Intelligentsia

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The word intelligentsia ( Russian интеллигенция ) stands for the social category of professional groups shaped by intellectuals , primarily in Russia and the USSR . Depending on the more precise delimitation of terms, however, there are significant differences between the negatively connotated and therefore often disparaging term intelligentsia and the concept of the intellectual . In German, the synonymous terms Russian intelligence or simply intelligence are used, and the English transcription Intelligentsia is sometimes used in German texts.

The term was coined in the 1860s by the Russian publicist Pyotr Boborykin . The intelligentsia is the social class of people who are “smart, understanding, knowing, thinking and creatively employed at a professional level and who contribute to the development and spread of culture.” Nikolai Alexandrowitsch Berdjajew later defined the term much broader, he also did not calculate representatives educated classes (such as the peasantry) to the intelligentsia, provided they took an active part in public life.

Before the October Revolution, the intelligentsia was represented far disproportionately among the Bolsheviks . According to the Marxist interpretation of materialism , this is due to the fact that some intellectual representatives of the petty bourgeoisie have far less to lose compared to the upper bourgeoisie and in the class struggle they take the side they consider victorious, i.e. the working class .

Change of meaning

According to the Brockhaus lexicon, the term has undergone frequent changes in meaning. First of all in Russia around 1860 it referred to the educated who did not belong to the clergy . After that there was a change in meaning in terms of the designation of committed, often anti-subversive intellectuals. In the Eastern Bloc countries, a distinction was made between a non-communist "old" and a communist "new" intelligentsia. The latter in turn was differentiated according to functional aspects as a technical or economic intelligence layer. Often she was considerably privileged. Then the Russian intelligentsia emerged as a critic of the communist social system.

sociology

Intelligence as a term for the entirety of all educated people was first used in Polish by Karol Libelt in 1844 , in Russian by Wissarion Grigorjewitsch Belinski in 1846 , later in German a . a. by Karl Kautsky , Karl Marx , Hugo Ball ( Critique of the German Intelligence ) and Adolf Hitler . Until 1990, the “ intelligence as a social class ” was an integral part of a communist understanding of society . In the GDR, for example, one understood intelligence - also called "intellectual workers" or "intellectual workers" - the totality of all persons with a university or technical college degree , represented by the circle in the national coat of arms of the GDR. In West Germany , where the term was also widely used, intelligence still competes with the older term “ intellectuals ” or “ academics ” or even appears as a sociological term in the Slavic form “Intelligentzija”.

In the Soviet Union , the intelligentsia typically consisted of engineers , teachers, and other academics whose living conditions were comparable to or only slightly better than those of the working class .

See also

literature

  • Karl Mannheim : The Problem of the Intelligentsia. In: Karl Mannheim: Essays on the Sociology of Culture. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1956, pp. 91-170.
  • Kurt Lenk : The role of the sociology of intelligence in Mannheim's theory. In: Cologne journal for sociology and social psychology. Vol. 15, 1963, ISSN  0023-2653 , pp. 323-337.
  • Theodor Geiger : Intelligence. In: Concise dictionary of the social sciences. Volume 5: Commercial Law - Church Finances. Fischer u. a., Stuttgart 1956, p. 303.
  • R. Piepmeier et al .: Intelligence, Intelligentsia, intellectuals. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Volume 4: I-K. Completely reworked. Edition of Rudolf Eisler : Dictionary of Philosophical Terms. Schwabe, Basel a. a. 1976, ISBN 3-7965-0115-X , pp. 445-461.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Intelligence, Intelligentsia. In: The Great Brockhaus. Compact edition in 26 volumes. 18th edition. FA Brockhaus, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-7653-0353-4 , Volume 10, p. 249.