354 LAST YEARS - CONCLUSION
and intellectual successors: making .up the intelligentsia properly speak-
ing, they never forgave the government for suppressing and convicting
the Decembrists. From this time on, Russia's literary and intellectual
elite was to be found among the opposition to the government. Even
when members of the intelligentsia entered government service, they
always did it with mental reservations. Either they felt that under Rus-
sian conditions they had no alternative and tried to resign as soon as
they could (Khom.iakov, Aksakov, for example), or else they entered
government sefYice with the express purpose of being of some use in a
specific situation (Iu. Samarin, Koshelev, Cherkasskii), but they never
identified themselves with the bureaucracy at large, remaining outside
the regular career hierarchy. On the other side stood the government.
It too included men of great intelligence, men with lively intellectual
and artistic interests, and frequently not devoid of unselfish civic con-
sciousness. But they were solidary with the government; they rejected the
path taken by the Decembrists and approved of the Emperor's punish-
ment of the rebels. And consequently, to the intelligentsia, they were
the obedient servants of an abhorred despotism and the objects of
social and cultural ostracism. There could be no common language,
after 1825, between an Orlov, Chernyshev, Benkendorf, Korf, Bludov.
or Uvarov and the intelligentsia. For a while yet, a few outstanding
personalities of Russia's intellectual elite did not identify themselves
exclusively with either group. Among these were Pushkin, Prince
Vilu:emskii. Zhukovskii. But they were a small and dwindling group,
and their influence vanished after the middle of the 1830's.
This fateful split of Russian society changed the social position of
men like Speransky, who in a previous generation might have been
perfectly at home in both groups. It ended for all times the close
relationship and intellectually fruitful collaboration of intellectuals (in
the narrow sense) and officials. While tracing the intellectual make-up
of Speransky, we could point to his connections with writers, teachers.
scholars. religious personalities, and philosophers. After 1825 such a
tie between the bureaucratic and intellectual elites becomes more and
more rare and difficult (at least until the 20th century). As, not un-
expectedly, Speransky cast in his lot with the government, he cut his
ties with the intelligentsia.
And so it was that the'generation of intellectuals who came to
maturity and prominence in the 1830's had no contact or connectionswith him. It was not, incidentally, due to a discrepancy in age, for
Speransky remained intellectually alive and vigorous to his very end.
Writers like Pushkin and Zhukovskii might still be seen at Speransky's