What role did intelligentsia have with reforming russia?

A very limited one, in the end. According to most analysts, reforms after the fall of the USSR were only temporary. After Putin's ascendancy to the Presidency, Parliament was once again reduced to a rubber-stamp institute and the nation is now run by Putin and a handpicked group of confidants, many with a KGB background and some oligarchs who have chosen to side with him and who have enabled Putin and his family to become extremely rich themselves. Although there is press freedom, any paper critical of the President's policies may become subject of - usually fiscal - investigation which will always 'discover' enough irregularities to justify editors being jailed and/or the paper to be shut down.