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

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What did Populists do in large scale in 1874?
(a) Declare independence from Russia.
(b) Study social organization in peasant communes.
(c) Publish a manifesto prophesying Communism.
(d) Begin a rebellion in Moscow.

2. How was Turgenev received by the radicals of the 1860s and 70s?
(a) He was rejected as ineffectual.
(b) He was celebrated as a visionary.
(c) He was dismissed as a noble.
(d) He was embraced as a model.

3. Which principles did Belinsky never abandon?
(a) Russian Nationalism.
(b) English Humanism.
(c) French Decadence.
(d) German Romanticism.

4. What program did Tolstoy advocate?
(a) Tolstoy advocated a program in which individuals share the fruits of civilization with the peasants.
(b) Tolstoy advocated a program in which dissidents should be exiled to Siberia or America.
(c) Tolstoy advocated a program in which aristocrats benefited from the labor of their peasants.
(d) Tolstoy advocated a program in which the peasants rule themselves without hierarchy.

5. What was Tolstoy's relationship with Hegel's philosophy?
(a) Tolstoy rejected Hegel.
(b) Tolstoy embraced the divinity behind a changing world, but rejected the teleological nature of Hegel's history.
(c) Tolstoy believed in the evolution of culture, but not in the force behind that evolution.
(d) Tolstoy embraced Hegel wholeheartedly.

6. Who was the thinker Tolstoy agreed with most?
(a) Pestalozzi.
(b) Marcus Aurelius.
(c) Mazzini.
(d) Rousseau.

7. How was Herzen seen by the revolutionaries of the 1860s and 1870s?
(a) Herzen was portrayed as a father of Russian literature.
(b) Herzen was seen as an inspiring revolutionary.
(c) Herzen was dismissed as a salon-talker.
(d) Herzen was seen as a decadent aesthete.

8. What does the Russian word "Mir" mean?
(a) A political party.
(b) Collective of communes.
(c) Freedom.
(d) Russian laws.

9. How does Berlin describe Belinsky's legacy?
(a) Berlin describes Belinsky as the father of social criticism.
(b) Berlin describes Belinsky as an aesthete whose decadence was in fashion for a few years.
(c) Berlin describes Belinsky as a revolutionary whose martyrdom inspired future revolutionaries.
(d) Berlin describes Belinsky as the decadent gadfly of his generation.

10. Where was Herzen born?
(a) Pinsk.
(b) Petersburg.
(c) Moscow.
(d) Berlin.

11. Whose failures did the leader of the Populists reject?
(a) Herzen's.
(b) Bakunin's.
(c) Dostoevsky's.
(d) Gogol's.

12. What was Herzen anxious to avoid becoming?
(a) A husband.
(b) A political prisoner.
(c) A bureaucrat.
(d) An over-educated dilettante.

13. Where was Belinsky born?
(a) Minsk.
(b) Finland.
(c) Berlin.
(d) Moscow.

14. What allowed the leader of the Populists to lead?
(a) He was born in Europe, so he could see Russian culture without bias.
(b) He was born to a parish priest, so he understood poor people's concerns.
(c) He was born after the period of repression, so he experienced a full spectrum of Russian literature and life.
(d) He was born to an aristocratic father and a poor mother, so he understood both worlds.

15. According to Berlin, why is there not a good biography of Alexander Herzen?
(a) Because Herzen's papers were all lost in a fire.
(b) Because Herzen destroyed all of his papers.
(c) Because Herzen's biographers were censored by the government.
(d) Because Herzen's autobiography is so remarkable.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Herzen's last name indicate about his birth?

2. What theme does Turgenev's novel Fathers and Children deal with?

3. What were the Russian Populists opposed to?

4. What was Belinsky's father like?

5. What does the Russian word "obshcnina" mean?

(see the answer keys)

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