Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) is more important as a thinker than as a writer, but What Is To Be Done (Lenin’s favorite novel, and quite possibly the worse novel ever written, if we exclude novel-length things meant for beach reading) was one of the most influential, life-altering books in the history of Russian literature and culture. 4 Foreword Nicholas Chernyshevsky’s What is to Be Done is often considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature for the Russian revolutionary youth and the source of inspiration for the few generations of Russian radicals. Bizerba terminal st manual.

What Is to Be Done? (novel)

What Is to Be Done? (Russian: Что делать?, tr.Shto delat'?; also translated as 'What Shall We Do?') is an 1863 novel written by the Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky. It was written in response to Fathers and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev. The chief character is a woman, Vera Pavlovna, who escapes the control of her family and an arranged marriage to seek economic independence. The novel advocates the creation of small socialist cooperatives based on the Russian peasant commune, but oriented toward industrial production. The author promoted the idea that the intellectual's duty was to educate and lead the laboring masses in Russia along a path to socialism that bypassed capitalism. One of the characters in the novel, Rakhmetov, became an emblem of the philosophical materialism and nobility of Russian radicalism despite his minor role. The novel also expresses, in one character's dream, a society gaining 'eternal joy' of an earthly kind. The novel has been called 'a handbook of radicalism'^[1] and led to the founding of the Land and Liberty society.^[2]

When he wrote the novel, the author was himself imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress of St. Petersburg, and he was to spend years in Siberia. Chernyshevsky asked for and received permission to write the novel in prison, and the authorities passed the manuscript along to his former employer, the newspaper Sovremennik, which also approved it for publication in installments in its pages. Lenin, Plekhanov, Peter Kropotkin, Alexandra Kollontay, Rosa Luxemburg, and also the Swedish writer August Strindberg,^[3] were all highly impressed with the book, and it came to be officially regarded a Russian classic in the Soviet period.^[4][5]

• Plot introduction1
• Reactions2
• Footnotes3
• References4
• External links5

Plot introduction

Within the framework of a story of a privileged couple who decide to work for the revolution, and ruthlessly subordinate everything in their lives to the cause, the work furnished a blueprint for the asceticism and dedication unto death which became an ideal of the early socialist underground of the Russian Empire.

Reactions

The book is perhaps better known in the English-speaking world for the responses it created than as a novel in its own right. Fyodor Dostoevsky mocked the utilitarianism and utopianism of the novel in his 1864 novella Notes from Underground, as well as in his 1872 novel Devils. Leo Tolstoy wrote a different What Is to Be Done?, published in 1886, based on his own ideas of moral responsibility.^[6]Vladimir Lenin, however, found it inspiring and named a 1902 pamphlet 'What Is to Be Done?'. Lenin is said to have read the book five times in one summer, and according to Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Stanford, Joseph Frank, 'Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.' ^[7]

Vladimir Nabokov's final novel in Russian, The Gift, thoroughly ridiculed What is to Be Done? in its fourth chapter.

In the book Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, author Chris Matthew Sciabarra says that What Is to Be Done? is one of the sources of inspiration for Rand's thought.^[8] For example, the book's main character Lopuhov says 'I am not a man to make sacrifices. And indeed there are no such things. One acts in the way that one finds most pleasant.' Chernyshevsky's egoism was ultimately socialistic, and thus quite distinct from the capitalistic form later advocated by Rand.

The main character of Gide's Les caves du Vatican (En. Lafcadio's Adventures), Lafcadio, bears a striking resemblance to Rakhmetov.

American playwright Tony Kushner referenced the book multiple times in his play Slavs!.

Footnotes

1. ^Middlebury College
2. ^Emory. It inspired several generations of revolutionaries in Russia: populists, nihilists, terrorists, and Marxists.
3. ^Jan Myrdal, Ord & avsikt
4. ^Чернец, Л.В. (1990). 'Н. Г.: Биобиблиографическая справка'. Русские писатели. Биобиблиографический словарь. Том 2. М--Я. Под редакцией П. А. Николаева. М., 'Просвещение'. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
5. ^Плеханов, Г.В. (1910). 'Н.Г.Чернышевский'. Библиотека научного социализма. Т.4. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
6. ^Boston theological
7. ^
8. ^Chris Matthew Sciabarra (1 November 2010). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Penn State Press. p. 28.

References

• The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, pages 1,085–1,086

External links

• (Russian text)What Is to Be Done?
• English translation (1886)

“On the morning of July 11, 1856, the staff of one of the large hotels near the Moscow Railway Station in Petersburg was in a quandary, almost in a state of distress.”

Chernyshevsky What Is To Be Done Pdf File

What do Chernyshevsky, Nietzsche and Star Trek all have in common? They all believe in socialist Utopias, in that if we all just could see the higher purpose of man and allow our characters to be developed beyond the animalistic tendencies of greed and selfishness and jealousy, we would all be able to lead this idealistic life with money, freedom, happiness and, in Nietzsche’s case, right-thinking for all. Everyone would get exactly what they wanted in all things, and gratification and joy would abound everywhere. And this would all come in an erupting revolution that would change the world as we know it. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Except that there’s one catch. In all of history, men have never been able to shed all strife and avarice and enmity towards each other. We have never been able to only do good, love mercy and walk humbly. So how these people can expect this to happen in the rumblings of revolution, yet also in an easily perceived development of social change, is quite beyond me. “Delusional”is the word that springs first to mind.

In Chernyshevsky’s, What Is To Be Done?, Véra Pálovna is a sheltered young woman with a strident, lower class, controlling mother. Her mother tries to manipulate her with her machinations, but Véra, with stern self command unusual for her age and sex, manages to best her mother and ends up marrying a medical student and tutor, Dmítry Sergéich Lopukhóv, to escape her mother’s nagging domination. While married to Lopukhóv, she starts her own sewing business, employing unusual business acumen to make it a success. Likewise, her marriage is run in an unusual business-like way, to the apparent delight of both. Yet when their close friend, another medical student, Alexánder Matvéich Kirsánov, begins to form an attraction to Véra, an impending tragedy culminates, and finalizes in a most unexpected way.

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

Although What Is To Be Done? is almost unknown in classic fiction, among Russians it was considered one of the most influential books of nineteenth-century Russia for the ramification it had on human thought, and the effect it had on the history of the country.

Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a staunch proponent of materialist philosophy, socialist political economy, and women’s liberation. In his novel, he attempted to provide a remedy for all the social ills and the dilemmas that faced Russian society, believing that the controlling patriarchal hierarchy of the family, social inequality, and political and social problems were the main causes of the tyrannical, unbalanced, economic backwardness of the society. He disliked modern reform, advocating more radical steps. Offering a blend of Russian traditional values, and ideas from Western Europe, he called for a social education that would bring sexual freedom, self-awareness, and prosperity. However, his self-righteousness and intolerance of criticism eventually caused him to be barred from academia, and Chernyshevsky was forced to turn to journalism for an outlet. His views eventually occasioned his arrest and he spent eighteen months in prison, which no doubt helped to advance him to the status of a martyr and enhanced the popularity of this book. He became a symbol of the ultimate revolutionary Utopian socialist.

This book served not only as a platform for Chernyshevsky’s ideas, but it was also a response to Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. In Turgenev’s novel, Turgenev explores the relationship between reason and emotion, or perhaps how emotion can undermine one’s ideology. In Fathers and Sons, both the nihilist Bazarov’s ideology and his underdeveloped grasp of emotion appear to cancel each other out, leaving him in a morass of ineffectuality in either. In contrast, the nobleman Kirsanov reaches a level of contentment using a combination of idealism and reason, mirrored in his recognition of family values, the importance of nature and the land on which he lives. Chernyshevsky despised the novel and Turgenev’s portrayal of “new men”; with his novel, he strove to counter the portrayal, borrowing character names from Turgenev and metamorphosing Bazarov’s nihilism into rational egoism for what he thought allowed for more efficient action. The ongoing debate continued with Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s response to What is To Be Done?, in his Notes from the Underground.

Perhaps I was suffering with extreme impatience with naive “genius” philosophers and writers, but the impatience only increased with Chernyshevsky. Not only were his ideas born of some unrealistic fantasy, but the structure of his book was tedious. The book wasn’t really a story, it was merely Chernyshevsky’s ideas. Everyone is subordinate to his ideas, from his plot, to his characters, even his reader cannot escape. While I know that authors control their stories, I like to feel their stories control them to some degree; that the story is born inside of them with not only the passionate ideas that they breed, but perhaps with an insight that is not quite explored or realized. Then, voilà! A “conversation” is begun between reader and writer. Yet, with Chernyshevsky, this certainly wasn’t the case. Instead of speaking with you, he speaks at you. In fact, he goes so far as to address his readers with an intentional condescension, not only confessing what he is doing to you with his prose, but leading you down garden paths of supposition, professing your own ideas and putting words in your mouth, then calling you an idiot because you followed what he was offering you. I don’t understand it. Often these people profess to know all the ills of society and all the solutions, but they have absolutely no social skills or even an appearance of love for humanity at all; or at least it doesn’t come out in their work.

Chernyshevsky What Is To Be Done Pdf Document

I’m going to read Notes from the Underground next to finish this conversation. Dostoyevsky confuses me, but he has to be better than Chernyshevsky. Doesn’t he ………???