Joseph Stalin The Intelligentsia Analysis

The intelligentsia, a bourgeois class in pre-Revolutionary Russia, were a group of people that acted as a leadership role in shaping Russian culture and politics. According to Sheila Fitzpatrick, author of The Cultural Front and Modern Russian Historian, states that "the old intelligentsia had 'real culture '…and being products of a prerevolutionary bourgeois upbringing…they knew how to behave in a cultured manner in good society." It was in the late thirties that Josef Stalin both declared the Soviet Union as a two class, the workers and the peasants, and one stratum, the intelligentsia, society. In the midst of the Cultural Revolution the intelligentsia or "old intelligentsia" consisted of professors who predominately taught the vydvizhentsy, …show more content…
For example, in a letter from a group of cinematographers to Stalin, the cinematographers stated six reasons as to why the "moral condition of creative workers is very difficult". The written tone of their letter seems to be that of concern and conflict between wanting to maintain their creative flow and not having their work be altered or censored by both the Cinematography leadership or Stalin. Therefore, they ask for Stalin’s intercession to "play a decisive role in the development of the Soviet cinema of art” so that perhaps they may have agency over their own work. However, most of the time this did not work out for the intelligentsia because of Stalin 's own biases on themes. For instance, in a letter to V.P. Stavsky, Stalin comes to the defense of, according to Clark, a "mediocre writer", Leonis Sobolev; Stalin writes "…he is capricious and uneven…However these characteristics in my opinion are present in all major literary talents…there is no need to require him to write about kolkhozes of Magnitogorsk…Let him write what he wants and when he