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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. Who advocated Russian Populism?

2. What archetype was Levin in Anna Karenina an example of?

3. What program did Tolstoy advocate?

4. Where was Herzen born?

5. When did Vissarion Belinsky die?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where did characters based on Belinsky appear in Russian literature?

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

3. How did Belinsky see literature's use?

4. According to Berlin, why was Turgenev attacked from both left and right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

What are Berlin's main concerns as a biographer? Is he telling the stories of the lives of the writers, or the development of the ideas they lived by? Is he telling individual lives, or facets of the life of a culture? Is Berlin a fox or a hedgehog by temperament?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

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