NIKOLAI CHERNYSHEVSKY (1828-1889) was a Russian revolutionary, materialist philosopher and literary critic. His ideas were heavily influenced by Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, and Ludwig Feuerbach. As a founder of Narodism (Russian socialism), he agitated for the revolutionary overthrow of the Tsar and the creation of a socialist society based on the old peasant commune. He exercised the greatest influence upon populist youth of the 1860s and 1870s.
In 1855 he defended his master's dissertation, "The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality" (included in SELECTED PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS), which contributed to the development of materialist aesthetics in Russia.
He was imprisoned in 1862 for sedition, where he wrote his famous novel WHAT IS TO BE DONE? (1863) in response to Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons". The book has been called "a handbook of radicalism" and inspired several generations of revolutionaries in Russia, including populists, nihilists, and Marxists. Many later Russian radicals sought to emulate the novel's hero Rakhmetov, who was wholly dedicated to the revolution, ascetic in his habits and ruthlessly disciplined in order to build strength for the revolution. The novel advocated the creation of small socialist cooperatives based on the Russian peasant commune, but that were oriented toward industrial production. According to Joseph Frank, "Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution."
Dostoevsky was enraged by the demagoguery of the political and psychological ideas expressed in the book, and wrote "Notes from Underground" largely as a reaction against it. Marx and Engels studied Chernyshevsky's works and called him a "great Russian scholar and critic." Lenin, who wrote a political pamphlet of the same name, praised Chernyshevsky because "he approached all the political events of his times in a revolutionary spirit and was able to exercise a revolutionary influence by advocating, in spite of all the barriers and obstacles places in his way by the censorship, the idea of a peasant revolution, the idea of the struggle of the masses for the overthrow of all the old authorities."
The following books are in PDF unless otherwise noted:
* Selected Criticism (Dutton, 1962). R. Matlaw, ed.
* Selected Philosophical Essays (Foreign Languages, 1953). M. Grigoryan, ed.
* What Is to Be Done? (Cornell, 2014). M. Katz, trans. -- ePUB
_____________________________________________________________________________
PLEASE HELP TO SEED! If you like these books and want others to have access to them, please help to seed for as long as you can. The more you seed, the longer the torrent will live, and the easier it will be for me to upload new content. Thank you!
