Abstract
The 1990s were the years in which the intelligentsia gave up its identity and its autonomy. The intellectual [intelligent]—if he is authentic and not a pseudointellectual (an intellectual by status, a bureaucrat, a clerk, a narrow specialist in a nonindustrial sphere such as education, management, or information technology)—is a creator: a creative individual, a genius, a person engaged in the search for truth through rational (scientific) or emotional (artistic) understanding and assimilation of the world. True intellectuals comprehend their individual role as thinking subjects and their social role as enlighteners and emancipators. Genuine intellectuals are paragons of critical thinking, opposed to conformity and parochialism.