The Attitude of the Soviet Intelligentsia and the Change in Its Attitude towards Power during the Years of Reforms of N.S. Khrushchev

This article is devoted to understanding the genesis of the Soviet intelligentsia and identifying meaningful changes in its attitude to power in 1953–1964. The research methodology is based on complementing the historical-party approach with sociological theories of functionalism and structuralism, as well as the theory of elites and the new class. The hypothesis of the study is the complex nature of the Soviet intelligentsia, which included the remnants of the pre-revolutionary educated layer, as well as representatives of the “new” Soviet intelligentsia who emerged during the years of Soviet power, possessing high cognitive qualities, partisanship and the ability for social conformism and mimicry. The modernization of the socio-political course under N.S. Khrushchev and his opening of the floodgates of criticism of the “cult of personality” of J.V. Stalin revived the function of critical analysis and construction of new meanings, characteristic of the intelligentsia, which was successfully suppressed in the USSR. The growth of critical sentiment among the Soviet intelligentsia in the conditions of desacralization of power and half-hearted de-Stalinization, the articulation of doubts about the effectiveness of the Soviet system began in the early 1960s to failures in economic policy. The economic uncompetitiveness of socialism in the conditions of weakening mobilization mechanisms for its development gives rise to a crisis of confidence in power among the Soviet intelligentsia. In the conditions of the USSR's transition to a post-industrial society, there is a growing dissonance between the humanization and technocratization of the Soviet intelligentsia and the further dogmatization of the CPSU system of ideological education. The result is an increasing trend since the mid-1960s anomie of the Soviet intelligentsia from power.