Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia (Latin: intellegentia, Polish: inteligencja, Russian: интеллигенция; IPA: [ɪntʲɪlʲɪˈɡʲentsɨjə]) is a social class of people engaged in complex mental labour aimed at guiding or critiquing, or otherwise playing a leadership role in shaping a society's culture and politics. This therefore might include everyone from artists to school teachers, as well as academics, writers, journalists, and other hommes de lettres (men of letters) more usually thought of as being the main constituents of the intelligentsia. Intelligentsia is the subject of active polemics concerning its own role in the development of modern society not always positive historically, often contributing to higher degree of progress, but also to its backward movement.

In a social sense, the stratum of intelligentsia arose first in Russian-controlled Poland during the age of Partitions. The term was borrowed from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in around the 1840s, to describe the educated and professionally active segment of patriotic bourgeoisie able to become the spiritual leaders of the country ruled by a foreign power in an authoritarian way. Deprived of socio-political influence in the form of enterprises or any "effective levers of economic development", the educated intelligentsia became a characteristic indicator of the East-European cultural periphery unlike the German Bildungsbürgertum or the British professions for whom leading societal roles were available.

Intelligencia (comics)

The Intelligencia is a name of a fictional supervillain team made up of the smartest villains in the Marvel Comics.

The name is derived is from the term coined in nineteenth-century Russia to denote an intellectual elite.

Publication history

The group first appear as antagonists to the Hulk in Fall of the Hulks: Alpha (December 2009) and was created by Jeff Parker and Paul Pelletier.

Fictional team history

Intelligencia is a collection of some of the smartest supervillains in the Marvel canon. The core group consists of the Leader, Mad Thinker, Red Ghost, Wizard, and MODOK. Doctor Doom was also a member of this group before he left. Led primarily by a joint partnership of the Leader and MODOK, the group was responsible for the creation of Red Hulk and his subsequent female counterpart Red She-Hulk as well as transforming Rick Jones into A-Bomb and Marlo Jones into the Harpy. MODOK replaced Egghead who was a member of the group before his death. Red Hulk was originally a member of Intelligencia until he was betrayed and focused his strength to taking them down.