Communication, Democracy, and Intelligentsia

In the early 1990s, a group of Russian and American scholars teamed up to investigate the impact of Gorbachev’s reform on Soviet society, focusing especially on the role the intelligentsia played in fomenting glasnost and perestroika. Results of this collaborative study were published in a volume Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness (Shalin, 1996a). The contributors worked on the assumption that perestroika was an irreversible achievement, that distortions the reforms wrought in Russian society would be smoothed out over time. Today, this assumption appears overoptimistic. After nearly twenty years in power, Vladimir Putin dismantled key democratic institutions, badly weakened other, and established a personalistic regime that reversed many political gains brought about by his predecessors. An international team assembled for the present project starts with the premise that we live in the age of counterperestroika. Our focus is still on the intelligentsia and its contribution to dismantling the Soviet system, but now we want to explore the unanticipated consequences of social change threatening the existence of the intelligentsia as a distinct group. Our team includes prominent scholars, writers, and civil rights leaders who illuminate the political agendas and personal choices confronting intellectuals in today’s Russia. Contributors look at the current trends through different lenses, they disagree about the intelligentsia’s past achievements and looming future, yet they all feel the need to examine its local and world-historical significance. This essay aims to place the debate in historical context and elucidate its relevance to the field of communication studies. I begin with the communication-specific conditions fortifying democratic institutions and show how distorted communications have hobbled the Russian intelligentsia throughout history. Next, I review the social context within which the intelligentsia emerged, the special place it occupies in Russian discourse, and the acute distress counterperestroika inflicted on Russian society in general and public intellectuals in particular. After examining the systematic distortions that communication suffers in repressive societies, I zero in on the intelligentsia’s role in modeling emotionally intelligent conduct and scrutinize the communication sphere as the condition of possibility for a viable democracy. I close this introduction with a brief survey of the articles collected in this volume and reflections on the prospects for a communication theory in the pragmatist key

“Readings†of N. V. Gogol`s Compassion by Turkish Novelist Alev Alatli

As a result of the evolutions one of the founding fathers of the 19th century Russian literature Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol experienced in his thought, 'a few Gogol views' have been formed in the history of Russian literature according to both Western specialists and native Russian researchers. As Gogol is known more for his contribution to critical realism in Russian literature, the deep and vast allusions to layers of meaning in the plots of his works under the influence of despotism at that period make Gogol's works today much more valuable. N. V. Gogol's allusions of 'vastness and deepness' had quite different reflections on man's search for his interpretation and reading, and this difference has been keeping on widening his great diversity of understanding. Alev Alatlı shared the Gogol's readings with her readers in the novel Not Enlightenment, Compassion! / Aydınlanma DeÄŸil, Merhamet! with its unique plot and style, the first book of this series consisting of four volumes whose main title Following Gogol/Gogol'ün Ä°zinden' is given by her in the year 2003. In the novel the title 'Compassion' is preferred to 'Enlightenment', in pursuit of Gogol's readings after 151 years of his death by Alev Alatlı, a highly cultured intellectual; her perceptions of him and the actions triggered by this perceptions is the purpose of this presentation on the basis of the aforementioned work.Origins of Gogol’s compassion, its perception by Russian writers of that time, “Readings†of N. V. Gogol’s Compassion by Alev Alatlı based on cultural diversities

Beyond the Imagery: The Encounters of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky with an Image of the Dead Christ

Through an analysis of Kierkegaard’s and Dostoevsky’s approaches to the theme of the death of Christ – one of the major leitmotifs in the debate of their contemporaries conveyed through theological and philosophical considerations, but also expressed in novels and in art – I show how the thinkers comprehended and articulated in their works the religious challenges awaiting the modern man

Two essays by Roman Jakobson, translated into English: ‘About Mayakovsky’s Later Lyrical Poems’ and ‘Dostoyevsky Echoed In Mayakovsky’s Work’

The two essays by Roman Jakobson which are now presented in English translation for the first time were originally published in Russian, in one of the nine volumes (a tenth volume is under preparation, edited by Professor Linda Waugh) of Jakobson’s Selected Writings. In keeping with a number of his other essays in various languages, it was published in Russian, in the English edition: Selected Writings, Vol 5, On Verse, Its Masters and Explorers (1979) The Hague, Mouton (pp382-412). The title details of the essays are: КПОЗДНЕЙ ЛИРИКЕ МАЯКОВСКОГО (pp382-405), translated as: ‘About Mayakovsky’s Later Lyrical Poems’; and ДОСТОЕВСКИЙ В ОТГОЛОСКАХ МАЯКОВСКОГО (pp406-412), translated as: ‘Dostoyevsky Echoed In Mayakovsky’s Work’. These essays were originally written as a commentary to previously unpublished texts by the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky for an edition of his work Russkij literaturnyi arxiv (1956) New York, Harvard University Press. Roman Jakobson wrote about Mayakovsky in his essay: ‘On a Generation That Squandered Its Poets’ in 1931. It was re-published in English in Language in Literature (1987) Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press (pp273-300). These two newly translated essays reveal insights, not only into Mayakovsky but into Roman Jakobson himself, both as a theoretician and as a person. Known for his commitment to, and exploration of Formalism, the essays also reveal the more personal biographical response of a close friend. However, Jakobson clearly states his Formalist analytical position in the opening sentence of the first essay: ‘In Mayakovsky’s literary works, love poems and lyrical cycles befittingly alternate with lyrical epic poems about world events’. As is indicated in the Colloquium essay to which these translations provide an addendum, this alternation of composition is also evident within individual poems. After providing details of Mayakovsky’s personal life events, Jakobson returns to Formalist analysis, in the penultimate paragraph of the second essay, stating that Mayakovsky often made: ‘declarations about the alternation of genres and their dramatic collisions; about the fight between the lyrical and anti-lyrical inspiration. This is not a fight that was imposed upon the poet. No one could have imposed anything upon such a stubborn poet’. The English translation of these essays provides fresh knowledge of Roman Jakobson the theorist by revealing how he uses personal biographical details to provide material for his Formalist analysis

The Confucian Puzzle: Justice and Care in Aquinas

Ethical theories of justice and care are often presented in opposition to each other. Eleonore Stump argues that Aquinas’s moral theory has the resources to bring justice and care together. There is, however, a potential worry for her view raised by the ‘Confucian Puzzle’. The puzzle poses a moral dilemma between care and justice that serves as a test case for Stump’s picture. In this paper, I provide a brief overview of the justice and care debate along with the subsequent challenges that both positions face in order to situate Aquinas’s position as Stump defends it. Next, I present the Confucian Puzzle and consider how Aquinas might respond to it. Finally, given his response, I make two claims. First, the unifying virtue of charity enables Aquinas to resolve the tension between justice and care as it appears in the Confucian Puzzle. Second, Stump’s integration thesis only obtains given what Aquinas says about charity