A. I. Bobkov

The purpose of the article is a philosophical analysis of the problem of the connection between ethnocultural identity and religious experience, as a watershed between intellectuals and intelligentsia within Russian society. In the context of this division, the author argues that the antinomic state of the identity of the intelligentsia in Russia is obvious. In this connection, it is proposed to carry out a philosophical and anthropological analysis of her worldview. Its essence lies in the fact that the intelligentsia in Russia easily defines itself as the “conscience of the people,” but does not recognize itself as the creator of unjustified symbolic violence against it. The author suggests that her marginal position in the social structure is due to the fact that she does not know the true meaning of constitutive violence in the ethnocultural space. Within the religious experience of Orthodoxy, the constitutive sacred is contained in the inviolability of distance from the West and in the special flow of social time, where retribution for inadequate violent exchange is postponed or even canceled. The process of denying the leading role of the founding sacred in the history of the people leads to the fact that the intelligentsia is not capable of identifying the sociality of a multi-subjective nature that has developed in Russia. Violence through fanatical imitation of the West, chosen by the Russian intelligentsia, is a way to strengthen the phobia of ethnocultural identity. A phobia that Russian intellectuals help overcome. The “deadly identity” of the Russian people is a phenomenon that was constructed and continues to be constructed by the intelligentsia, which believes that a rational, disenchanted existence can accommodate a person.

Bobkov Alexander Ivanovich, Candidate of Philosophy, Associate Professor, Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Social and Humanitarian Disciplines, East Siberian Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, 110, Lermontov st., Irkutsk, 664078, Russian Federation, e-mail: iab71@inbox.ru

Bobkov A.I. The Connection Between Religious Experience and Ethnocultural Identity as an Indicator of the Destructive Social Construction of the Russian Intelligentsia (to the 70th Anniversary of V. V. Chernykh). The Bulletin of Irkutsk State University. Series Political Science and Religion Studies, 2024, vol. 47, pp. 179-185. https://doi.org/10.26516/2073-3380.2024.47.179 (in Russian)

religion, religious experience, intellectuals, intelligentsia, ethnocultural identity, Russophobia, sacred, founding violence, philosophy, social.

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