THE GOVERNMENT, THE CENTRAL COMMISSION FOR IMPROVINGTHE LIFE OF SCIENTISTS,AND THE CREATIVE INTELLIGENTSIA IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE 1920S: POSITIONS, STATUSES, DECORATIONS

The article studies the problem of interrelation between the government and the creative intelligentsia in the 1920s. It analyzes the documentation of the Central Commission for Improving the Life of Scientists (TSEKUBU) concerning the division of artistic intellectuals into ca­tegories, the issuance of rations and benefits, the materials on social and welfare institutions — the Homes for Elderly Scientists of Moscow and Leningrad (Petrograd), the sanatorium “Uzkoe”. The task is set and solved to investigate the examples of interaction (instead of conflict) of the government and intelligentsia, the features of their mutual positioning. The author concludes that the relationship between the authorities and the creative intelligentsia of the first post-revolutionary decade cannot be clearly defined as “winners-losers”: the need for coope­ration dictated certain compromises that were made by both sides. The work of the Central Commission for Improving the Life of Scientists serves as an example of such a compromise, the intervention of the party and Soviet authorities in it was minimal before 1929. It is no­ted that the TSEKUBU’s positions were not weak: using the system of client-patron relations with the government, it managed to preserve the “fragments” of the old, outgoing way of life, protecting and supporting those who, due to their social origin, political position until 1917 and further life strategy, were not close to the new political regime. The author identifies the reasons for this in the preservation and operation of the system of corporate relations, established before 1917. This system could not be destroyed in a short time and was implemented through the work in the TSEKUBU’s expert commissions of the persons who had been familiar, since pre-revolutio­nary time, with the principles of its operation and the ba­lance of power; through a system of sureties and patronage; through the approval of the TSEKUBU’s lists and decisions by the new government. It formed the specifics of the position of a narrow circle of intellectuals and the features of its positioning in relation to the government. Inclusion in this circle was determined not by the political position and loyalty to the regime, but by the personal fame (scientific reputation) of representatives of the creative intelligentsia, their corporate ties and, possibly, their belonging to certain creative associations and institutions.

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