A note on Russia's middle class

• The Gentry are a leisure class who are prone to "salon" activities (Courts says they just sat around and read books, and then discussed those books)
• these people formed an intellectual literary class called the intelligentsia. They politicized into two classes
  • The Westernizers: wanted to have an Industrial Revolution, political liberalism, economic capitalism, believed in zeitgeist (the spirit of the times)
    • these people evolved further into their own political party called the Kadets (who were basically Classical Liberals)
    • Socialists like Alexander Hersen wanted communal peasants and weak capitalism of Russia.
    • Bakunin and Nechaiev were anarchists who were in the First International with Marx. Believed in change through terror. They tried to kill Alexander III 5 times, and the 5th time he was killed by the People's will in 1881
  • Slavophiles: more conservative, believed that Russia had a unique destiny, volksgeist, develop in their own slavic way
    • led to a conservative political party the "Tsar's Men."
    • believed that the Tsar's reforms do not affect his office or title
    • the Tsar is autocratic and is served by a council of ministers. The favorite principle minister was Pobiedonostev.
    • believed in Russification and that Autocracy was sacred