Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovskii (Mikhailovsky), the Russian philosopher, social thinker, and literary critic, was a theorist of Russian Populism and an exponent of a form of positivism first advanced by his contemporary, Pëtr Lavrov. Mikhailovskii was born near Meshchovsk, Russia, the son of a landowner of moderate means. After his parents' death, he was enrolled in the St. Petersburg Mining Institute in 1856. Expelled in 1861 for leading student protests against the government, he became a writer on social and literary topics for progressive St. Petersburg reviews. From 1869 to 1884 he edited Otechestvennyye zapiski (Annals of the fatherland), at that time the chief organ of Russian radicalism. Mikhailovskii was periodically banished from the capital by the tsarist authorities, but he sufficiently tempered the expression of his views to avoid imprisonment and permanent exile. He remained an influential radical spokesman until his death in St. Petersburg...