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The intelligentsia (from Latin: intelligentia) is a social class of people engaged in complex mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them (e.g., artists and school teachers). The term has been borrowed either from the Russian, a transliteration of "интеллигенция" ("intelligentsiya"), or from Polish. Those two were earlier borrowed from the French word "intelligence". Initially the term was applied mostly in the context of Poland, Russia and later Soviet Union, and had a narrower meaning based on a self-definition of a certain category of intellectuals.