Il paradigma dell''uomo superfluo'. Il processo di formazione dell'intelligencija russa e la sua estraniazione

The article aims to investigate the formation process of Russian intelligentsia. In doing this, I decided to use a literary paradigm, coming directly from the art world. A choice of this kind is explained by the inseparable link that, in the first half of the nineteenth century (and beyond), exists in Russia between politics and literature. The Russian writer, crushed by an autocratic and censored reality, suspended between an education based on European values and gravitated in a reality irreconcilable to them, finds in art and novel the only means to express all his social disappointment. The first part of the article aims to present the so-called paradigm of “superfluous man” — in which the concept of alienation is expressed; the second part, instead, aims to present the historical formation of intelligentsia up to its complete realization coinciding with the moment of maximum political repression, under Nicholas I, from which the paradigm aforementioned arises.