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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. Which thinker affected Herzen?

2. Whom did Bakunin inspire during his travels?

3. What was Turgenev's "negative Hegelianism?"

4. How does Berlin describe the state of Russian culture in the mid-1800s?

5. What was the name of the committee in charge of government censorship?

Short Essay Questions

1. What influence did censors have on Russian intellectuals and literature?

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

3. What did Russian students learn in German universities?

4. What was Russia's cultural situation in the 1830s and 40s?

5. Name some of the thinkers who influenced Herzen's thinking.

6. Describe the difference between Herzen and Bakunin's personalities.

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

8. How did Bakunin differ from Stankevich in his application of Hegelian ideas?

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

10. What conspiracy group did the Second of April Committee unveil, and what was the result of the trial?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How did Berlin's own life and times affect his writing about the writers and activists whose portraits he drew in Russian Thinkers? In what ways might Berlin have been trying to identify ideas that would be useful for him in his own time--after WWII and Viet Nam--in addition to identifying the ideas that motivated the Russian writers, populists, Romantics to try to change Russian culture?

Essay Topic 2

How did authors resist the pitfalls of political engagement? Choose three authors or critics and describe their strategies for refusing to engage with the political tensions of their day.

Essay Topic 3

What cultural factors made the Russian populists so popular at first and then so ineffective? Why were populist leaders so out of touch that when populists went to the communes in 1874, the peasants rebuffed them whose organization they idealized?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 641 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample