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What Is To Be Done? The book that helped spark the Russian Revolution

79 points by drcwpl 2y ago

bell-cot 2y ago
For another angle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel)
- drcwpl 2y ago
  Excellent, thank you
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
josefritzishere 2y ago
If you like Russian literature for the geopolitics you can also read Solzhenitsyn. He's a politico but very readable.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  I picked up the Gulag Archipelago as a young adult and found it really challenging to read. Not sure if old adult me find the same.
helge9210 2y ago
Chernyshevsky -> Lenin -> Solzhenitsyn -> Dugin This is the trajectory of the Russian intellectuals striving for the "better world".
- benterix 2y ago
  > Solzhenitsyn There is an interesting quote by him (regarding the so-called "NATO's expansion"): "This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc."[0] Paradoxically, it wasn't NATO who did this 20 years later but his beloved Putin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_the_Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_the_...
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    > systematic armed robbery of the harvests from both Russian and Ukrainian peasants...to bring back food for the starving urban population centers Holodomor sounds like a great justification for guarding against populism or even pure democracy.
  - marcusverus 2y ago
    Putin caused the war, but the idea that NATO had no role in it is hard to justify. The Americans knew that NATO expansion into Ukraine could provoke Russian intervention, and they did it anyway.[0] What security benefits were to be gained that were worth risking this horrific outcome? The whole thing reminds me of the British security guarantee for Poland in '39. If it was intended to gin up an excuse to fight, it was masterful. If it was a good-faith attempt at securing the peace, it was asinine and catastrophically counterproductive. [0]https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      "I only robbed your house because you threatened to join the neighborhood watch!" isn't the incisive argument you may have meant to advance.
      - ANewFormation 2y ago
        These sort of black and white, good and evil, analogs don't make any sense as NATO is, in large part, a proxy for the US. And we've overthrown, invaded, and destroyed more countries than literally anybody. Multiple of those invasions were also based on fabricated evidence/lies. And when international law, such as the UN, gets in the way - we simply ignore it. These are not the behaviours of a 'neighbourhood watch.'
        discreteevent 2y ago
        > These sort of black and white, good and evil, analogs don't make any sense. Not black and white but worse and better. And Russia is so much worse (Its main offerings seem to be destruction and thievery) that nearly all of its neighbours tried to join NATO.
- mjfl 2y ago
  what does this mean? Solzhenitsyn was not a fan of Lenin and I don't understand how this is a coherent trajectory in any way.
  - helge9210 2y ago
    He didn't agree with what communism did to him personally. On the other hand, he is totally for the Russian Empire.
idlewords 2y ago
Nabokov's final Russian-language novel, The Gift, includes a devastating mini-biography of Chernyshevsky, ostensibly written by the protagonist. Think of it as a Russian equivalent to Twain on Fenimore Cooper. That it happens to be the best biography of Chernyshevsky available in English (translated by Nabokov's son) is icing on the cake. The whole novel is great, but Chapter 5 (the biography) is a beautiful introduction to possibly the worst writer in all of Russian literature.
- drcwpl 2y ago
  I did not know that, I have not read The Gift, will do now. I read Nabakov's biography (my version Speak, Memory) and do not remember him mentioning Chernyshevsky there either. I will re-read. Thank you.
UncleOxidant 2y ago
Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov for the first time and while I knew it was supposed to contain a lot of theological/philosophical ideas, it's also very political. Socialism was already in the air in 1870s Russia such that it's often discussed by characters in the novel. There's one scene where one of the Russian nobleman who has often lived in Paris suggests to some Russian Orthodox priests that he had heard it said in Paris that the worst socialists were not the atheistic ones, but the Christian Socialists. The Priest takes umbrage with this asking if the nobleman was lumping these priests into that category. This on the heels of a multi-page discussion on the separation of church and state and whether the state will eventually subsume the church or whether the church will eventually subsume the state.
- krisoft 2y ago
  > Socialism was already in the air in 1870s Russia such that it's often discussed by characters in the novel. That's not necessarily a valid conclusion. It is a work of fiction. You can't use it as evidence of what was going on in Russia. At best it can be used as evidence of what were the topics the author were thinking about, and as such an indirect proof of what was discussed in the zeitgeist. Similarly I could write a book set in 2025's America where everyone constantly talks about how the collapse of the bubblegum markets wiped them out, and discusses the benefits and ills of bubblegum trading. Doesn't make it true.
  - UncleOxidant 2y ago
    Sure, but the author is writing with his audience in mind. As I understand it, it started out as serialized stories in a periodical and was popular. If he wrote about something that was completely foreign to his audience it's not likely to have become popular. It really seems like he's having his characters take various positions on topics that were being discussed in the culture.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > was completely foreign to his audience I suppose "The Lord of the Rings" is a true history of England?
benterix 2y ago
I wonder where all these Russian intellectuals sparking social changes are now? Their country needs them, the world needs them.
- piombisallow 2y ago
  It didn't go all that well the first time.
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - MiguelX413 2y ago
      This but unironically
- waster 2y ago
  Some emigrated or fled; some (if they had leadership aspirations) were killed or imprisoned; and many may be keeping their heads low so as to avoid drawing attention from the current regime. Unfortunately.
  - morkalork 2y ago
    The population has been thoroughly and effectively trained to be apolitical.
- yks 2y ago
  Russian nationalism/imperialism is a powerful drug that is hard for Russians to unchain their minds from. So even if the intellectuals don't like Putin, Russia becoming a client state of China or wars as such, most of them dislike independent Ukraine even more. Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Navalny etc etc. Besides, Russia is "winning" Western elections, and who doesn't like to be on the winning team.
  - 2y ago
bbminner 2y ago
It is usually discussed in the context of this other novel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F
- drcwpl 2y ago
  Excellent, thank you for that
thomasmiller_ 2y ago
I like to recommend Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" as it gives a contemporary critical view of the nihilistic and utopian ideologies that shaped Russian intellectual discourse of the 1860s.
lordleft 2y ago
Years ago I read an introduction to a collection of Chekhov's letters that provided an illuminating context to the intellectual & aesthetic climate of Russia in the 19th century. It explained that authors like Chernyshevsky asserted that all novels, really all art, ought to be of a politically salient character; that it ought to highlight the suffering the marginal & subaltern. So many of the authors we now revere -- Dostoevsky, Chekhov, even Tolstoy, aroused the ire of the Russian intelligentsia for failing to meet this standard, for writing for purposes other than political and revolutionary utility. The introduction asserted that this was an overwhelmingly unanimous sentiment among the Russian left.
- piombisallow 2y ago
  Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are absolutely political, only not necessarily left-wing.
sumosudo 2y ago
Moses Hess -- Rome and Jerusalem, is the book you're looking for. Russia was just a stopgap

79 points by drcwpl 2y ago

For another angle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel)

drcwpl 2y ago
Excellent, thank you

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

josefritzishere 2y ago

If you like Russian literature for the geopolitics you can also read Solzhenitsyn. He's a politico but very readable.

WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
I picked up the Gulag Archipelago as a young adult and found it really challenging to read. Not sure if old adult me find the same.

helge9210 2y ago

Chernyshevsky -> Lenin -> Solzhenitsyn -> Dugin This is the trajectory of the Russian intellectuals striving for the "better world".

benterix 2y ago
> Solzhenitsyn There is an interesting quote by him (regarding the so-called "NATO's expansion"): "This was especially painful in the case of Ukraine, a country whose closeness to Russia is defined by literally millions of family ties among our peoples, relatives living on different sides of the national border. At one fell stroke, these families could be torn apart by a new dividing line, the border of a military bloc."[0] Paradoxically, it wasn't NATO who did this 20 years later but his beloved Putin. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_the_Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn#On_the_...
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  > systematic armed robbery of the harvests from both Russian and Ukrainian peasants...to bring back food for the starving urban population centers Holodomor sounds like a great justification for guarding against populism or even pure democracy.
- marcusverus 2y ago
  Putin caused the war, but the idea that NATO had no role in it is hard to justify. The Americans knew that NATO expansion into Ukraine could provoke Russian intervention, and they did it anyway.[0] What security benefits were to be gained that were worth risking this horrific outcome? The whole thing reminds me of the British security guarantee for Poland in '39. If it was intended to gin up an excuse to fight, it was masterful. If it was a good-faith attempt at securing the peace, it was asinine and catastrophically counterproductive. [0]https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    "I only robbed your house because you threatened to join the neighborhood watch!" isn't the incisive argument you may have meant to advance.
    - ANewFormation 2y ago
      These sort of black and white, good and evil, analogs don't make any sense as NATO is, in large part, a proxy for the US. And we've overthrown, invaded, and destroyed more countries than literally anybody. Multiple of those invasions were also based on fabricated evidence/lies. And when international law, such as the UN, gets in the way - we simply ignore it. These are not the behaviours of a 'neighbourhood watch.'
      - discreteevent 2y ago
        > These sort of black and white, good and evil, analogs don't make any sense. Not black and white but worse and better. And Russia is so much worse (Its main offerings seem to be destruction and thievery) that nearly all of its neighbours tried to join NATO.
mjfl 2y ago
what does this mean? Solzhenitsyn was not a fan of Lenin and I don't understand how this is a coherent trajectory in any way.
- helge9210 2y ago
  He didn't agree with what communism did to him personally. On the other hand, he is totally for the Russian Empire.

idlewords 2y ago

Nabokov's final Russian-language novel, The Gift, includes a devastating mini-biography of Chernyshevsky, ostensibly written by the protagonist. Think of it as a Russian equivalent to Twain on Fenimore Cooper. That it happens to be the best biography of Chernyshevsky available in English (translated by Nabokov's son) is icing on the cake. The whole novel is great, but Chapter 5 (the biography) is a beautiful introduction to possibly the worst writer in all of Russian literature.

drcwpl 2y ago
I did not know that, I have not read The Gift, will do now. I read Nabakov's biography (my version Speak, Memory) and do not remember him mentioning Chernyshevsky there either. I will re-read. Thank you.

UncleOxidant 2y ago

Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov for the first time and while I knew it was supposed to contain a lot of theological/philosophical ideas, it's also very political. Socialism was already in the air in 1870s Russia such that it's often discussed by characters in the novel. There's one scene where one of the Russian nobleman who has often lived in Paris suggests to some Russian Orthodox priests that he had heard it said in Paris that the worst socialists were not the atheistic ones, but the Christian Socialists. The Priest takes umbrage with this asking if the nobleman was lumping these priests into that category. This on the heels of a multi-page discussion on the separation of church and state and whether the state will eventually subsume the church or whether the church will eventually subsume the state.

krisoft 2y ago
> Socialism was already in the air in 1870s Russia such that it's often discussed by characters in the novel. That's not necessarily a valid conclusion. It is a work of fiction. You can't use it as evidence of what was going on in Russia. At best it can be used as evidence of what were the topics the author were thinking about, and as such an indirect proof of what was discussed in the zeitgeist. Similarly I could write a book set in 2025's America where everyone constantly talks about how the collapse of the bubblegum markets wiped them out, and discusses the benefits and ills of bubblegum trading. Doesn't make it true.
- UncleOxidant 2y ago
  Sure, but the author is writing with his audience in mind. As I understand it, it started out as serialized stories in a periodical and was popular. If he wrote about something that was completely foreign to his audience it's not likely to have become popular. It really seems like he's having his characters take various positions on topics that were being discussed in the culture.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > was completely foreign to his audience I suppose "The Lord of the Rings" is a true history of England?

benterix 2y ago

I wonder where all these Russian intellectuals sparking social changes are now? Their country needs them, the world needs them.

piombisallow 2y ago
It didn't go all that well the first time.
- cryptonector 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - MiguelX413 2y ago
    This but unironically
waster 2y ago
Some emigrated or fled; some (if they had leadership aspirations) were killed or imprisoned; and many may be keeping their heads low so as to avoid drawing attention from the current regime. Unfortunately.
- morkalork 2y ago
  The population has been thoroughly and effectively trained to be apolitical.
yks 2y ago
Russian nationalism/imperialism is a powerful drug that is hard for Russians to unchain their minds from. So even if the intellectuals don't like Putin, Russia becoming a client state of China or wars as such, most of them dislike independent Ukraine even more. Solzhenitsyn, Brodsky, Navalny etc etc. Besides, Russia is "winning" Western elections, and who doesn't like to be on the winning team.
- 2y ago

bbminner 2y ago

It is usually discussed in the context of this other novel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F

drcwpl 2y ago
Excellent, thank you for that

thomasmiller_ 2y ago

I like to recommend Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" as it gives a contemporary critical view of the nihilistic and utopian ideologies that shaped Russian intellectual discourse of the 1860s.

lordleft 2y ago

Years ago I read an introduction to a collection of Chekhov's letters that provided an illuminating context to the intellectual & aesthetic climate of Russia in the 19th century. It explained that authors like Chernyshevsky asserted that all novels, really all art, ought to be of a politically salient character; that it ought to highlight the suffering the marginal & subaltern. So many of the authors we now revere -- Dostoevsky, Chekhov, even Tolstoy, aroused the ire of the Russian intelligentsia for failing to meet this standard, for writing for purposes other than political and revolutionary utility. The introduction asserted that this was an overwhelmingly unanimous sentiment among the Russian left.

piombisallow 2y ago
Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are absolutely political, only not necessarily left-wing.

sumosudo 2y ago

Moses Hess -- Rome and Jerusalem, is the book you're looking for. Russia was just a stopgap