The intelligentsia and emigration: strategic prospects, unrealized possibilities, and personal risks

Abstract

As if in a bad movie, I had а recurring dream while working on this essay. In the dream, they’re getting ready to kick me out again. This time, for a different reason. Not because I’m a ‘relic of the Cold War,’ and therefore a stone in the government’s shoe. Now I’m going to be expelled for corrupting my audience with my liberal/democratic ideas. A man from Washington is expected to give a speech about it. There are rumors that this envoy of a new policy will demand that members of the ‘fake mass media,’ financed by the U.S. Congress, strive to instill the feeling of patriotism in their audience, along with moral values and spiritual moorings. I’m 70 now, not 57 as I was the last time, and the prospect of experiencing it again fills me with dread as I envision my rising from the ashes to which I am about to be reduced and beginning to push the stone up the hill all over again. My colleagues are outraged in private, but when I ask if they will stay silent like the last time, the instinct for self-preservation kicks in, as they hold up their hands in desperation: ‘You know how it is, what’s the point of peeing against the wind... ’ Perhaps the most depressing thing this time around was witnessing the intelligentsia abandoning its historical mission, morphing into the post-intelligentsia or specialists engaged in intellectual work. The so-called ‘professionals.’