In his novel What Is to Be Done? (1863), Chernyshevsky endeavoured to detect positive aspects in the nihilist philosophy. Similarly, in his Memoirs, Prince Peter Kropotkin, the leading Russian anarchist, defined nihilism as the symbol of struggle against all forms of tyranny, hypocrisy, and artificiality and for individual. Repinetskiy Stanislav. Chernyshevskii's Novel 'What Is to Be Done?': Variances in Understanding the Text in TEXTUAL TRAILS – Transmissions of Oral and Written Texts, materials of the 11th Conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship (30. Jul 20, 2020 N.G. Chernyshevsky, radical journalist and politician who greatly influenced the young Russian intelligentsia through his classic work, What Is to Be Done? Son of a poor priest, Chernyshevsky in 1854 joined the staff of the review Sovremennik ('Contemporary'). Though he focused on social.
Author | Vladimir Lenin (as N. Lenin) |
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Original title | Что делать? Наболевшие вопросы нашего движения |
Language | Russian |
Published | 1902 |
Part of a series on |
Leninism |
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What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (Russian: Что делать? Наболевшие вопросы нашего движения, tr.Chto delat'? Nabolevshiye voprosy nashevo dvizheniya) is a political pamphlet written by Russian revolutionaryVladimir Lenin (credited as N. Lenin) in 1901 and published in 1902.[1] Lenin said that the article represented 'a skeleton plan to be developed in greater detail in a pamphlet now in preparation for print.'[2] Its title is taken from the 1863 novel of the same name by the Russian revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
In What Is to Be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously become political simply by fighting economic battles with employers over wages, working hours, and the like. To educate the working class on Marxism, Lenin insists that Marxists should form a political party, or vanguard, of dedicated revolutionaries in order to spread Marxist political ideas among the workers. The pamphlet, in part, precipitated the split of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party between Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.[3]
Main points[edit]
Lenin first confronts the so-called economist trend in Russian social democracy that followed the line of Eduard Bernstein. He explains that Bernstein's positions were opportunist, a point expressed by the French socialistAlexandre Millerand as in taking a post in a bourgeois government. Against the economists' demand for freedom of criticism, Lenin advances the position that the orthodox Marxists had the same right to criticize in return. He stresses that in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, revolutionary social democrats would need to pay particular attention to theoretical questions, recalling Friedrich Engels' position that there were three forms of social democratic struggle, namely political, economic and theoretical.[4]
Lenin theorizes that workers will not spontaneously become Marxists merely by fighting battles over wages with their employers. Instead, Marxists need to form a political party to publicise Marxist ideas and persuade workers to become Marxists. He goes on to argue that to understand politics you must understand all of society, not just workers and their economic struggles with their employers. To become political and to become Marxists, workers need to learn about all of society, not just their own corner of it, arguing:
Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without; that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships (of all classes and strata) to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes.[5]
Dell p2417h monitor driver. Reflecting on the wave of strikes in late 19th century Russia, Lenin writes that 'the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness;' that is, combining into trade unions and so on. However, socialist theory in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, was the product of the 'educated representatives of the propertied classes,' the intellectuals or 'revolutionary socialist intellectuals.' Lenin states that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves, the very founders of modern scientific socialism, belonged to this bourgeois intelligentsia.[6]
References[edit]
- ^Le Blanc, Paul. 2008. Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of Lenin. London: Pluto Press. pp. 9, 128.
- ^Lenin, Vladimir (1901). 'What Is To Be Done?'. Lenin's Selected Works. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
- ^Malia, Martin (1994). The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991. New York: Free Press. ISBN978-0-02-919795-0.
- ^North, David (6 September 2005). 'The Origins of Bolshevism and What Is To Be Done?'. World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. Archived from the original on 6 June 2013. Retrieved 3 June 2013.
- ^Lenin, Vladimir (1901). 'What Is to Be Done?'. Lenin Internet Archive at Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^Le Blanc, Paul (2008). Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of Lenin. London: Pluto Pres. pp. 31, 137–138.
Primary source[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
Russian Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
Lenin, Vladimir. 1901. 'What Is To Be Done?,' translated J. Fineberg and G. Hanna. Lenin Internet Archive. Free illustrator full version. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 5 July 2020. Available as eText.
Further reading[edit]
- T. Lih, Lars. 2006. Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Historical Materialism series). Leiden: Brill. Reviewed by:
- Blackledge, Paul. 3 July 2006. 'What was Done.' International Socialism 111. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- Craig, Joe. 10 November 2006. 'Review – ‘Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? In Context'.' Socialist Democracy. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- Draper, Hal. 1990. 'The Myth of Lenin's 'Concept of The Party' or What They Did to What Is To Be Done?.' — essay contextualizingWhat Is to Be Done?.
- Sewell, Rob. 14 June 2018. 'The Revolutionary Lessons of Lenin's What is to be Done.' In Defense of Marxism. International Marxist Tendency. Retrieved 13 May 2019.
What Is to Be Done? (novel)
Author | Nikolai Chernyshevsky |
---|---|
Original title | Shto delat (Что делать) |
Country | Russian Empire |
Language | Russian |
Genre | Novel |
Publication date | 1863 |
1886 | |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
ISBN | NA |
What Is to Be Done? (Russian: Что делать?, tr.Shto delat'?; also translated as 'What Shall We Do?') is an 1863 novel written by the Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky. It was written in response to Fathers and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev. The chief character is a woman, Vera Pavlovna, who escapes the control of her family and an arranged marriage to seek economic independence. The novel advocates the creation of small socialist cooperatives based on the Russian peasant commune, but oriented toward industrial production. The author promoted the idea that the intellectual's duty was to educate and lead the laboring masses in Russia along a path to socialism that bypassed capitalism. One of the characters in the novel, Rakhmetov, became an emblem of the philosophical materialism and nobility of Russian radicalism despite his minor role. 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 the Land and Liberty society.[2]
When he wrote the novel, the author was himself imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress of St. Petersburg, and he was to spend years in Siberia. Chernyshevsky asked for and received permission to write the novel in prison, and the authorities passed the manuscript along to his former employer, the newspaper Sovremennik, which also approved it for publication in installments in its pages. Lenin, Plekhanov, Peter Kropotkin, Alexandra Kollontay, Rosa Luxemburg, and also the Swedish writer August Strindberg,[3] were all highly impressed with the book, and it came to be officially regarded a Russian classic in the Soviet period.[4][5]
- Plot introduction1
- Reactions2
- Footnotes3
- References4
- External links5
Plot introduction
Within the framework of a story of a privileged couple who decide to work for the revolution, and ruthlessly subordinate everything in their lives to the cause, the work furnished a blueprint for the asceticism and dedication unto death which became an ideal of the early socialist underground of the Russian Empire.
Reactions
The book is perhaps better known in the English-speaking world for the responses it created than as a novel in its own right. Fyodor Dostoevsky mocked the utilitarianism and utopianism of the novel in his 1864 novella Notes from Underground, as well as in his 1872 novel Devils. Leo Tolstoy wrote a different What Is to Be Done?, published in 1886, based on his own ideas of moral responsibility.[6]Vladimir Lenin, however, found it inspiring and named a 1902 pamphlet 'What Is to Be Done?'. Lenin is said to have read the book five times in one summer, and according to Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Stanford, Joseph Frank, 'Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.' [7]
Vladimir Nabokov's final novel in Russian, The Gift, thoroughly ridiculed What is to Be Done? in its fourth chapter.
In the book Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, author Chris Matthew Sciabarra says that What Is to Be Done? is one of the sources of inspiration for Rand's thought.[8] For example, the book's main character Lopuhov says 'I am not a man to make sacrifices. And indeed there are no such things. One acts in the way that one finds most pleasant.' Chernyshevsky's egoism was ultimately socialistic, and thus quite distinct from the capitalistic form later advocated by Rand.
The main character of Gide's Les caves du Vatican (En. Lafcadio's Adventures), Lafcadio, bears a striking resemblance to Rakhmetov.
American playwright Tony Kushner referenced the book multiple times in his play Slavs!.
Footnotes
- ^Middlebury College
- ^Emory. It inspired several generations of revolutionaries in Russia: populists, nihilists, terrorists, and Marxists.
- ^Jan Myrdal, Ord & avsikt
- ^Чернец, Л.В. (1990). 'Н. Г.: Биобиблиографическая справка'. Русские писатели. Биобиблиографический словарь. Том 2. М--Я. Под редакцией П. А. Николаева. М., 'Просвещение'. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
- ^Плеханов, Г.В. (1910). 'Н.Г.Чернышевский'. Библиотека научного социализма. Т.4. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
- ^Boston theological
- ^
- ^Chris Matthew Sciabarra (1 November 2010). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Penn State Press. p. 28.
References
- The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, pages 1,085–1,086
Lenin first confronts the so-called economist trend in Russian social democracy that followed the line of Eduard Bernstein. He explains that Bernstein's positions were opportunist, a point expressed by the French socialistAlexandre Millerand as in taking a post in a bourgeois government. Against the economists' demand for freedom of criticism, Lenin advances the position that the orthodox Marxists had the same right to criticize in return. He stresses that in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, revolutionary social democrats would need to pay particular attention to theoretical questions, recalling Friedrich Engels' position that there were three forms of social democratic struggle, namely political, economic and theoretical.[4]
Lenin theorizes that workers will not spontaneously become Marxists merely by fighting battles over wages with their employers. Instead, Marxists need to form a political party to publicise Marxist ideas and persuade workers to become Marxists. He goes on to argue that to understand politics you must understand all of society, not just workers and their economic struggles with their employers. To become political and to become Marxists, workers need to learn about all of society, not just their own corner of it, arguing:
Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without; that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships (of all classes and strata) to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes.[5]
Dell p2417h monitor driver. Reflecting on the wave of strikes in late 19th century Russia, Lenin writes that 'the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade-union consciousness;' that is, combining into trade unions and so on. However, socialist theory in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, was the product of the 'educated representatives of the propertied classes,' the intellectuals or 'revolutionary socialist intellectuals.' Lenin states that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves, the very founders of modern scientific socialism, belonged to this bourgeois intelligentsia.[6]
References[edit]
- ^Le Blanc, Paul. 2008. Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of Lenin. London: Pluto Press. pp. 9, 128.
- ^Lenin, Vladimir (1901). 'What Is To Be Done?'. Lenin's Selected Works. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
- ^Malia, Martin (1994). The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917–1991. New York: Free Press. ISBN978-0-02-919795-0.
- ^North, David (6 September 2005). 'The Origins of Bolshevism and What Is To Be Done?'. World Socialist Web Site. International Committee of the Fourth International. Archived from the original on 6 June 2013. Retrieved 3 June 2013.
- ^Lenin, Vladimir (1901). 'What Is to Be Done?'. Lenin Internet Archive at Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^Le Blanc, Paul (2008). Revolution, Democracy, Socialism: Selected Writings of Lenin. London: Pluto Pres. pp. 31, 137–138.
Primary source[edit]
Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
Russian Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
Lenin, Vladimir. 1901. 'What Is To Be Done?,' translated J. Fineberg and G. Hanna. Lenin Internet Archive. Free illustrator full version. Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 5 July 2020. Available as eText.
Further reading[edit]
- T. Lih, Lars. 2006. Lenin Rediscovered: What Is to Be Done? in Context (Historical Materialism series). Leiden: Brill. Reviewed by:
- Blackledge, Paul. 3 July 2006. 'What was Done.' International Socialism 111. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- Craig, Joe. 10 November 2006. 'Review – ‘Lenin Rediscovered: What is to be Done? In Context'.' Socialist Democracy. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- Draper, Hal. 1990. 'The Myth of Lenin's 'Concept of The Party' or What They Did to What Is To Be Done?.' — essay contextualizingWhat Is to Be Done?.
- Sewell, Rob. 14 June 2018. 'The Revolutionary Lessons of Lenin's What is to be Done.' In Defense of Marxism. International Marxist Tendency. Retrieved 13 May 2019.
What Is to Be Done? (novel)
Author | Nikolai Chernyshevsky |
---|---|
Original title | Shto delat (Что делать) |
Country | Russian Empire |
Language | Russian |
Genre | Novel |
Publication date | 1863 |
1886 | |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
ISBN | NA |
What Is to Be Done? (Russian: Что делать?, tr.Shto delat'?; also translated as 'What Shall We Do?') is an 1863 novel written by the Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky. It was written in response to Fathers and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev. The chief character is a woman, Vera Pavlovna, who escapes the control of her family and an arranged marriage to seek economic independence. The novel advocates the creation of small socialist cooperatives based on the Russian peasant commune, but oriented toward industrial production. The author promoted the idea that the intellectual's duty was to educate and lead the laboring masses in Russia along a path to socialism that bypassed capitalism. One of the characters in the novel, Rakhmetov, became an emblem of the philosophical materialism and nobility of Russian radicalism despite his minor role. 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 the Land and Liberty society.[2]
When he wrote the novel, the author was himself imprisoned in the Peter and Paul fortress of St. Petersburg, and he was to spend years in Siberia. Chernyshevsky asked for and received permission to write the novel in prison, and the authorities passed the manuscript along to his former employer, the newspaper Sovremennik, which also approved it for publication in installments in its pages. Lenin, Plekhanov, Peter Kropotkin, Alexandra Kollontay, Rosa Luxemburg, and also the Swedish writer August Strindberg,[3] were all highly impressed with the book, and it came to be officially regarded a Russian classic in the Soviet period.[4][5]
- Plot introduction1
- Reactions2
- Footnotes3
- References4
- External links5
Plot introduction
Within the framework of a story of a privileged couple who decide to work for the revolution, and ruthlessly subordinate everything in their lives to the cause, the work furnished a blueprint for the asceticism and dedication unto death which became an ideal of the early socialist underground of the Russian Empire.
Reactions
The book is perhaps better known in the English-speaking world for the responses it created than as a novel in its own right. Fyodor Dostoevsky mocked the utilitarianism and utopianism of the novel in his 1864 novella Notes from Underground, as well as in his 1872 novel Devils. Leo Tolstoy wrote a different What Is to Be Done?, published in 1886, based on his own ideas of moral responsibility.[6]Vladimir Lenin, however, found it inspiring and named a 1902 pamphlet 'What Is to Be Done?'. Lenin is said to have read the book five times in one summer, and according to Professor Emeritus of Slavic and Comparative Literature at Stanford, Joseph Frank, 'Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.' [7]
Vladimir Nabokov's final novel in Russian, The Gift, thoroughly ridiculed What is to Be Done? in its fourth chapter.
In the book Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical, author Chris Matthew Sciabarra says that What Is to Be Done? is one of the sources of inspiration for Rand's thought.[8] For example, the book's main character Lopuhov says 'I am not a man to make sacrifices. And indeed there are no such things. One acts in the way that one finds most pleasant.' Chernyshevsky's egoism was ultimately socialistic, and thus quite distinct from the capitalistic form later advocated by Rand.
The main character of Gide's Les caves du Vatican (En. Lafcadio's Adventures), Lafcadio, bears a striking resemblance to Rakhmetov.
American playwright Tony Kushner referenced the book multiple times in his play Slavs!.
Footnotes
- ^Middlebury College
- ^Emory. It inspired several generations of revolutionaries in Russia: populists, nihilists, terrorists, and Marxists.
- ^Jan Myrdal, Ord & avsikt
- ^Чернец, Л.В. (1990). 'Н. Г.: Биобиблиографическая справка'. Русские писатели. Биобиблиографический словарь. Том 2. М--Я. Под редакцией П. А. Николаева. М., 'Просвещение'. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
- ^Плеханов, Г.В. (1910). 'Н.Г.Чернышевский'. Библиотека научного социализма. Т.4. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
- ^Boston theological
- ^
- ^Chris Matthew Sciabarra (1 November 2010). Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical. Penn State Press. p. 28.
References
- The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, pages 1,085–1,086
External links
Chernyshevsky What Is To Be Done Pdf Editor Word
- (Russian text)What Is to Be Done?
- English translation (1886)
Chernyshevsky What Is To Be Done Pdf Editor Pdf
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