The monograph examines the life of the sons of church ministers who chose secular spheres for their activities. Having left their estate, they nevertheless preserved the traditions of their fathers in their moral principles and ideological views. The commonality of upbringing and education of priests formed their self-awareness as a very homogeneous group of intelligentsia, opposing the nobility intellectuals in their ethos. Unlike the nobles, who were imbued with the Western cultural norms of secular civilization, the popovichi were confident in their role as leaders of the Russian people on the way to building paradise on earth, they were characterized by authoritarian thinking and the desire to subordinate personal interests to public ones. Behind the usual political groups of the Russian intelligentsia, Laurie Manchester reveals deeper collective identities and faults, when revolutionaries and monarchists often turn out to be kindred spirits.