ABSTRACT
It feels like the question about the Russian intelligentsia and its mission has been around longer than the intelligentsia itself. Clearly, it is still very much on our minds. Several years ago, I was summoned to Cyprus to see a dying friend. She had a thriving international legal practice, hobnobbed with the rich and famous, and wrote poetry in her spare time – may she rest in peace! It took five layovers to get to her, and when I arrived, she kicked everyone out of the room to ask me an important question. I was filled with trepidation. What could she possibly want to know – something about her will, where she wanted to be buried, special instructions for the living? After everyone left the room, she asked me: ‘Lyus, what do you think the intelligentsia is?’ I was really stunned but pulled myself together and answered: ‘Well, the intelligentsia are educated people whose actions are not motivated by self-interest … ’ She shook her head, ‘No, no.’ She died that same night, leaving me to wonder why the question mattered to her in the last hours of her life.
