Most participants were male, white, middle-aged and recognized members of the technological elite.

With regard to the mass populations, why should powerful technological elites hold them in little more than contempt?

More important from the broader Russian perspective, continuing employment of the technological elite in established institutes and laboratories could pay enormous dividends in the future.

It still has the hallmarks of an industry dominated by technological elites.

Lerner became a member of the Soviet scientific and technological elite.

"There is almost an assumption that there is a technological elite that makes everyone else feel a little inferior," he said.

The fundamentalist churches are doing fine, but they don't do much business among the technological elite.

Decades later, it is now clear that those technologies may have dominated discussions of the day but their direct influence remained firmly with the technological elite.

Now Soviet planners are calling on the technological elite to manage the transformation.

In it, he calls for the party to embrace the new "advanced productive forces" in society like entrepreneurs and the technological elite.