Le conflit entre l'élite dirigeante et l'élite culturelle

The Conflict Between the Power Elite and the Cultural Elite: the Case of Eastern Europe. Conflict between the cultural elite and the power elite is a permanent element in the history of nations. The Platonic idea of "philosophers-kings" provides the only solution of this conflict. The fathers of modern communism could not have openly proposed this solution. However, the earliest power elite in post- revolutionary Russia might be seen as a power elite of "philosophers". Dreams are short-lived, but yet even Stalin pretended to be a philosophical interpretor of the "only true philosophical system of Marxism-Leninism". The character of the cultural elite is determined by the character of the power elite. The more totalitarian the system, the more its culture elite depends upon direct service to the power elite. This servile obedience, however, causes a polarization within the cultural elite. Un-recognized and oppressed intellectual opposition arises on the margin of cultural life. This opposition finds secret support from some factions of the power elite; thus the latter is also slowly but unavoidably divided. This process was most evident in Poland 1955-1956 and in Czechoslovakia 1967-1968. The relation of cultural and power elites in the Soviet Union has differed from that of the East European countries mostly due to the different fates of their intelligentsias. The process whereby the non-conformist cultural elite came into being lasted much longer in Russia than in Eastern Europe. The short periods of enthusiastic cooperation between the cultural and power elites (Poland 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968) must be seen in the framework of national struggles against the Soviet power elite

Communism · Elite · Ethnology · Opposition (politics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Law · Post-Communist Economic and Political Transition