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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

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

2. When did Vissarion Belinsky die?
(a) 1862.
(b) 1850.
(c) 1848.
(d) 1856.

3. Who was Tolstoy's sole close friend?
(a) Mikhailovsky.
(b) Fet.
(c) Chernyshevsky.
(d) Dobrolyubov.

4. What has the consensus been about Leo Tolstoy?
(a) That he was really a cleric, more than a novelist.
(b) That he was a brilliant novelist but a bad thinker.
(c) That he was more of a philosopher than a novelist.
(d) That he was ahead of his time as a thinker.

5. How was Fathers and Children received in Russia?
(a) It was banned for obscenity.
(b) It was not noticed until later in Turgenev's life.
(c) It caused a controversy over its portrayal of nihilism.
(d) It was celebrated as an avant-garde modernism novel.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Berlin ultimately characterize Turgenev?

2. Whose diatribes had influenced Turgenev's politics?

3. What were the Russian Populists opposed to?

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

5. When did Tolstoy's reputation change?

Short Essay Questions

1. Who was Nikolay Chernychevsky and what was his role in Russian culture?

2. Describe Belinsky's background and biography.

3. How did Belinsky see literature's use?

4. What was Herzen's relationship with his friends?

5. What qualities did the characters based on Belinsky have?

6. What was Turgenev's political stance, and how had he formulated it?

7. Why was Chernychevsky wary of the state?

8. What does the term "superfluous men" mean in Russian literature?

9. Why did Turgenev and Botkin despise Chernychevsky?

10. What was Tolstoy's social life like after graduating from university?

(see the answer keys)

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