The intelligentsia, in its peculiarly Russian sense, was a class held together only by the bond of consciousness critical thought, or moral passion. It was a group of people in the 19th century who questioned the problems that faced Russia - specifically the question of serfdom and class. The many generations of intelligentsia each ascribed to different schools of thought but were all engaged in critiquing Russia. These individuals, alienated by their education and frequently exiled, created the abstract ideals that planted part of the discontent in 1917.

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The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 complicated the relationship of the peasants to the intelligentsia; the peasants were convinced that the tsar would eventually give them the land they needed, thus the intelligentsia could not "reeducated the peasants to a conscious revolutionary socialist program."

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By the 1890s, there was a clear divide in the intelligentsia over the role of peasants in the coming revolutions and deep ideological differences about the interpretation of Marxism and its application. During the 1900s until the revolution, the intelligentsia developed into the many parties that would clamor for change from the tsar and provide foundation for the revolution and civil war that would follow his downfall.

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The most famous members of the intelligentsia were revolutionists, but the revolutionary movement grew out of a more generalized crisis at the heart of Russian social/service hierarchies. Most men and women of the creative professions and trained specializations found themselves in a state of identity crisis in the final decades of the old regime. The Russian Empire was just then experiencing a decline of customary ways based on serf agriculture (changes after the serfs were freed in 1861), hereditary social structure, and official Orthodoxy. At the same time Russia experienced an intrusion of modern ways based on market economies, industry, democracy, science, and technology.

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The state itself insisted on abolishing the foundations of two central social estates, serfs and gentry owners. And the state was a major promoter of modernization. The old social/service hierarchies no longer worked for most Russians. They did not, in truth, work for the state either. Nonetheless, officials enforced adherence to these superannuated structures of class status and service rank down to the end of the Empire. This is the setting within which the famous Russian intelligentsia arose.

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In the original homeland of the intelligentsia, Russia, the study of the intelligentsia has been immersed in the study of larger and necessarily vaguer categories: social classes as defined by Karl Marx. In the Soviet Union under Communist rule, the social history of the intelligentsia was fragmented as a result of the enforced need to deny any independent social experience to that "stratum." In this form, the intelligentsia was a dependent variable, always functioning as an expression of this or that class interest: thus the "bourgeois" or "aristocratic" intelligentsia.

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In the English literature, the dominant narrative has been "the socially unattached intelligentsia." In this form, we learn of intellectuals who sometimes seem like "supermen" or psychopaths. Biography, rather than phosopography (group biography) or aggregated analysis of cohorts has been the prevailing form of analysis.

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Categorizing and defining the intelligentsia is a more complex task than it appears to be because the criteria is more in one's state of mind, ideals, and opinions, than in more easily identifiable factors. Additionally, being able to understand detailed cultural and contextual factors is of the utmost importance.

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Looking at the way the intelligentsia has been interpreted by different entities can give us interesting insight into which narratives are accepted/expected/enjoyed by people. It seems fitting that the US and UK paint the intelligentsia as detached and either more or less than human. Western culture focuses on exceptionalism. In particular, the deeply embedded capitalism contributes to a culture built around praising individuals who rise above and create advancements. Analysis from the Western lens  stands in opposition to the Russian lens. Russians see the intelligentsia as  one of the many factors that ebb and flow as they get swept up in the tide of more gargantuan factors. In this view, it's easy to see the vast influence of Marx, whose theories claim that everything is inevitably the result of class struggle. The Russian lens tends to put the spotlight on all-encompassing ideas and phenomenons that are much bigger than any individual, group, or even population. The stories of these people are wrapped up somewhere within these gigantic cultural forces. What does that say about the stories that we consume and create?