SUMMARY:

In his response to the colleagues’ critique, Lipovetsky emphasizes the discursive (as opposed to political and/or ideological) character of the intelligentsia community, shaped by the ITR discourse. Developing ideas generated by the discussion and revisiting the trope of “progressor”, he introduces a hypothesis of this discursive formation as a version of “internal colonization” (Alexander Etkind). In this capacity, this discourse has obtained a central position in late Soviet culture and, having undergone the transformation, preserved its significance, now predominantly conservative, for post-Soviet culture.