- For the coffee shop company, see Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea.
The intelligentsia (from Russian интеллигенция, Russian
pronunciation: [ɪntʲɪlʲɪˈɡʲentsɨjə]; from Latin: intelligentia)
is a social class of people engaged in complex mental labour
aimed at disseminating culture. This therefore might include
everyone from artists to school teachers and book readers. The
term was first used in pre-revolutionary Russia to describe
people possessing cultural and political initiative. But it was
commonly used by those individuals themselves to create an
apparent distance from the masses, and generally retained that
narrow self-definition. More recently the term mass
intelligentsia has been popularized to describe the intellectual
effect of tertiary education upon a population. See the mass
intelligentsia section below. History of the notion  The notion
of an intellectual elite as a distinguished social stratum can
be traced far back in history. Examples are the philosopher-
kings and guardians of Plato's Republic and