N.G. Chernyshevsky

N.G. Chernyshevsky (born July 12 [July 24, New Style], 1828, Saratov, Russia—died Oct. 17 [Oct. 29], 1889, Saratov) was a radical journalist and politician who greatly influenced the young Russian intelligentsia through his classic work, What Is to Be Done? (1863).

Son of a poor priest, Chernyshevsky in 1854 joined the staff of the review Sovremennik (“Contemporary”). Though he focused on social and economic evils and tried to expound predictable laws of economic change, he followed his fellow journalist Vissarion Belinsky and the English utilitarians in preaching a highly purified egoism as the most natural and desirable mainspring of human conduct. Landowners accused him of stirring up class hatred; and, although the extent to which he was actively subversive is a matter of controversy, he was arrested in 1862 and, after two years’ imprisonment, was exiled to Siberia, where he remained until 1883. While in prison he wrote his didactic novel Shto Delat? (1863; A Vital Question or What Is to Be Done?). He was a Westernizer who opposed nationalist Slavophiles. In the U.S.S.R. he was considered by many to be a forerunner of Vladimir Lenin.