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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. Whose diatribes had influenced Turgenev's politics?

2. What ideas did Tolstoy believe in?

3. Which principles did Belinsky never abandon?

4. What does Herzen's last name indicate about his birth?

5. How were Tolstoy's early stories received?

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Hegel's ideas influence Herzen?

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

3. What course of action did Tolstoy advocate for intellectuals?

4. What belief did Tolstoy share with Rousseau?

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

6. Describe Russian populism as a movement.

7. What was Herzen's early activist career like?

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

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

10. Where did Alexander Herzen come from?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

Was writing enough for Russian writers, or did they have to be known for their actions as well? Whether it is Herzen's radical magazine or Tolstoy's radical innovations on his estate, it seems that literature itself could never be more than a part of a man's identity. Why was this? Were there writers who were successful by simply being writers?

Essay Topic 3

How accurate is the stereotype of the Russian intellectual as gloomy and pessimistic? Why was that stereotype conceived, and what cultural factors would induce an intellectual to be gloomy and pessimistic? In what cases was the stereotype grossly inaccurate?

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