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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 values did Herzen share with the group he was part of?

2. What was Tolstoy's opinion about his professors?

3. What ideas did Tolstoy believe in?

4. What does the Russian word "obshcnina" mean?

5. What problem obsessed Turgenev during his life?

Short Essay Questions

1. Describe Belinsky's background and biography.

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

3. How did Hegel's ideas influence Herzen?

4. Why was Chernychevsky wary of the state?

5. What Western thinkers influenced Populism?

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

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

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

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

10. What was Tolstoy's education like?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

What is the state of radicalism in Western thought today? Where radicalism playing out, the way French and German radicalism is was playing out in Russia starting in the 1830s? Make a case for a current conflict as evidence of a modern cultural clash/reform/transformation.

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This section contains 855 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample