What is to be Done? (Chernyshevsky)
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| Author | Nikolai Chernyshevsky |
|---|---|
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
| Publisher | |
| Released |
What is to be Done? (alternatively translated as "What Shall we Do?") is a novel written by Nikolai Chernyshevsky when he was in Peter and Paul Fortress. It was written in response to Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. The novel's hero, named Rakhemtov, became an emblem of the philosophical materialism and nobility of Russian radicalism. 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 a Land and Liberty society.[2]
The book is perhaps best known for the responses it created than as a novel in its own right. Leo Tolstoy wrote a different What is to be Done? based on moral responsibility.[3] Fyodor Dostoevsky mocked the utilitarianism and utopianism of the novel in Notes from Underground. Vladimir Lenin, however, found it inspiring and named a pamphlet for it, see What is to be Done? (pamphlet).
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[edit] Reference
- The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces page 1085-1086
