The conference is organized by the Institute in cooperation with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and the Zentrum fuer Vergleichende Geschichte Europas (Berlin). The principal goal is to research some of the factors and institutions contributing to the growing of an "intelligent"/intellectual and to the formation of social strata.

The main topics of the sessions are:

• "The identification of an educated man and the analysis of the phenomenon of Intelligentsia";
• "The emerging of educated society - time and place";
• "In search of the way to be "intelligent" - an ideologist, a bureaucrat, a professional?";
• "The Russian Intelligentsia between the revolutionary radicalism and the idea of civil society";
• "The Intelligentsia- and Anti-Intelligentsia-Discourses";
• "The unique Intelligentsia or many "intelligentsias": an educated man outside cultural capitals".

The participants are: Prof. Jutta Scherrer (Paris-Berlin), Prof. Wladimir Berelowitch (Paris), Prof. Manfred Hildermeier (Goettingen), D. A. Sdvizkov (Moscow, Institute of Universal History), J. L. Rudnickaja (Moscow, Institute of Russian History). A. A. Levandovskij (Moscow, Moscow State University), B. I. Kolonitskij (S.-Petersburg, Institute of History), A. S. Tumanova (Tambov), A. A. Danilov (Ivanovo) etc.