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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. How did authors fare in the mid-nineteenth-century Russian literary scene?

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

3. What forces dominated Herzen's world?

4. When did the Decembrist rebellion take place?

5. What events proved the limitation Tolstoy described?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Describe the difference between progressive and reactionary Romanticism.

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

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

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

6. Why, according to Berlin, did Tolstoy resist subscribing to a totalizing theory of history?

7. How did Bakunin react to Hegel's philosophy?

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

9. What problems did Herzen have with Hegelian philosophy?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Where else in the modern world are people playing out this tension between progress on one hand and nationalism or localism, on the other? How does the Russian example--of revolutionaries trying to preserve Russian social structures in the face of industrial or modern reforms--relate to the modern example?

Essay Topic 2

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?

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 682 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample