Petersburg

St. Petersburg, at this time the capital of Russia. The largest and most westernized of the major Russian cities.

Samovar

A heated, metal Russian tea container and tea maker.

Fourier

A 19th century French utopian socialist. His ideas were very influential at the time; he believed that society should be arranged in worker phalanxes along scientific lines.

Serf

A Russian class until their 19th century emancipation. Not exactly slaves, they were bound to a certain space of land, usually owned by a Russian aristocrat. They were not allowed to move and the landowner owned the product of their labor, at least in part.

Alexander Herzen

19th century Russian liberal and writer. He edited and printed the influential and technically illegal journal, The Bell. The greatest Russian liberal of his time, he was not a doctrinaire political thinker and often angered dogmatists on many different sides of the...