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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. Where was Herzen born?

2. Which two thinkers influenced the Russian populists?

3. According to Berlin, why is there not a good biography of Alexander Herzen?

4. What was Herzen anxious to avoid becoming?

5. What balance did Belinsky strike in his career?

Short Essay Questions

1. What did Russian populists experience when they went to the communes in 1874?

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

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

4. How did Hegel's ideas influence Herzen?

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

6. How was Turgenev's work viewed at the end of his life?

7. How did Tolstoy's theories and values appear in his novels?

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

9. What was Turgenev's political stance, and how had he formulated it?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What cultural institutions or customs were Russian writers trying to defend when they were resisting European ideas of progress and Enlightenment? How did authors define the unique "Russian soul?"

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

Were literature and philosophy separable from politics in 19th-century Russian literature, or were they simply the meditative and artistic versions of political activity? What was it about the cultural moment of 19th-century Russia that turned philosophy and literature into political questions?

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