Home – Home – Jornals – "Philosophy of Education" 2014 number 5

The modern sociocultural situation is characterized by unprecedented rise of scientific and public interest to the culture problems. The search for new reference points, an integrating basis of the society forces to address the issue of understanding the basic values of the Russian culture, which more than once in the history have proved their necessity for its harmonious development. In this regard, the discussion of the Russian cultural heritage becomes topical. In this article the author investigates the organizational forms of activity of creative intellectuals, which is significant from the point of view of implementation of cultural continuity, involvement of the public to the solution of social problems and realization of cultural policy. Several problematic aspects of the history of Russian culture are more completely and more deeply comprehended: the phenomenon of intelligentsia, the specifics of a «transitional» cultural epoch, its display in the creative person’s experience, etc. The intelligentsia is considered by the author in interrelation with the phenomenon of «life’s creativity», that means theoretical and practical attempts of creation of new forms of public or individual life. The modern level of culturological research allows approaching analysis of activity of the organizations of the creative intellectuals as working with cultural texts, which represent artist‘s thought about the world and the people. Such associations started to be studied long ago and still are an important subject of Russian historiography. However, the major part of the literature about their activity has the art-study and literary criticism character. In this article there is presented a culturological aspect of studying various associations as a concentration of spiritual, intellectual, art life and a specific way of organization of creative intellectuals. The transfer of cultural information, support of cultural continuity, specifics of art culture are the most important characteristics of the spiritual atmosphere of the society. Not only the «metropolis» (professional collectives, schools, academies), but also the «periphery» (art circles, salons, clubs, evenings, etc.) has to be an object of studying in this case. The research of activity of such associations is, certainly, an important culturological task (on the example of the second half of XIX - the beginning of the XX century, when we can see the heyday of various organizational forms of activity of creative intellectuals). It should be noted that one of the most remarkable forms of the intelligentsia organization during the considered period was an art club; therefore, the author pays much attention to definition of this concept and to its characteristic features on the basis of the comparative analysis with other types of associations.