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tion of
SERFDOM
. As Russia's political climate
turned more conservative in the early 1860s,
Chernyshevsky became increasingly popular
among students. A letter from the émigré revo-
lutionary leader Aleksandr
HERZEN
, intercepted
by the authorities, led to his arrest in 1862. He
was imprisoned in St. Petersburg's Peter and Paul
Fortress, where he wrote
What Is to Be Done?,
a
novel whose title succinctly captured the con-
cerns and growing impatience of Russia's radi-
calized youth with the state of their society. The
novel presented a world of well-intentioned,
rational-thinking “new people,” devoted to the
transformation of Russian society, and intro-
duced the character of Rakhmetev, a profes-
sional revolutionary who sought to live by this
strict code. It became required reading for gener-
ations of future intellectuals and revolutionaries,
including Vladimir
LENIN
, who wrote an impor-
tant political tract of the same name in 1902. In
1864, Chernyshevsky was sentenced to seven
years of labor and exiled for life to northern
Siberia. The harshness of Siberian exile harmed
his health, and in 1883, he was allowed to
return to Saratov. Like Herzen, a pivotal though
ambiguous figure in the development of Russian
social thought, Chernyshevsky contributed to the
intellectual development of both Populists and
Marxists, rivals in the struggle for leadership of
Russia's revolutionary movement. Both groups
of revolutionaries were strongly influenced by
his utilitarian aesthetics and philosophical mate-
rialism and his belief in historical determinism,
tempered to account for Russia's comparatively
slow development.
established himself as a leading historian. In his
work, Chicherin became known as the advocate
of the “statist” school of Russian historiography,
arguing for the essentially progressive role of the
Russian state. He tempered his defense of the
state with the liberal beliefs in individual free-
doms, property rights, and toleration of religious
and ethnic minorities. Throughout his political
life, he advocated substantial reforms, beginning
with the abolition of serfdom, but always in the
context of nonviolent, legal change. In 1861 he
was appointed professor of law at Moscow Uni-
versity, but he resigned seven years later in
protest against the government's interference in
a tenure case. In 1881 Chicherin reentered poli-
tics when he was elected mayor of Moscow, but
he was forced to resign in 1883 when his public
views on popular government clashed with the
autocratic preferences of
ALEXANDER III
.He
returned to scholarship, publishing works such as
The Foundations of Logic and Metaphysics
(1894),
On
Popular Representation
(1899), and
The Philosophy
of Law
(1900). In the latter years of his life, he
took part in the politics of the Tambov provincial
ZEMSTVO
. He died at the family estate on Febru-
ary 16, 1904. His four-volume memoirs were
published posthumously from 1929 to 1934.
Chicherin, Georgii Vasilievich
(1872-1936)
revolutionary and diplomat
A Bolshevik of noble background, Chicherin
served as Soviet foreign minister in the first
decade after the October Revolution. Chicherin,
a relative of the renowned liberal philosopher
and historian Boris Nikolaevich
CHICHERIN
, was
born on his family's estate in Tambov province.
He graduated from St. Petersburg University in
1897 and joined the Foreign Ministry. In 1904
after years of involvement in the revolutionary
movement, Chicherin resigned his government
post, renounced all claims to family estates, and
emigrated to Berlin. There he joined the Men-
shevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic
Labor Party. Chicherin spent the next decade
Chicherin, Boris Nikolaevich
(1828-1904)
historian and philosopher
One of the outstanding Russian liberal intellec-
tuals of the 19th century, Chicherin was also a
jurist who took part in politics. He was born on
his family's estate in Tambov province but made
his career in Moscow. By 1858, through several
important historical studies, Chicherin had
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