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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 Turgenev differ from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky?

2. What idea caused Tolstoy agony?

3. What did Turgenev try to do with the novel he published five years after Fathers and Children?

4. Why was Belinsky expelled from university?

5. When did Tolstoy's reputation change?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

4. How are Herzen and Turgenev similar? How are they different?

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

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

7. What belief did Tolstoy share with Rousseau?

8. Describe Belinsky's background and biography.

9. Describe Russian populism as a movement.

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Which writer or character is most representative of the tensions and conflicting desires that characterize the writers Berlin profiles? Define your terms, and use examples from the life of the author you choose.

Essay Topic 2

What cultural developments in Russia and what European philosophical and political ideas made the peasant commune an attractive basis for social organization to the populists?

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?

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