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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 idea caused Tolstoy agony?

2. Where was Herzen born?

3. Who were Herzen's parents?

4. What was Belinsky's father like?

5. When was Herzen born?

Short Essay Questions

1. What was the stance of the "new men" toward Turgenev?

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

3. Describe Belinsky's background and biography.

4. What balances did Belinsky strike in his social status and identity?

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

6. Describe Russian populism as a movement.

7. Why did Turgenev's character Bazarov inspire such strong responses from audiences?

8. Why was Chernychevsky wary of the state?

9. How did Belinsky see literature's use?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Research essay: Who inherited the legacy of the thinkers Berlin profiled? How did the Russian Revolution transform the ideas of the 19th-century Russian writers? Where was Hegel in the Russian Revolution?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

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.

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