The Russian Empire of the Wane Period: Learned Elites and Authority

Abstract

The greatness of any empire is composed of the diversity of structural factors among which a special position is taken by the quality of science and education development. This factor is vividly revealed in the learned elite and their relationships with the authorities. Every empire has its own experience of the learned elite and authorities relations, its own cultural traditions and scientific novelties. The Russian learned elite of the Russian autocracy's last existence decades shows us the rise in scientific thought and cultural activities. Not without reason, this period of time is called Silver Age of the Russian culture. That rise was broken by the Russian revolution to have thrown the scientific thought development in Russia back for decades. The present paper deals with the examination of those characteristics.

The Entity And Attributes Of Ersatz-Elites

“…The specific authoritarian nature of political processes (so called «manual control»), social differentiation, marginalization result in the decreasing activity of democratic institutes, hinder the formation of a civil society, and, consequently, in autarchy and absenteeism (Karabushenko, 2015). Rising authority of traditional institutes, national clan nepotism, kinship and the like prevent the elites from benefitting the entrepreneur system recruiting, thus leading to permanent generation of social and political tensions.…”