CHERNYEVSKY, NIKOLAI GAVRILOVICH. – Russian revolutionary, known as a man of letters, publicist, and economist, born at Saratov in 1828, died there in 1889. He collaborated with the principal Russian reviews of his time: Otečestvennye Zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland) and Sovremennik (The Contemporary). Accused of organizing political and social disorders, he was sentenced to fourteen years of hard labor; the sentence was later reduced by half.
Considerable fame came to him through the novel Cto delat'? (What Is to Be Done?), prolix and devoid of artistic value, but greatly appreciated by revolutionary youth because it rested on materialist doctrines and approved of free love. Chernyshevsky, together with Dobrolyubov and Pisarev, was a staunch advocate of an aesthetic with utilitarian overtones and of a literature strictly tied to living problems, i.e., to social issues. Significant are his Essays on Political Economy, in which, not without reason, Marxist trends were noted.
Lenin regarded Chernyshevsky, in various respects, as a precursor of the Bolshevik Revolution: and such he was, without doubt, for certain of his principles concerning class struggle and for his uncompromising, polemical anti-religious stance.