Raymond Claude Ferdinand Aron (1905-1983) - friend of his youth and ideological opponent of Jean-Paul Sartre, the most prominent French philosopher, political scientist, sociologist and publicist of the second half of the twentieth century, one of the creators of the theory of industrial society. The book “Opium of the Intellectuals” was published in 1955 and produced the effect of a bomb exploding. The discussions that followed it continue to this day, which makes R. Aron’s work still relevant for the reader. The full text of this work is being published in Russian for the first time.