The Last Ideology of the Old Intelligentsia: Civil Society

Abstract

The less modernized a society is the more intellectuals claim a special role in that society. German sociology — to which belong most of the sociologists in Eastern Europe — has made a distinction between the members of the intelligentsia and the intellectuals. The term ‘intellectual’ was frequently used as a kind of honorary title. Intellectuals were those who had devoted themselves to critical thought (Geiger. 1949: 43ff; Lepsius. 1990: 277). In some other languages, though, this difference in typology is hardly translatable. In the literature of English-speaking countries, intelligentsia and intellectuals arc frequently used as synonyms. The communist regimes recruited their elites largely from the intelligentsia, who had criticized the old pre socialist system, but critical intellectuals, on the other hand, were hardly tolerated. The intelligentsia became a term of social structure, encompassed by all academic professions. The qualitative aspect of the former term ‘intelligentsia’ was preserved only in types such as ‘creative intelligentsia’, (tvorcheskaya intelligentsia) opposed to the technical intelligentsia. ‘Criticism as vocation’ had no function in communist systems.