Chernyshevsky, Nikolay Gavrilovich

CHERNYSHEVSKY, NIKOLAY GAVRILOVICH. - Russian revolutionary, known as a man of letters, publicist and economist, b. at Saratov in 1828, d. there in 1889. He collaborated on the leading Russian journals of his time: Otelestvennye Zapiski (Annals of the Fatherland) and Sovremennik (The Contemporary). Accused of having organized disturbances of a political-social character, he was sentenced to fourteen years of hard labor: the sentence was subsequently reduced by half.

Considerable fame was brought him by the novel Cto delat' (What Is to Be Done?), prolix and devoid of artistic value, but greatly appreciated by the revolutionary youth, in that it rested on materialist doctrines and approved of free love. C., together with Dobroljubov and Pisarev, was a decided follower of an aesthetics with a utilitarian basis and of a literature closely connected to "living problems," that is, to social questions. Significant are his Essays in Political Economy, in which, not without reason, points of contact with Marxist thought were noted. Lenin considered C., in various respects, a precursor of the Bolshevik Revolution: and such he was, without doubt, for certain of his principles concerning the class struggle and for his intransigent and polemical anti-religious attitude.