth Coates; Part III. Themes and Constructs: 9. The West Vera Tolz; 10. The East David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye; 11. The people Derek Offord; 12. The intelligentsia and capitalism Wayne Dowler; 13. Natural science Charles Ellis; Part IV. The Afterlife of Classical Thought: 14. Continuities in the Soviet period Galin Tihanov; 15. Dialectical materialism and Soviet science in the 1920s and 1930s Daniel Todes and Nikolai Krementsov; 16. Afterword James Scanlan; Biographical appendix; Selected bibliography; Index.