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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What was the name of the committee in charge of government censorship?
(a) The Homeland Purity Committee.
(b) The Second of April Committee.
(c) The Decembrist Committee.
(d) The Comintern.

2. Who spread German Romantic philosophy in student circles?
(a) Pavel Annenkov.
(b) Nicholas Stankevich.
(c) Nikolai Gogol.
(d) Vissarion Belinksy.

3. Who was Mikhail Bakunin's mentor?
(a) Nicholas Stankevich.
(b) Vissarion Belinksy.
(c) Pavel Annenkov.
(d) Fyodor Dostoevsky.

4. What was the result of Russia's "moral quarantine"?
(a) A renaissance in Russian literature.
(b) Ethnic cleansing of Tartars.
(c) A decrease in censorship.
(d) Intense Slavophilia.

5. Who wrote the memoir titled "The Birth of the Russian Intelligentsia"?
(a) Pavel Annenkov.
(b) Alexander Herzen.
(c) Vissarion Belinksy.
(d) Ivan Turgenev.

6. What writer supported the Tsar's acts?
(a) Fyodor Dostoevsky.
(b) Alexander Pushkin.
(c) Nikolai Gogol.
(d) Leo Tolstoy.

7. What dictum of Schelling's represented the Russian literary scene in the nineteenth century?
(a) Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
(b) Writers capture the times better than sociologists do.
(c) The arts are the last thing to change in a culture.
(d) Idealism lives in literature but grows old and dies in prison.

8. How does Berlin describe the state of Russian culture in the mid-1800s?
(a) A thriving renaissance.
(b) A police state.
(c) A moral and intellectual vacuum.
(d) A powder keg on the verge of revolution.

9. In what point do Annenkov and Herzen agree about Russian Intelligentsia?
(a) They were both drawn to the romantic prospects of the movement.
(b) They both experienced a profound camaraderie with the intelligentsia.
(c) They were both disillusioned by the moral bankruptcy of the intelligentsia.
(d) They were both repelled by the shallow optimism and naivete of the intelligentsia.

10. What was Tolstoy's relationship with Joseph de Maistre?
(a) They were co-conspirators.
(b) They shared similar views.
(c) Tolstoy was de Maistre's father-in-law.
(d) de Maistre censored Tolstoy.

11. What popular idea did Herzen disagree with?
(a) Herzen disagreed with the notion of state power as a justification for violence.
(b) Herzen disagreed with the notion of a pattern in historical events.
(c) Herzen disagreed with the notion that peasants deserve representation in government.
(d) Herzen disagreed with the notion of individual freedom.

12. How did the writer who supported the Tsar present the Tsar's acts?
(a) He presented even serfdom as divinely ordained.
(b) He justified the aristocracy's use of violence.
(c) He denounced the Tsar's opponents.
(d) He proclaimed the natural rights of man.

13. How did the Intelligentsia see their role in society?
(a) They saw themselves as a secular priesthood undertaking a sacred mission of enlightenment.
(b) They saw themselves as nationalists, building a new industrial nation out of the ruins of the feudal system.
(c) They saw themselves as proselytes, spreading a gospel of reason and faith in the arts.
(d) They saw themselves as aesthetes separate from questions of politics.

14. What mistake did Tsar Nicholas I make about European universities?
(a) He believed that German universities were safer than French universities.
(b) He believed that English universities were the best, but he also believed that they were too expensive.
(c) He believed that German universities would not instill any revolutionary ideas in Russian students.
(d) He believed that German universities would give Russian students a good foundation in Slavic culture.

15. How does Berlin describe conservative Romantics?
(a) Conservative Romantics believed that progress was a trap, and that the only way out would be to develop Russian nationalism.
(b) Conservative Romantics believed that the best progress was a return to traditional Russian values.
(c) Conservative Romantics believed that intellectuals could thrive without changing the aristocratic government.
(d) Conservative Romantics believed that mechanical reforms would not work without a deep understanding of the Russian soul

Short Answer Questions

1. Who was the Tsar following the Decembrist rebellion?

2. What does Berlin mean when he says that Tolstoy was a fox who believed in being a hedgehog?

3. How does Berlin describe Herzen's importance?

4. What were de Maistre's views?

5. What part of Tolstoy's legacy do critics praise?

(see the answer keys)

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