SUMMARY:

In his article, Mark Lipovetsky proposes a critical approach to the scientific intelligentsia of the1960s, which, according to common opinion, constituted the leading group in the liberal movement of the late Soviet period. The article, however, focuses not on the political but the cultural ideology of this group, which the author defines as the ITR-discourse (ITR – the Soviet-period acronym for scientific/technological specialists). In the author’s opinion, this ideology has outlived the Soviet period, shaping the mainstream of post-Soviet liberalism as well. In discussing this cultural ideology (poetics of the discourse), Lipovetsky isolates its characteristics, such as essentialism, resistance to complexity, double confrontation of the authorities and the “masses,” and the subsequent exceptionalist position of the intelligentsia. The Strugatsky brothers have effectively summarized this complex of features in the perennial figure of their science-fiction prose (extremely popular among the scientific intelligentsia), the progressor, a representative of the advanced (i.e., communist in the specific ITR interpretation) civilization situated in a backward, medieval/fascist society. This character feels alienated from society and tries to help those in need but well realizes the danger of a large-scale revolutionary invasion. Lipovetsky’s article traces the evolution of this character in the Strugatskys’ prose. In the author’s opinion, Viktor Pelevin’s cynical spin doctors emerge as the direct heirs to “progressors,” which reflects transformations of the idealistic cultural ideology of the sixties in the post-Soviet period. The article concludes with the proposition that the further effectiveness of the protest movement that started in 2011–2012 will depend on the liberal intelligentsia’s ability to overcome the cultural ideology that they inherited from the scientific intelligentsia of the Thaw period.