An educated and intellectual elite; SYN. clerisy.
Intellectual persons; “highbrows”.
In 19th-century Russia, a section of the middle class, including lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, and some officers, who advocated the adoption of Western ideas as a cure for the country's backwardness. They also supported political and social reform but were baulked by an autocratic tsarist regime. This group eventually provided much of the leadership for the revolutionary movements of the early 20th century.