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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was Tolstoy's relationship with Joseph de Maistre?

2. Whom did Bakunin inspire during his travels?

3. What advantages did Hegel's theories have for Bakunin?

4. Whose writing was Russia "intellectually dependent" upon?

5. What was the relationship between literature and politics in mid-nineteenth century Russia?

Short Essay Questions

1. Whose writings had Russian intellectuals and writers primarily been influenced by?

2. How did Tsar Nicholas respond to the European revolutions of 1848?

3. What did Russian students learn in German universities?

4. What were the three accomplishments of the intellectuals who rose to prominence in the 1830s and 40s?

5. Which Russian intellectuals did Pavel Annenkov describe in his memoirs?

6. How did the revolutions of 1848 affect western European intellectuals and Russians differently?

7. What was Leo Tolstoy's as a thinker, and how does Berlin see him?

8. What was Annenkov's role in the circle of Russian Intelligentsia?

9. In what ways does Berlin see Tolstoy's experience as representative of Russian culture?

10. What do foxes and hedgehogs represent in Archilochus' adage, and how does Berlin apply the distinction to Russian thinkers?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the state of radicalism in Western thought today? Where radicalism playing out, the way French and German radicalism is was playing out in Russia starting in the 1830s? Make a case for a current conflict as evidence of a modern cultural clash/reform/transformation.

Essay Topic 2

Why was Russian culture so ripe for revolution and transformation? What traits of inherited Russian culture made it so receptive to external ideas such as Hegel's ideas about history or Rousseau's ideas about the innocence of children?

Essay Topic 3

What are the strengths of the kind of biography Berlin is practicing here? What are the limitations? What does Berlin show effectively? What questions remain unaddressed, or unresolved?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 618 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample