Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Chernyshevsky Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky short biography the most interesting
The parents of the future revolutionary were Evgenia Egorovna Golubeva and Archpriest Gavriil Ivanovich Chernyshevsky.
Until the age of 14, he was educated at home by his father, who had encyclopedic knowledge and was a strongly devout man. He was helped by Nikolai Gavrilovich’s cousin L.N. Pypina. During his childhood, Chernyshevsky was assigned a tutor from France. As a child, young Kolya loved to read and spent most of his free time reading books.
Formation of views
In 1843, Chernyshevsky took the first step in obtaining higher education, entering the theological seminary of the city of Saratov. After studying there for three years, Nikolai Gavrilovich decides to quit his studies.
In 1846, he passed the exams and entered the Faculty of History and Philology at the University of St. Petersburg. Here, absorbing the thoughts and scientific knowledge of ancient authors, studying the works of Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon Laplace and advanced Western materialists, the formation of the future revolutionary took place. According to short biography Chernyshevsky, it was in St. Petersburg that the transformation of Chernyshevsky the subject into Chernyshevsky the revolutionary took place.
The formation of Nikolai Gavrilovich’s socio-political views took place under the influence of I. I. Vvedensky’s circle, in which Chernyshevsky begins to comprehend the basics of writing.
In 1850, his studies at the university ended and the young graduate received an appointment to the Saratov gymnasium. This educational institution Already in 1851, it began to be used as a launching pad for cultivating advanced social revolutionary ideas in its students.
Petersburg period
In 1853, Chernyshevsky met the daughter of a Saratov doctor, Olga Sokratovna Vasilyeva, with whom he married. She gave her husband three sons - Alexander, Victor and Mikhail. After the wedding, the family changed the district Saratov to the capital St. Petersburg, where the head of the family worked for a very short time in the cadet corps, but soon resigned from there due to a quarrel with an officer. Chernyshevsky worked in many literary magazines, which we will reflect in the chronological table.
After the “Great Reforms” were carried out in Russia, Chernyshevsky acted as the ideological inspirer of populism and going to the people. In 1863 he published in Sovremennik main novel of your life, which is called “What to do?
" This is Chernyshevsky's most important work.
Exile and death
Chernyshevsky’s biography is replete with difficult moments in his life. In 1864, for his social revolutionary activities and involvement in “People's Will,” Nikolai Gavrilovich was sent to a 14-year exile to work at hard labor. After some time, the sentence was halved thanks to the decree of the emperor. After hard labor, Chernyshevsky was ordered to remain in Siberia for life. After serving hard labor, in 1871 he was assigned the city of Vilyuysk as his place of residence.
In 1874, he was offered freedom and the revocation of his sentence, but Chernyshevsky did not send his petition for clemency to the emperor.
His youngest son did a lot to return his father to his native Saratov, and only 15 years later Chernyshevsky still moved to live on his own small homeland. Having not lived in Saratov for even six months, the philosopher fell ill with malaria. Chernyshevsky's death occurred from a cerebral hemorrhage. The great philosopher was buried at the Resurrection Cemetery.
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Russian materialist philosopher, democratic revolutionary, encyclopedist, theorist of critical utopian socialism, scientist, literary critic, publicist and writer
Nikolai Chernyshevsky
short biography
Russian revolutionary, democrat, writer, philosopher, economist, publicist, literary critic, scientist - was born in Saratov on July 24 (July 12, O.S.), 1828. His father was a priest, a well-educated man. Even in his childhood, Nikolai became addicted to reading and amazed those around him with his erudition.
In 1842 he became a student at the Saratov Theological Seminary. The years of study there (he completed his studies in 1845) were filled with intensive self-education. In 1846, Chernyshevsky was a student at the Faculty of Philosophy (historical and philological department) of St. Petersburg University. After his graduation in 1951-1853. He taught Russian at the local gymnasium. IN student years Chernyshevsky was formed as a person and was ready to devote his life revolutionary activities. The first attempts at writing date back to the same period of biography.
In 1853, Nikolai Gavrilovich, having married, moved to St. Petersburg and in 1854 was assigned to the Second Cadet Corps as a teacher. Despite his teaching talent, he was forced to resign after a conflict with a colleague. The beginning of his literary activity in the form of small articles, which were published by St. Petersburg Gazette and Otechestvennye Zapiski, dates back to 1853. In 1854, Chernyshevsky became an employee of the Sovremennik magazine. The defense of the master's thesis “Aesthetic relations of art to reality” turned into a significant social event and gave rise to the development of national materialist aesthetics.
During 1855-1857. From the pen of Chernyshevsky a number of articles were published, mainly of a literary-critical and historical-literary nature. At the end of 1857, having entrusted the critical department to N. Dobrolyubov, he began composing articles covering economic and political issues, primarily related to the planned agrarian reforms. He had a negative attitude towards this step of the government and at the end of 1858 he began to call for the reform to be thwarted by revolutionary means, warning that the peasantry would face large-scale ruin.
Late 50s - early 60s. noted in his creative biography writing political economic works in which the writer expresses his conviction in the inevitability of the coming of socialism to replace capitalism - in particular, “The Experience of Land Ownership”, “Superstitions and Rules of Logic”, “Capital and Labor”, etc.
From the beginning of autumn 1861 N.G. Chernyshevsky becomes the object of secret police surveillance. During the summer of 1861-1862. he was the ideological inspirer of “Land and Freedom” - a revolutionary populist organization. Chernyshevsky was listed in the official documentation of the secret police as enemy number one Russian Empire. When a letter from Herzen with a mention of Chernyshevsky and a proposal to publish Sovremennik, which was banned at that time, was intercepted, Nikolai Gavrilovich was arrested on June 12, 1862. While the investigation was ongoing, he sat in the Peter and Paul Fortress, in solitary confinement, while continuing to write. So, in 1862-1863. The famous novel “What is to be done?” was written in the dungeons.
In February 1864, a verdict was passed according to which the revolutionary was to spend 14 years in hard labor followed by lifelong residence in Siberia, but Alexander II reduced the term to 7 years. In total, N. Chernyshevsky had to spend more than two decades in prison and hard labor. In 1874, he refused to write a petition for pardon, although he was given such a chance. In 1889, his family obtained permission for him to live in Saratov, but having moved, he died on October 29 (October 17, O.S.), 1889, and was buried at the Resurrection Cemetery. For several more years, until 1905, all of his works were banned in Russia.
Biography from Wikipedia
N. G. Chernyshevsky. Photo by V. Ya. Lauffert. 1859
Born into the family of Archpriest Alexander Nevsky cathedral Saratov Gabriel Ivanovich Chernyshevsky (1793-23.10.1861), who came from the serfs of the village of Chernysheva, Chembar district, Penza province. The name of the village gave him his last name. Until the age of 14, he studied at home under the guidance of his father, a well-educated and very religious man, and his cousin, L.N. Pypina. Archbishop Nikanor (Brovkovich) pointed out that from early childhood he was assigned a French tutor, to whom “in Saratov they attributed the initial direction of young Chernyshevsky.”
Nikolai's erudition amazed those around him; as a child, he even had the nickname “bibliophage,” that is, a book eater. In 1843 he entered the Saratov Theological Seminary. He stayed at the seminary for three years, “being unusually thoroughly developed beyond his years and educated far beyond the seminary course of his peers”; Without graduating, in 1846 he entered St. Petersburg University in the historical and philological department of the Faculty of Philosophy.
During these years, the Chernyshevsky that all of Russia would soon recognize was formed - a convinced revolutionary democrat, socialist and materialist. Chernyshevsky's worldview was formed under the influence of ancient, as well as French and English materialism of the 17th-18th centuries, the works of naturalists - Newton, Laplace, Lalande and other ideas of utopian socialists, classics of political economy, Hegel's dialectics and especially the anthropological materialism of Feuerbach. The formation of his views was influenced by the circle of I. I. Vvedensky. At this time, Chernyshevsky began to write his first works of fiction. In 1850, having completed the course as a candidate, he was assigned to the Saratov gymnasium and in the spring of 1851 began work. Here the young teacher used his position to preach revolutionary ideas.
In 1853, he met his future wife, Olga Sokratovna Vasilyeva, with whom after the wedding he moved from his native Saratov to St. Petersburg. By the highest order on January 24, 1854, Chernyshevsky was appointed as a teacher in the Second Cadet Corps. The future writer proved himself to be an excellent teacher, but his stay in the building was short-lived. After a conflict with an officer, Chernyshevsky was forced to resign.
Literary activity
He began his literary activity in 1853 with small articles in St. Petersburg Gazette and Otechestvennye Zapiski.
At the beginning of 1854, he moved to the Sovremennik magazine, where in 1855-1862 he was actually the head of the magazine along with N. A. Nekrasov and N. A. Dobrolyubov, he led a decisive struggle to transform the magazine into a tribune of revolutionary democracy, which caused protest of liberal writers (V.P. Botkin, P.V. Annenkov and A.V. Druzhinin, I.S. Turgenev) who collaborated in Sovremennik.
On May 10, 1855, at the university, he defended his dissertation “The Aesthetic Relationship of Art to Reality,” which became a great social event and was perceived as a revolutionary speech; in this work, he sharply criticized the aesthetics of idealists and the theory of “art for art’s sake.” The Minister of Education A. S. Norov prevented the award of an academic degree, and only in 1858, when Norov was replaced as minister by E. P. Kovalevsky, the latter approved Chernyshevsky for a master's degree in Russian literature.
In 1858, he became the first editor of the Military Collection magazine. A number of officers (Serakovsky, Kalinovsky, Shelgunov, etc.) were involved by him in revolutionary circles. Herzen and Ogarev, who sought to lead the army to participate in the revolution, were well aware of this work of Chernyshevsky. Together with them he is the founder of populism.
In the 1860s, Chernyshevsky became the recognized leader of the journalistic school of Russian philosophical materialism. Chernyshevsky’s main philosophical work is “ Anthropological primacy in philosophy"(1860). It sets out the author’s monistic materialist position, directed both against dualism and idealistic monism. Defining philosophy as “a theory for solving the most general questions of science,” he substantiated the provisions on the material unity of the world, the objective nature of the laws of nature, using data from the natural sciences.
1861 Announced: The Imperial Manifesto of February 19, 1861 On the abolition of serfdom, the implementation of the reform begins, which Marx and Engels called a “fraudulent trick.” At this time, Chernyshevsky’s activities acquired the greatest scope and extreme intensity. Without formally entering the secret revolutionary society “Land and Freedom,” Chernyshevsky is its undoubted inspirer. No wonder Marx and Engels called him “the head of the revolutionary party.”
Since September 1861 it has been under secret police surveillance. The chief of gendarmes, Dolgorukov, gives the following characterization of Chernyshevsky: “Suspected of drafting the “Velikoruss” appeal, of participating in the drafting of other appeals, and of constantly arousing hostile feelings towards the government.” Suspected of involvement in the fires of 1862 in St. Petersburg.
In May 1862, the Sovremennik magazine was closed for 8 months.
In 1863, the revived Sovremennik magazine published the novel What Is To Be Done?, written by Chernyshevsky, who was under arrest in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
Arrest and investigation
On June 12, 1862, Chernyshevsky was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in custody in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress on charges of drawing up a proclamation “Bow to the lordly peasants from their well-wishers.” The appeal to the “Barsky Peasants” was rewritten by Mikhailov and handed over to Vsevolod Kostomarov, who, as it later turned out, was a provocateur.
In official documentation and correspondence between the gendarmerie and the secret police, he was called “enemy of the Russian Empire number one.” The reason for the arrest was a letter intercepted by the police from Herzen to N.A. Serno-Solovyevich, in which Chernyshevsky’s name was mentioned in connection with the proposal to publish the banned Sovremennik in London.
The investigation lasted about a year and a half. Chernyshevsky waged a stubborn struggle with the investigative commission. As a protest against the illegal actions of the investigative commission, Chernyshevsky went on a hunger strike, which lasted nine days. At the same time, Chernyshevsky continued to work in prison. During 678 days of arrest, Chernyshevsky wrote text materials in the amount of at least 200 copyright sheets. The most fully-fledged utopian ideals were expressed by the prisoner Chernyshevsky in the novel “What is to be done?” (1863), published in issues 3, 4 and 5 of Sovremennik.
Hard labor and exile
On February 7, 1864, Senator M. M. Karniolin-Pinsky announced the verdict in the Chernyshevsky case: exile to hard labor for 14 years, and then settlement in Siberia for life. Alexander II reduced the term of hard labor to 7 years; in general, Chernyshevsky spent more than twenty years in prison, hard labor and exile.
On May 19 (31), 1864, the civil execution of a revolutionary took place in St. Petersburg on Mytninskaya Square. He was sent to the Nerchinsk penal servitude in the Kadai prison; in 1866 he was transferred to the Aleksandrovsky Plant of the Nerchinsk District, in 1867 to the Akatuysk prison, at the end of seven years of hard labor he was transferred in 1871 to Vilyuysk. In 1874, he was officially offered release, but he refused to apply for clemency. In the Aleksandrovsky Plant, the house-museum of N. G. Chernyshevsky has been preserved to this day - the house in which he lived.
The organizer of one of the attempts to free Chernyshevsky (1871) from exile was G. A. Lopatin. In 1875, I. N. Myshkin tried to free Chernyshevsky. In 1883, Chernyshevsky was allowed to return to the European part of Russia, to Astrakhan (according to some sources, Konstantin Fedorov worked as a copyist for him during this period).
Death
Thanks to the efforts of his son Mikhail, on June 27, 1889 he moved to Saratov, but on October 11 of the same year he fell ill with malaria. Chernyshevsky died at 12:37 at night on October 17 (29), 1889 from a cerebral hemorrhage. On October 20, 1889 he was buried in Saratov at the Resurrection Cemetery.
Family
Grandfather (maternal) - Egor (Georgy) Ivanovich Golubev (1781-04/20/1818), archpriest of the Saratov Church of the Savior Not Made by Hands (Sergius), “was an honest man, learned and loved by many.”
Grandmother (maternal) - Pelageya Ivanovna Golubeva, née Kirillova (1780-1847), daughter of the Saratov priest Ivan (Ivan) Kirillov (circa 1761-after 1821) and his wife Mavra Porfiryevna (circa 1761-after 1814). She was “a typical, stern, domineering, unyielding woman of the old century, with a character that subjugated those around her.” She had two daughters.
Father - Gabriel Ivanovich Chernyshevsky (07/5/1793-10/23/1861), the eldest son of the deacon of the village of Chernyshevki, Chembarsky district, Penza province, Ivan Vasilyev (1763-1809) and his wife Evdokia (Avdotya) Markovna (1767-1835); he had a sister Stepanida (1791-?) and a brother Photius (1794-?). After studying at the Tambov School, he was transferred to the Penza Seminary, where he received his surname after his place of birth, the village of Chernyshevo, Penza province - Chernyshevsky, for inclusion in the lists of seminarians. Having married the daughter of Archpriest E.I. Golubev, in 1825 he became an archpriest in Saratov; since 1826 member of the spiritual board. Knew languages and history.
Mother - Evgenia Egorovna Golubeva (11/30/1803-04/19/1853), married G.I. Chernyshevsky on June 7, 1818.
Aunt - Alexandra Egorovna Golubeva (1806-15.08.1884), the only sister of E. E. Chernyshevskaya. She was married twice: 1) to artillery second lieutenant Nikolai Mikhailovich Kotlyarevsky (d. 08.28.1828), they had 3 children: Lyubov (1824-1852), Sophia (1826-1827) and Yegor (1828-1892); 2) from 1831 to the small-scale nobleman Nikolai Dmitrievich Pypin (1808-1893), a Saratov official, from whom she gave birth to 8 more children, including A. N. Pypin.
Sister - Pelageya Gavrilovna Chernyshevskaya (09/07/1825-09/25/1825), lived for less than a month.
N. G. Chernyshevsky was married from April 29, 1853 to Olga Sokratovna Vasilyeva (03/15/1833-07/11/1918), the daughter of the Saratov doctor Socrates Evgenievich Vasiliev (1796-1860) and Anna Kirillovna Kazachkovskaya, the daughter of Lieutenant General K.F. Kazachkovsky. Olga Sokratovna “was a cheerful, energetic, loving outdoor games, cheerful and brave girl.” They had 3 sons:
- Alexander (03/5/1854, St. Petersburg, - 01/17/1915, Rome, Italy), a mathematician by training, who was passionate about literature all his life.
- Victor (01/20/1857, St. Petersburg, - November 1860, ibid.), died in childhood.
- Mikhail (10/7/1858, St. Petersburg, - 05/3/1924), was the first director of the N. G. Chernyshevsky museum-estate. He was married to Elena Matveevna Solovyova (1864-1940)
Journalistic activity
Continuing the traditions of Belinsky's criticism, he sought to reveal the essence of social phenomena and convey to the reader his revolutionary views. He wrote many articles and reviews aimed at explaining certain new literary movements, and was one of the first critics to reveal the so-called “dialectics of the soul” in Tolstoy’s work.
Philosophical views
He was a follower of Russian revolutionary-democratic thought and progressive Western European philosophy (18th-century French materialists, social-utopians Fourier and Feuerbach). During his university years, he experienced a short-lived fascination with Hegelianism, and subsequently criticized idealistic views, Christian, bourgeois and liberal morality as “slave” .
Chernyshevsky's philosophy is monistic and directed against dualism, objective idealistic and subjective idealistic monism. Defining philosophy as “a theory for solving the most general questions of science,” he substantiated the position of the material unity of the world, the objective nature of nature and its laws (for example, the law of causality), widely using data from chemistry, physics, biology and other natural sciences. Explaining the ideal as a product of the material, discussing the material foundations of consciousness, Chernyshevsky also relied on data from experimental psychology and physiology. In Chernyshevsky's philosophy, a significant place is occupied by ideas associated with anthropological materialism, which brings him closer to the most advanced thinkers, such as Feuerbach.
According to Chernyshevsky, the main factors that shape moral consciousness are “natural needs,” as well as “social habits and circumstances.” Satisfaction of needs, from his point of view, will eliminate obstacles to the flourishing of personality and the causes of moral pathologies; for this it is necessary to change the very conditions of life through revolution. Materialism served as a theoretical basis for the political program of the revolutionary democrats; they criticized the reformist hopes for an “enlightened monarch” and an “honest politician.”
His ethics are based on the concept of “reasonable egoism” and the anthropological principle. Man, as a biosocial being, belongs to the natural world, which defines his “essence,” and consists in social relations with other people, in which he realizes the original desire of his “nature” for pleasure. The philosopher claims that the individual “acts as it is more pleasant for him to act, guided by calculations that command him to give up less benefit and less pleasure in order to obtain greater benefit, greater pleasure,” only then does he achieve benefit. The personal interest of a developed person prompts him to an act of noble self-sacrifice in order to bring closer the triumph of his chosen ideal. Denying the existence of free will, Chernyshevsky recognizes the operation of the law of causality: “The phenomenon that we call will is a link in a series of phenomena and facts connected by a causal connection.”
Thanks to freedom of choice, a person moves along one or another path of social development, and the enlightenment of people should ensure that they learn to choose new and progressive paths, that is, to become “new people” whose ideals are service to the people, revolutionary humanism, and historical optimism.
Political ideology
Peasant question
Published in 1858-1859. In three articles under the general title “On New Conditions of Rural Life,” Chernyshevsky, in a censored form and in an outwardly well-intentioned tone, promoted the idea of immediately releasing peasants with land without any ransom, then communal ownership of land would be preserved, which would gradually lead to socialist land use. According to Lenin, this utopian approach could lead to a decisive breakdown of feudal antiquity, which would lead to the most rapid and progressive development of capitalism.
While the official press published the manifesto of Alexander II of February 19, 1861 on the first page, Sovremennik placed only excerpts from the Tsar’s Decree at the end of the book, as an appendix, without being able to directly reveal the nature of the reform. The same issue published poems by the American poet Longfellow “Songs of Negroes” and an article about the slavery of African Americans in the United States. Readers understood what the editors wanted to say by this.
Socio-economic views
For Chernyshevsky, the community is a patriarchal institution of Russian life; in the community there is a “comradely form of production” in parallel with capitalist production, which will be abolished over time. Then collective production and consumption will be finally established, after which the community as a form of production association will disappear. He estimated the period of transition from cultivation of the land by the private forces of an individual owner to the communal cultivation of an entire secular dacha at 20-30 years. He used the ideas of Fourier and his main student Considerant. In “Essays from Political Economy”, with some reservations, he conveys the utopian doctrine of labor, pointing out the need for large-scale production, and explains the unprofitability of wage labor. Chernyshevsky believed that “the consumer of a product must also be its owner-producer.” According to Fourier's views, Chernyshevsky pointed out the exaggerated importance of trade in modern society and the shortcomings of its organization. In the novel “What to do?” directly depicted the phalanstery (Vera Pavlovna’s Fourth Dream).
Addresses in St. Petersburg
- 06/19/1846 - 08/20/1846 - Prilutsky apartment building - Nab. Catherine Canal (now Griboyedov Canal), 44;
- 08/21/1846 - 12/07/1846 - Vyazemsky apartment building - Embankment. Ekaterininsky Canal (now Griboyedov Canal), 38, apt. 47;
- 1847-1848 - Fredericks house - Vladimirskaya street, 13;
- 1848 - Solovyov’s apartment building - Voznesensky Avenue, 41;
- 09/20/1849 - 02/10/1850 - apartment of L.N. Tersinskaya in the apartment building of I.V. Koshansky - Bolshaya Konyushennaya street, 15, apt. 8;
- 12.1850 - 03.12.1851 - Ofitserskaya street, 45;
- 05/13/1853 - 08/01/1853 - Ofitserskaya street, 45;
- 1853-1854 - apartment of I. I. Vvedensky in the Borodina apartment building - Zhdanovka River embankment, 7;
- 08/22/1855 - end of 06/1860 - Povarsky Lane, 13, apt. 6;
- end of 06.1860 - 06.07.1861 - apartment building of V.F. Gromov - 2nd line of Vasilyevsky Island, 13, apt. 7;
- 06/08/1861 - 07/07/1862 - Esaulova's apartment building - Bolshaya Moskovskaya street, 6, apt. 4.
Reviews
- In the USSR, Chernyshevsky became a cult figure in the history of the revolutionary struggle in connection with V.I. Lenin’s flattering reviews of the novel “What is to be done?”
- Chernyshevsky as a revolutionary ideologist and novelist was mentioned in the statements of K. Marx, F. Engels, A. Bebel, H. Botev and other historical figures.
- G.V. Plekhanov noted: “my own mental development took place under the enormous influence of Chernyshevsky, the analysis of whose views was a whole event in my literary life.”
- Information about Chernyshevsky is contained in the memoirs of Russian public figure L. F. Panteleev.
- Writer V. A. Gilyarovsky after reading “What to do?” ran away from home to the Volga - to barge haulers.
- One of the most expressive monuments to Chernyshevsky was created by the sculptor V. V. Lishev. The monument was unveiled on Moskovsky Prospekt in Leningrad on February 2, 1947.
- With elements of satire, the image of Chernyshevsky was presented in the novel “The Gift” (1937) by V. V. Nabokov.
Pedagogical theory
In Chernyshevsky’s philosophical and pedagogical views, one can trace a direct relationship between the political regime, material wealth and education. Chernyshevsky defended a decisive, revolutionary remaking of society, for which it was necessary to prepare strong, intelligent, freedom-loving people.
The pedagogical ideal for Chernyshevsky is a comprehensively developed personality, ready for self-development and self-sacrifice for the sake of the public good.
Chernyshevsky considered the disadvantages of his contemporary education system to be the low level and potential of Russian science, scholastic teaching methods, drill instead of education, and inequality of female and male education.
Chernyshevsky defended the anthropological approach, considering man to be the crown of creation, a changeable, active being. Social change lead to changes in society as a whole and each individual individually. He did not consider bad behavior to be hereditary - it was a consequence of poor upbringing and poverty.
Chernyshevsky considered one of the main properties of human nature to be activity, the nature of which is rooted in the awareness of insufficiency and the desire to eliminate this insufficiency.
Works
Novels
- 1862−1863 - What to do? From stories about new people.
- 1863 - Stories within a story (unfinished)
- 1867−1870 - Prologue. A novel from the early sixties.(unfinished)
Stories
- 1863 - Alferev.
- 1864 - Small stories.
- 1889 - Evenings with Princess Starobelskaya (not published)
Literary criticism
- 1849 - About “Brigadier” Fonvizin. Candidate's work.
- 1854 - On sincerity in criticism.
- 1854 - Songs of different nations.
- 1854 - Poverty is not a vice. Comedy by A. Ostrovsky.
- 1855 - Works of Pushkin.
- 1855−1856 - Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature.
- 1856 - Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin. His life and writings.
- 1856 - Poems by Koltsov.
- 1856 - Poems by N. Ogarev.
- 1856 - Collected poems by V. Benediktov.
- 1856 - Childhood and adolescence. War stories of Count L.N. Tolstoy.
- 1856 - Sketches from peasant life by A.F. Pisemsky.
- 1857 - Lessing. His time, his life and work.
- 1857 - " Provincial essays» Shchedrin.
- 1857 - Works of V. Zhukovsky.
- 1857 - Poems by N. Shcherbina.
- 1857 - “Letters about Spain” by V. P. Botkin.
- 1858 - Russian man at rendez-vous. Reflections on reading Mr. Turgenev’s story “Asya”.
- 1860 - Collection of miracles, stories borrowed from mythology.
- 1861 - Is this the beginning of a change? Stories by N.V. Uspensky. Two parts.
Journalism
- 1856 - Review historical development rural community in Russia Chicherin.
- 1856 - “Russian conversation” and its direction.
- 1857 - “Russian conversation” and Slavophilism.
- 1857 - On land ownership.
- 1858 - Taxation system.
- 1858 - Cavaignac.
- 1858 - July Monarchy.
- 1859 - Materials for solving the peasant question.
- 1859 - Superstition and the rules of logic.
- 1859 - Capital and labor.
- 1859−1862 - Politics. Monthly reviews of foreign political life.
- 1860 - History of civilization in Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to the French Revolution.
- 1861 - Political and economic letters to the President of the United States of America G. K. Carey.
- 1861 - About the reasons for the fall of Rome.
- 1861 - Count Cavour.
- 1861 - Disrespect for authority. Regarding "Democracy in America" by Tocqueville.
- 1861 - Bow to the Barsky peasants from their well-wishers.
- 1862 - As an expression of gratitude Letter to Mr. Z<ари>Well.
- 1862 - Letters without an address.
- 1878 - Letter to the sons of A.N. and M.N. Chernyshevsky.
Memoirs
- 1861 - N. A. Dobrolyubov. Obituary.
- 1883 - Notes about Nekrasov.
- 1884−1888 - Materials for the biography of N. A. Dobrolyubov, collected in 1861-1862.
- 1884−1888 - Memories of Turgenev’s relationship with Dobrolyubov and the breakdown of friendship between Turgenev and Nekrasov.
Philosophy and aesthetics
- 1854 - A critical look at modern aesthetic concepts.
- 1855 - Aesthetic relations of art to reality. Master's dissertation.
- 1855 - The Sublime and the Comic.
- 1855 - The nature of human knowledge.
- 1858 - Criticism of philosophical prejudices against common ownership.
- 1860 - Anthropological principle in philosophy. "Essays on questions of practical philosophy." Essay by P. L. Lavrov.
- 1888 - Origin of the theory of the beneficence of the struggle for life. Preface to some treatises on botany, zoology and natural sciences human life.
Translations
- 1858-1860 - “History of the Eighteenth Century and the Nineteenth to the Fall of the French Empire” by F. K. Schlosser.
- 1860 - “Foundations of Political Economy by D. S. Mill” (with his own notes).
- 1861-1863 - “World History” by F. K. Schlosser.
- 1863-1864 - “Confession”
Russian literature XIX century
Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky
Biography
Chernyshevsky (Nikolai Gavrilovich) - famous writer. Born on July 12, 1828 in Saratov. His father, Archpriest Gabriel Ivanovich (1795 - 1861), was a very remarkable man. His great intelligence, due to his serious education and knowledge of not only ancient but also new languages, made him an exceptional person in the provincial wilderness; but what was most remarkable about him was his amazing kindness and nobility. This was an evangelical shepherd in the best sense of the word, from whom, at a time when it was supposed to treat people harshly for their own good, no one heard anything but words of affection and greetings. In the school business, which was then entirely based on brutal flogging, he never resorted to any punishment. And at the same time, this kind man was unusually strict and rigoristic in his demands; In communicating with him, the most dissolute people became morally better. Outstanding kindness, purity of soul and detachment from everything petty and vulgar completely passed on to his son. Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, as a person, was a truly bright personality - this is recognized by the worst enemies of his literary activity. The most enthusiastic reviews of Chernyshevsky as a person belong to two elderly representatives of the clergy, who could not find enough words to characterize the harm of Chernyshevsky’s writings and theories. One of them, a teacher at various Palimpsest seminaries, mentally grieves that this “being with the purest soul” has turned, thanks to his passion for various Western European false teachings, into a “fallen angel”; but at the same time, he categorically states that Chernyshevsky “really at one time resembled an angel in the flesh.” Information about Chernyshevsky’s personal qualities is very important for understanding his literary activity; they provide the key to the correct illumination of many aspects of it and, above all, that which is most closely connected with the idea of Chernyshevsky - the preaching of utilitarianism. Borrowed from the same exclusively kind person- J. St. Milla - Chernyshevsky’s utilitarianism does not stand up to criticism that does not close its eyes to reality. Chernyshevsky wants to reduce the best movements of our soul to “reasonable” egoism - but this “egoism” is very peculiar. It turns out that a person, acting nobly, acts so not for others, but exclusively for himself. He does well because doing well gives him pleasure. Thus, the matter comes down to a simple dispute about words. Does it matter what motivates self-sacrifice; The only thing that matters is the desire to sacrifice oneself. In Chernyshevsky’s touchingly naive efforts to convince people that doing well is “not only sublime, but also profitable,” only the high structure of the soul of the preacher of “reasonable egoism,” who understood “benefit” in such an original way, was clearly reflected.
Chernyshevsky received his secondary education under especially favorable conditions - in the quiet of an ideally peaceful family, which included the family of A. N. Pypin, Nikolai Gavrilovich’s maternal cousin, who lived in the same yard as the Chernyshevskys. Chernyshevsky was 5 years older than Pypin, but they were very friendly and over the years their friendship grew stronger. Chernyshevsky bypassed the terrible bursa of the pre-reform era and the lower classes, seminaries, and only at the age of 14 did he directly enter high school. He was prepared mainly by his learned father, with some help from the gymnasium teachers. By the time he entered the seminary, young Chernyshevsky was already extremely well-read and amazed his teachers with his extensive knowledge. His comrades adored him: he was the universal supplier of class essays and a diligent tutor for everyone who turned to him for help.
After spending two years at the seminary, Chernyshevsky continued his studies at home and in 1846 went to St. Petersburg, where he entered the university, the Faculty of History and Philology. Chernyshevsky the father had to listen to reproaches about this from some representatives of the clergy: they found that he should have sent his son to the theological academy and not “deprive the church of its future luminary.” At the university, Chernyshevsky diligently studied departmental subjects and was among Sreznevsky’s best students. On his instructions, he compiled an etymological-syntactic dictionary for the Ipatiev Chronicle, which was later (1853) published in Izvestia of the II Department of the Academy of Sciences. Much more than university subjects, he was fascinated by other interests. The first years of Chernyshevsky's student life were an era of passionate interest in socio-political issues. He was captured by the end of that period in the history of Russian progressive thought, when social utopias coming to us from France in the 1840s in one form or another were reflected to a greater or lesser extent in literature and society (see Petrashevtsy, XXIII, 750 and Russian literature XXVII, 634). Chernyshevsky became a convinced Fourierist and all his life remained faithful to this most dreamy of the doctrines of socialism, with the very significant difference that Fourierism was rather indifferent to political questions, to questions about the forms of state life, while Chernyshevsky attached great importance to them. Chernyshevsky’s worldview also differs from Fourierism in religious matters, in which Chernyshevsky was a free thinker.
In 1850, Chernyshevsky graduated from the course as a candidate and went to Saratov, where he received a position as a senior teacher at the gymnasium. Here, by the way, he became very close to Kostomarov, who was exiled to Saratov, and some exiled Poles. During this time, great grief befell him - his dearly beloved mother died; but during the same period of his Saratov life, he married his beloved girl (the novel “What to Do,” published ten years later, “is dedicated to my friend O.S.Ch.”, that is, Olga Sokratovna Chernyshevskaya). At the end of 1853, thanks to the efforts of an old St. Petersburg acquaintance - the famous teacher Irinarkh Vvedensky, who occupied an influential position in the teaching staff of military educational institutions, Chernyshevsky went to serve in St. Petersburg, as a teacher of the Russian language in the 2nd cadet corps. Here he lasted no more than a year. An excellent teacher, he was not strict enough with his students, who abused his gentleness and, while willingly listening to his interesting stories and explanations, did almost nothing themselves. Because he let the officer on duty calm down the noisy class, Chernyshevsky had to leave the building, and from then on he devoted himself entirely to literature.
He began his activity in 1853 with small articles in St. Petersburg Gazette and in Otechestvennye Zapiski, reviews and translations from English, but already at the beginning of 1854 he moved to Sovremennik, where he soon became the head of the magazine. In 1855, Chernyshevsky, who passed the master's exam, presented as a dissertation the following argument: “Aesthetic relations of art to reality” (St. Petersburg, 1855). At that time, aesthetic issues had not yet acquired the character of socio-political slogans that they acquired in the early 60s, and therefore what later seemed to be the destruction of aesthetics did not arouse any doubts or suspicions among members of the very conservative historical and philological faculty of St. Petersburg University . The dissertation was accepted and allowed to be defended. The master's student successfully defended his theses and the faculty would no doubt have awarded him the required degree, but someone (apparently I. I. Davydov, an “aesthetician” of a very peculiar type) managed to turn the Minister of Public Education A. S. Norov against Chernyshevsky; he was outraged by the “blasphemous” provisions of the dissertation and the degree was not given to the master’s student. At first, Chernyshevsky’s literary activity in Sovremennik was almost entirely devoted to criticism and the history of literature. During 1855 - 1857 A number of extensive historical and critical articles by him appeared, among which the famous “Essays on the Gogol Period”, “Lessing” and articles on Pushkin and Gogol occupy a particularly prominent place. In addition, during these same years, with his characteristic amazing capacity for work and extraordinary literary energy, he gave the magazine a number of smaller critical articles about Pisemsky, Tolstoy, Shchedrin, Benediktov, Shcherbin, Ogarev and others, many dozens of detailed reviews and, in addition, he also wrote monthly “Notes” about magazines."
At the end of 1857 and the beginning of 1858, all this literary productivity was directed in a different direction. With the exception of this (1858) article about Turgenev’s “Ace” (“Russian man on rendez-vous”), to support the emerging nice magazine “Atheneum”, Chernyshevsky now almost leaves the field of criticism and devotes himself entirely to political economy, issues of foreign and domestic policy and partly the development of a philosophical worldview. This turn was caused by two circumstances. In 1858, a very critical moment arrived in the preparations for the liberation of the peasants. The government's good desire to liberate the peasants did not weaken, but, under the influence of the strong connections of the reactionary elements of the highest government aristocracy, the reform was in danger of being significantly distorted. It was necessary to defend its implementation on the broadest possible basis. At the same time, it was necessary to defend one principle very dear to Chernyshevsky - communal land ownership, which he, with his Fourierist ideal of joint economic activity humanity was especially close. The principle of communal land ownership had to be protected not so much from reactionary elements, but from people who considered themselves progressives - from the bourgeois-liberal “Economic Index” of Professor Vernadsky, from B. N. Chicherin, from Katkovsky’s “Russian Messenger”, who was then in the forefront of the vanguard camp. ; and in society, communal land ownership was treated with a certain distrust, because admiration for it came from the Slavophiles. Preparation of radical revolutions in Russian public life and the maturing of a radical change in the socio-political worldview of the majority of the advanced part of our intelligentsia also distracted Chernyshevsky’s predominantly journalistic temperament from literary criticism. The years 1858 - 1862 are in the life of Chernyshevsky an era of intensive work on the translation or, rather, reworking of Mill's political economy, equipped with extensive “Notes”, as well as on a long series of political-economic and political articles. Among them are: on the issue of land and peasants - an article on “Research on internal relations folk life and especially rural institutions in Russia" (1857, No. 7); “On land ownership” (1857, No. 9 and 11); an article on Babst’s speech “On some conditions conducive to the increase of the people’s capital” (1857, No. 10); “Response to a letter from a provincial” (1858, No. 3); “Review of measures taken so far (1858) to organize the life of landowner peasants” (1858, No. 1); “Measures taken to limit landowner power during the reign of Empress Catherine II, Alexander I and Nicholas I” (1858, No. 0); “Regarding Mr. Troinitsky’s article “On the number of serfs in Russia” (1858, No. 2); “On the need to keep as moderate figures as possible when determining the amount of redemption of estates” (1858, No. 11); “Is it difficult to buy back land” (1859, No. 1); a number of reviews, journal articles on the peasant issue (1858, No. 2, 3, 5; 1859, No. 1); "Critique of Philosophical Prejudices against Common Ownership" (1858, No. 12); " Economic activity and legislation" (continuation of the previous article); “Materials for solving the peasant question” (1859, No. 10); "Capital and Labor" (1860, No. 1); "Credit Affairs" (1861, No. 1). On political issues: “Cavaignac” (1858, No. 1 and 4); “The Struggle of Parties in France under Louis XVIII and Charles X” (1858, No. 8 and 9); "Turgot" (1858, No. 9); “The Question of Freedom of Journalism in France” (1859, No. 10); "The July Monarchy" (1860, No. 1, 2, 5); "The Present English Whigs" (1860, No. 12); “Preface to current Austrian affairs” (1861, No. 2); “French Laws on Printing Affairs” (1862, No. 8). When Sovremennik was allowed to establish a political department, Chernyshevsky wrote monthly political reviews during 1859, 1860, 1861 and the first 4 months of 1862; These reviews often reached 40 - 50 pages. In the last 4 books for 1857 (No. 9 - 12), Chernyshevsky owns “Modern Review”, and in No. 4 for 1862 - “Internal Review”. Only the famous article belongs to the sphere of Chernyshevsky’s directly philosophical works: “The Anthropological Principle in Philosophy” (1860, No. 4 and 5). A number of journalistic and polemical articles are of a mixed nature: “G. Chicherin as a publicist" (1859, No. 5), "The laziness of the rude common people" (1860, No. 2); “The Story Because of Mrs. Svechina” (1860, No. 6); “Great-grandfather’s morals” (regarding Derzhavin’s notes, 1860, No. 7 and 8); “New periodicals” (“Osnova” and “Time” 1861, No. 1); “On the reasons for the fall of Rome. Imitation of Montesquieu" (on the subject of "History of Civilization in France" by Guizot, 1880, No. 5); “Irrespect for Authority” (on Democracy in America by Tocqueville, 1861, No. 6); "Polemical Beauties" (1860, No. 6 and 7); "National Tactlessness" (1860, No. 7); “Russian Reformer” (about “The Life of Count Speransky” by Baron Korf, 1860, No. 10); “People’s stupidity” (about the newspaper “Day”, 1860, No. 10); "The Self-Proclaimed Elders" (1862, No. 3); “Have you learned!” (1862, No. 4).
No matter how intense this amazingly prolific activity was, Chernyshevsky still would not have left such an important branch of magazine influence as literary criticism if he had not been confident that he had found a person to whom he could calmly transfer the critical department of the magazine. By the end of 1857, if not for the entire reading public, then for Chernyshevsky personally, Dobrolyubov’s paramount talent was revealed in all its magnitude, and he did not hesitate to hand over the critical baton of the leading magazine to a twenty-year-old youth. Thanks to this insight alone, Dobrolyubov’s activity becomes a glorious page in literary biography Chernyshevsky. But in reality, Chernyshevsky’s role in Dobrolyubov’s activities is much more significant. From his communication with Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov drew the validity of his worldview, that scientific foundation, which, despite all his reading, he could not have had at twenty-one, twenty-two years old. When Dobrolyubov died and they began to talk about the enormous influence that Chernyshevsky had on the young critic, he protested against this in a special article (“Expression of Gratitude”), trying to prove that Dobrolyubov followed an independent path in his development simply because he was talented taller than him, Chernyshevsky. At present, hardly anyone will argue against the latter, unless, of course, we talk about Chernyshevsky’s merits in the field of political and economic issues, where he occupies such a large place. In the hierarchy of the leaders of Russian criticism, Dobrolyubov is undoubtedly higher than Chernyshevsky. Dobrolyubov still withstands the most terrible of literary tests - the test of time; his critical articles are still read with unflagging interest, which cannot be said about most of Chernyshevsky’s critical articles. Dobrolyubov, who has just experienced a period of deep mysticism, has incomparably more passion than Chernyshevsky. One feels that he suffered for his new convictions and that is why he excites the reader more than Chernyshevsky, whose main quality is also the deepest conviction, but very clear and calm, given to him without internal struggle, exactly an immutable mathematical formula. Dobrolyubov is literary angrier than Chernyshevsky; No wonder Turgenev said to Chernyshevsky: “You just poisonous snake, and Dobrolyubov is a spectacled snake.” In the satirical appendix to Sovremennik - “Whistle”, which with its causticity restored all the literary opponents of Sovremennik, more than the magazine itself, Chernyshevsky took almost no part; The dominant role in it was played by Dobrolyubov’s concentrated and passionate wit. In addition to wit, Dobrolyubov has more literary brilliance in general than Chernyshevsky. Nevertheless, the general coloring of the ideological wealth that Dobrolyubov developed with such brilliance in his articles could not but be partly the result of Chernyshevsky’s influence, because from the first day of their acquaintance both writers became extremely attached to each other and saw each other almost every day. The combined activities of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov gave Sovremennik enormous importance in the history of the progressive movement in Russia. Such a leadership position could not help but create numerous opponents for him; many people watched with extreme hostility the growing influence of the organ of Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov on the younger generation. At first, however, the controversy between Sovremennik and other magazines was purely literary, without much aggravation. Russian “progress” was then experiencing its honeymoon, when, with the most insignificant exceptions, all, one might say, intelligent Russia was imbued with a lively desire to move forward and disagreements were only in details, and not in basic feelings and aspirations. A characteristic expression of this unanimity can be the fact that Chernyshevsky at the end of the 50s was a member of the editorial board of the official Military Collection for about a year. By the beginning of the 60s, the relationship between Russian parties and the unanimity of the progressive movement changed significantly. With the liberation of the peasants and the preparation of most of the “great reforms,” the liberation movement, both in the eyes of the ruling spheres and in the minds of a significant part of the moderate elements of society, became complete; further following the path of changes in the state and social system began to seem unnecessary and dangerous. But the mood, headed by Chernyshevsky, did not consider itself satisfied and moved forward more and more impetuously.
At the end of 1861 and beginning of 1862 big picture The political situation has changed dramatically. Student unrest broke out at St. Petersburg University, Polish unrest intensified, proclamations calling on youth and peasants to revolt appeared, terrible St. Petersburg fires occurred, in which, without the slightest reason, but very persistently they saw a connection with the emergence of revolutionary sentiments among young people. The good-natured attitude towards extreme elements has completely disappeared. In May 1862, Sovremennik was closed for 8 months, and on June 12, 1862, Chernyshevsky was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he spent about 2 years. The Senate sentenced Chernyshevsky to 14 years of hard labor. In the final confirmation the period was reduced to 7 years. On May 13, 1864, the verdict was announced to Chernyshevsky on Mytninskaya Square. The name of Chernyshevsky almost disappears from the press; before his return from exile, he was usually spoken of descriptively, as the author of “Essays on the Gogol Period” or the author of “The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality,” etc. In 1865, the 2nd edition of “The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality” was authorized. , but without the name of the author (“edition by A.N. Pypin”), and in 1874 Mill’s “Foundations of Political Economy” was published, also as “edition by A.N. Pypin", without the name of the translator and without "Notes". Chernyshevsky spent the first 3 years of his stay in Siberia in Kadai, on the Mongolian border, and then was installed at the Aleksandrovsky plant in the Nerchinsk district. During his stay in Kadai, he was allowed a three-day visit with his wife and 2 young sons. Life for Chernyshevsky in material terms was not particularly difficult, because political prisoners at that time did not carry out real hard labor. Chernyshevsky was not constrained either in relations with other prisoners (Mikhailov, Polish rebels) or in walks; at one time he even lived in a separate house. He read and wrote a lot, but everything he wrote was immediately destroyed. At one time, performances were staged at the Aleksandrovsky Plant and Chernyshevsky composed short plays for them. “The common prisoners didn’t like them much, or rather, they didn’t even like them at all: Chernyshevsky was too serious for them” (“Scientific Review”, 1899, 4).
In 1871, the term of hard labor ended and Chernyshevsky had to move into the category of settlers, who were given the opportunity to choose their place of residence within Siberia. The then chief of the gendarmes, Count P. A. Shuvalov, entered, however, with an idea about Chernyshevsky’s settlement in Vilyuisk. This was a significant worsening of his fate, because the climate at the Aleksandrovsky plant is moderate, and Chernyshevsky lived there in communication with intelligent people, and Vilyuisk lies 450 miles beyond Yakutsk, in the harshest climate, and in 1871 had only 40 buildings. Chernyshevsky's society in Vilyuisk was limited to a few Cossacks assigned to him. Chernyshevsky's stay in such a place remote from the civilized world was painful; nevertheless, he worked actively on various works and translations. In 1883, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Count D. A. Tolstoy, requested the return of Chernyshevsky, who was assigned Astrakhan for residence. In exile, he lived on funds that, according to his most modest needs, were sent to him by Nekrasov and his closest relatives.
In 1885, the last period of Chernyshevsky’s activity began. During this time, Chernyshevsky gave little original material, not counting the prefaces to Weber’s “World History”: an article in “Russian Gazette” (1885): “The Character of Human Knowledge”, a long poem from ancient Carthaginian life, “Hymn to the Virgin of Heaven”, which was least brilliant with poetic merits "(Russkaya Mysl, 1885, 7) and a large article signed with the pseudonym "Old Transformist" (all other works and translations of the Astrakhan period were signed with the pseudonym Andreev) - "The Origin of the Theory of Beneficence of the Struggle for Life" (Russkaya Mysl, 1888, No. 9). The article by “The Old Transformist” attracted attention and amazed many with its manner: it was strange in its disdainful and mocking attitude towards Darwin and the reduction of Darwin’s theory to a bourgeois fiction created to justify the exploitation of the working class by the bourgeoisie. Some, however, saw in this article the former Chernyshevsky, accustomed to subordinating all interests, including purely scientific ones, to the goals of the struggle for social ideals. In 1885, friends arranged for Chernyshevsky to have the famous publisher and philanthropist K. T. Soldatenkov translate the 15-volume “ Universal History» Weber. Chernyshevsky performed this enormous work with amazing energy, translating 3 volumes a year, each 1000 pages long. Until Volume V, Chernyshevsky translated literally, but then he began to make large cuts in Weber’s text, which he generally did not like very much for its outdatedness and narrow German point of view. To replace what had been thrown out, he began to add, in the form of prefaces, a series of ever-expanding essays: “about the spelling of Muslim and, in particular, Arabic names”, “about races”, “about the classification of people by language”, “about the differences between peoples according to national character", "the general character of the elements that produce progress", "climates". To the 2nd edition of Weber’s 1st volume, which quickly followed the first, Chernyshevsky added “an outline of scientific concepts about the emergence of the conditions of human life and the course of human development in prehistoric times.” In Astrakhan, Chernyshevsky managed to translate 11 volumes of Weber. In June 1889, at the request of the then Astrakhan governor, Prince L.D. Vyazemsky, he was allowed to settle in his native Saratov. There he set to work on Weber with the same energy, managed to translate 2/3 of volume XII, and since the translation was nearing completion, he began to think about a new grandiose translation - a 16-volume “ Encyclopedic Dictionary» Brockhaus. But excessive work strained the senile body, whose nutrition was very poor, due to the exacerbation of Chernyshevsky’s long-standing illness - catarrh of the stomach. Having been ill for only 2 days, Chernyshevsky died of a cerebral hemorrhage on the night of October 16-17, 1889.
His death significantly contributed to the restoration of the correct attitude towards him. The press of various trends paid tribute to his extensive and amazingly versatile education, his brilliant literary talent and the extraordinary beauty of his moral being. In the recollections of people who saw Chernyshevsky in Astrakhan, what is most emphasized is his amazing simplicity and deep disgust for everything that even remotely resembled a pose. They tried to talk to him more than once about the suffering he had endured, but always to no avail: he claimed that he had not suffered any special trials. In the 1890s, the ban on Chernyshevsky's works was partially lifted. Without the name of the author, as “editions by M.N. Chernyshevsky" (youngest son), 4 collections of aesthetic, critical and historical-literary articles by Chernyshevsky appeared: "Aesthetics and Poetry" (St. Petersburg, 1893); “Notes on modern literature” (St. Petersburg, 1894); “Essays on the Gogol period of Russian literature” (St. Petersburg, 1890) and “Critical Articles” (St. Petersburg, 1895). About the first of Chernyshevsky’s significant works - “Aesthetic relations of art to reality” - the opinion is still held that it is the basis and the first manifestation of that “destruction of aesthetics”, which reached its apogee in the articles of Pisarev, Zaitsev and others. This opinion has no basis. Chernyshevsky’s treatise cannot be considered one of the “destruction of aesthetics” because he always cares about “true” beauty, which - rightly or wrongly, this is another question - sees mainly in nature, and not in art. For Chernyshevsky, poetry and art are not nonsense: he only sets them the task of reflecting life, and not “fantastic flights.” The dissertation undoubtedly makes a strange impression on the later reader, but not because it supposedly seeks to abolish art, but because it asks completely fruitless questions: what is higher in aesthetic terms - art or reality, and where true beauty is more often found - in works of art or in living nature. Here the incomparable is compared: art is something completely original, main role it plays into the artist’s attitude towards what is being reproduced. The polemical formulation of the question in the dissertation was a reaction against the one-sidedness of German aesthetics of the 40s, with their disdainful attitude towards reality and their assertion that the ideal of beauty is abstract. The search for ideological art that permeated the dissertation was only a return to the traditions of Belinsky, who already from 1841 - 1842. had a negative attitude towards “art for art’s sake” and also considered art one of the “moral activities of man.” The best commentary on any aesthetic theories is always their practical application to specific literary phenomena. What is Chernyshevsky in his critical activity? First of all, an enthusiastic apologist for Lessing. About Lessing’s “Laocoon” - this aesthetic code with which they always tried to beat our “destroyers of aesthetics” - Chernyshevsky says that “since the time of Aristotle, no one understood the essence of poetry as truly and deeply as Lessing.” At the same time, of course, Chernyshevsky is especially fascinated by the militant nature of Lessing’s activities, his struggle with old literary traditions, the harshness of his polemics and, in general, the mercilessness with which he cleared the Augean stables of contemporary German literature. IN highest degree important for understanding the literary and aesthetic views of Chernyshevsky and his articles about Pushkin, written in the same year when the dissertation appeared. Chernyshevsky's attitude towards Pushkin is downright enthusiastic. “Pushkin’s creations, which created new Russian literature, formed new Russian poetry,” according to the deep conviction of the critic, “will live forever.” “Being neither primarily a thinker nor a scientist, Pushkin was a man of extraordinary intelligence and an extremely educated person; not only in thirty years, but even now in our society there are few people equal to Pushkin in education.” “Pushkin’s artistic genius is so great and beautiful that, although the era of unconditional satisfaction with pure form has passed for us, we still cannot help but be carried away by the wondrous, artistic beauty of his creations. He is the true father of our poetry." Pushkin “was not a poet of any specific view of life, like Byron, nor was he even a poet of thought in general, like, for example, Goethe and Schiller. The artistic form of Faust, Wallenstein, or Childe Harold arose in order to express a deep view of life; We will not find this in Pushkin’s works. For him, artistry is not just one shell, but the grain and the shell together.”
To characterize Chernyshevsky’s attitude to poetry, his short article about Shcherbin (1857) is also very important. If the literary legend about Chernyshevsky as a “destroyer of aesthetics” were at all true, Shcherbina - this typical representative of “pure beauty”, completely lost in ancient Hellas and the contemplation of its nature and art - could least of all count on his good disposition. In reality, however, Chernyshevsky, declaring that Shcherbina’s “antique manner” is “unsympathetic” to him, nevertheless welcomes the approval met by the poet: “if the poet’s imagination, due to subjective conditions of development, was overflowing with ancient images, from the abundance of the heart the lips should have spoken, and Mr. Shcherbina is right in front of his talent.” In general, “autonomy is the supreme law of art,” and “the supreme law of poetry: preserve the freedom of your talent, poet.” Analyzing Shcherbina’s “iambs,” in which “the thought is noble, alive, modern,” the critic is dissatisfied with them because in them “the thought is not embodied in a poetic image; it remains a cold sentiment, it is outside the realm of poetry.” The desire of Rosenheim and Benediktov to join the spirit of the times and sing the praises of “progress” did not arouse in Chernyshevsky, as well as in Dobrolyubov, the slightest sympathy.
Chernyshevsky remains a zealot of artistic criteria in his analyzes of the works of our novelists and playwrights. He, for example, was very strict about Ostrovsky’s comedy “Poverty is not a vice” (1854), although in general he highly regarded Ostrovsky’s “wonderful talent.” Recognizing that “works that are false in their main idea are weak even in pure artistically“,” the critic highlights “the author’s disregard for the demands of art.” Among Chernyshevsky’s best critical articles is a small note (1856) about “Childhood and Adolescence” and “War Stories” by Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy is one of those few writers who immediately received universal recognition and correct assessment; but only Chernyshevsky noticed in Tolstoy’s very first works the extraordinary “purity of moral feeling.” His article on Shchedrin is very typical for determining the general physiognomy of Chernyshevsky’s critical activity: he deliberately avoids discussing the socio-political issues that the “Provincial Sketches” suggest, focusing all his attention on the “purely psychological side of the types represented by Shchedrin,” trying to show that in themselves, by their nature, Shchedrin’s heroes are not moral monsters at all: they became morally unsightly people because they did not see any examples of true morality in the environment. Chernyshevsky’s famous article: “A Russian man at a rendez-vous”, dedicated to Turgenev’s “Asa”, entirely refers to those articles “about”, where almost nothing is said about the work itself, and all attention is focused on the social conclusions associated with the work. The main creator of this type of journalistic criticism in our literature is Dobrolyubov, in his articles about Ostrovsky, Goncharov and Turgenev; but if we take into account that the named articles by Dobrolyubov date back to 1859 and 1860, and Chernyshevsky’s article to 1858, then Chernyshevsky will also have to be included among the creators of journalistic criticism. But, as already noted in the article about Dobrolyubov, journalistic criticism has nothing in common with the requirement of journalistic art falsely attributed to it. Both Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov demand from work of art only one thing - the truth, and then this truth is used to draw conclusions of public importance. The article about “Ace” is devoted to clarifying that in the absence of a social life in our country, only such flabby natures as the hero of Turgenev’s story can be developed. Best illustration to the fact that, applying the journalistic method of studying their content to literary works, Chernyshevsky does not at all require a tendentious depiction of reality, one of his last (end of 1861) critical articles, p.
Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky is a famous writer, publicist, critic and philosopher. Nikolai Chernyshevsky was born on July 12, 1828 in Saratov into the family of a priest.
In the period 1842 - 1845, Chernyshevsky studied at the Saratov Seminary, where his father taught. They predicted a brilliant spiritual career for him, but Chernyshevsky was not particularly pleased with this prospect.
In 1846, Chernyshevsky entered St. Petersburg University, the Faculty of Philosophy, where he specialized in Slavic philology. During his studies at the university, the worldview of the future writer was formed, under the influence of German classical philosophy and French socialism. In 1850, Chernyshevsky tried his hand at literature. His first works were “The Tale of Lili and Goethe”, “The Tale of Josephine” and others. The first time after graduating from university, Chernyshevsky was engaged in tutoring in the Second Cadet Corps.
Upon returning to Saratov, from 1851 to 1853 he worked as a senior literature teacher at the gymnasium. In May 1853, Chernyshevsky returned to St. Petersburg. While planning to get his master's degree, he worked on his dissertation. In 1854, after retiring, Chernyshevsky began working for the Sovremennik magazine. He led a column devoted to criticism and bibliography. A revolutionary-democratic character appears in the writer’s works. He is being followed, but the detectives found nothing.
In 1862, Chernyshevsky was arrested. In May 1864, the civil execution of Chernyshevsky took place. He was kept chained to a post, then sentenced to 14 years of hard labor with a settlement in Siberia. On October 29, 1889, Nikolai Chernyshevsky died of a stroke.
Publicist and writer, materialist philosopher and scientist, democratic revolutionary, theorist of critical utopian socialism, Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was an outstanding personality who left a noticeable mark on the development of social philosophy and literary criticism and literature itself.
Coming from the family of a Saratov priest, Chernyshevsky was nevertheless well educated. Until the age of 14, he studied at home under the guidance of his father, a well-read and intelligent man, and in 1843 he entered the theological seminary.
“In terms of his knowledge, Chernyshevsky was not only superior to his peers and fellow students, but also to many teachers at the seminary. Chernyshevsky used his time at the seminary for self-education.", wrote Soviet literary critic Pavel Lebedev-Polyansky in his article.
Without completing the seminar course, Chernyshevsky in 1846 entered the historical and philological department of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg University.
Nikolai Gavrilovich read with interest the works of major philosophers, starting with Aristotle and Plato and ending with Feuerbach and Hegel, economists and art theorists, as well as the works of natural scientists. At the university, Chernyshevsky met Mikhail Illarionovich Mikhailov. It was he who brought together young student with representatives of the Petrashevites circle. Chernyshevsky did not become a member of this circle, but he often attended other meetings - in the company of the father of Russian nihilism, Irinarch Vvedensky. After the arrest of the Petrashevites, Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote in his diary that visitors to Vvedensky’s circle “do not even think about the possibility of an uprising that would free them.”
After graduating from the university course in 1850, the young candidate of sciences was assigned to the Saratov gymnasium. The new teacher used his position, among other things, to promote revolutionary ideas, for which he became known as a freethinker and a Voltairian.
“I have such a way of thinking that I should expect from minute to minute that the gendarmes will appear, take me to St. Petersburg and put me in a fortress for God knows how long. I do things here that smell like hard labor - I say such things in class.”
Nikolai Chernyshevsky
After his marriage, Chernyshevsky returned to St. Petersburg and was appointed as a teacher in the second cadet corps, but his stay there, despite all his pedagogical merits, was short-lived. Nikolai Chernyshevsky resigned after a conflict with an officer.
First literary works future author of the novel “What to Do?” began writing in the late 1840s. Having moved to the Northern capital in 1853, Chernyshevsky published short articles in St. Petersburg Gazette and Otechestvennye Zapiski. A year later, having finally ended his career as a teacher, Chernyshevsky came to Sovremennik and already in 1855 began to actually manage the magazine along with Nekrasov. Nikolai Chernyshevsky was one of the ideologists of turning the magazine into a tribune of revolutionary democracy, which turned a number of authors away from Sovremennik, among whom were Turgenev, Tolstoy and Grigorovich. At the same time, Chernyshevsky strongly supported Dobrolyubov, whom he attracted to the magazine in 1856 and handed over to him the leadership of the criticism department. Chernyshevsky was connected with Dobrolyubov not only general work in Sovremennik, but also the similarity of a number of social concepts, one of the most striking examples is the pedagogical ideas of both philosophers.
Continuing his active work in Sovremennik, in 1858 the writer became the first editor of the Military Collection magazine and attracted some Russian officers to revolutionary circles.
In 1860, Chernyshevsky’s main philosophical work, “Anthropological Primacy in Philosophy,” was published, and a year later, after the announcement of the Manifesto on the abolition of serfdom, the author came out with a number of articles criticizing the reform. Although not formally a member of the “Land and Freedom” circle, Chernyshevsky nevertheless became its ideological inspirer and came under secret police surveillance.
In May 1862, Sovremennik was closed for eight months “for its harmful direction,” and in June Nikolai Chernyshevsky himself was arrested. The position of the writer was worsened by Herzen’s letter to the revolutionary and publicist Nikolai Serno-Solovyevich, in which the former declared his readiness to publish a magazine abroad. Chernyshevsky was accused of having connections with revolutionary emigration and was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
The investigation into the case of “enemy number one of the Russian Empire” lasted about a year and a half. During this time, the novel “What to do?” was written. (1862–1863), published in Sovremennik, which reopened after a break, the unfinished novel “Tales within a Tale” and several stories.
In February 1864, Chernyshevsky was sentenced to hard labor for 14 years without the right to return from Siberia. And although Emperor Alexander II reduced hard labor to seven years, in general the critic and literary critic spent more than two decades in prison.
In the early 80s of the 19th century, Chernyshevsky returned to the central part of Russia - the city of Astrakhan, and at the end of the decade, thanks to the efforts of his son, Mikhail, he moved to his homeland in Saratov. However, a few months after his return, the writer fell ill with malaria. Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky died on October 29, 1889, and was buried in Saratov at the Resurrection Cemetery.
The artistic work of Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, the son of a Saratov priest, is small in volume (he completed the novels “What is to be done?” and “Prologue”), but, of course, requires a separate discussion. This man, endowed with great and varied natural talents, a socialist thinker and influential literary critic, was one of the most striking and extraordinary figures in Russia in the 19th century. At the same time, he is certainly a tragic figure. In the USSR, the legacy of Chernyshevsky was studied as carefully as the legacy of another socialist - A.I. Herzen (however, Herzen showed himself as an artist incomparably more versatile).
In the early 1860s N.G. Chernyshevsky became carried away by hopes for a quick peasant revolution and, essentially, not having any real revolutionary party or organization behind him (information about his membership in “Land and Freedom” is quite humane), made an attempt to engage in revolutionary propaganda by writing an appeal to the “Lord Peasants bow from their well-wishers.” This work is intellectually inept and rather falsely stylized as “folk” speech.
Chernyshevsky was arrested and after a long investigation (there was practically no direct evidence against him), as a result of gross fraud and violations of legal proceedings, he was sentenced to civil execution (a sword was publicly broken over his head) and to 14 years of hard labor (Tsar Alexander II halved this term ). The sentence against Chernyshevsky was widely and acutely experienced in society as the despotic arbitrariness of the authorities and extreme injustice.
Until 1871 N.G. Chernyshevsky was in hard labor in Eastern Siberia, and then was transferred to a settlement in the city of Vilyuysk (Yakutia). The revolutionaries, for whom his name had already become a high symbol, repeatedly tried to arrange his escape. But these tortures failed, but Chernyshevsky, apparently, was not at all what they wanted to see in him - not a practical activist, but rather an armchair-bookish person, a thinker, writer and dreamer (however, at the beginning of the 20th century V.V. Rozanov in his “Solitary” talked about him as a failed energetic statesman - but this is just Rozanov’s personal opinion).
In 1883, the government allowed Chernyshevsky to move to Astrakhan, and the climate change unexpectedly turned out to be disastrous for him. His health declined sharply. Chernyshevsky managed to obtain permission to move again - to his homeland, to Saratov, but died there of a stroke.
During the investigation, Chernyshevsky wrote a novel in the Peter and Paul Fortress entitled “What to do? (From stories about new people)" (1862 - 1863). In 1863, the novel was published in the Sovremennik magazine (as is commonly believed, due to an oversight of the censor, who was deceived by its “inverted” composition and mistook this work after an inattentive, cursory reading of the first chapters for a love vaudeville story - although it is possible that the censor understood everything and acted in secret quite consciously, for left-liberal sentiments were very widespread during this period among representatives of a wide variety of professions). Chernyshevsky’s novel “What to do?” had a huge impact on Russian society half of the 19th century- beginning of the 20th century (it can be compared with the influence of A.N. Radishchev’s “Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow” written at the end of the 18th century).
However, this influence was ambiguous. Some admired the novel “What is to be done?”, while others were outraged by it. Educational publications of the Soviet era invariably display a reaction of the first kind, and the work itself is assessed apologetically - as a specific program for young revolutionaries, personified in the image of a “special man” Rakhmetov (subjecting himself to severe spiritual and physical hardening, up to the famous lying on sharp nails), as a textbook of life for young people, as a bright dream of the coming victory of the socialist revolution, etc. and so on. (However, the utopianism of Chernyshevsky’s hopes for a peasant revolution was recognized). Let us briefly recall what the reaction of indignant readers was based on.
Many of the “anti-nihilistic” novels by various authors of the 1860s and 1870s contain a kind of rebuke to Chernyshevsky (“Panes” by V.P. Avenarius, “Nowhere” and “On the Knives” by N.S. Leskov, etc.). The relationship between its main characters (the emancipated Vera Pavlovna Rozalskaya, her first husband Dmitry Lopukhov and second husband Alexander Kirsanov) was often perceived as preaching immorality and an attack on the principles of the Christian family structure. There were grounds for such an understanding - in any case, the attempts of imitators of these heroes that immediately appeared in real communes to live and do “according to Chernyshevsky” broke many young destinies. Writer V.F. Odoevsky, one of the smartest people of his time, wrote in his diary (January 1, 1864):
“I read “What to do?” for the first time. Chernyshevsky. What an absurd direction, contradicting itself at every step! But how la promiscuite de femmes (the freedom to possess women) should seduce young people. And when will they grow old?
The social utopianism of Chernyshevsky’s creativity, his socially destructive mentality could also be perceived as irresponsible and socially harmful. Educated people knew what a bloody development the Great French Revolution had (contrary to the dreams of the Enlightenment philosophers), and could not possibly yearn for a repetition of something similar on Russian soil. How naively vulgar the “social Darwinist” motifs in the novel looked to a number of readers. During these years, a number of publicists mechanically projected onto the laws of social life fashionable novelty, relating to the field of biology, is the theory of Charles Darwin, set out in his work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” (1859). For some time, before the spread of the ideas of Marxism, Social Darwinism played the role of ideological support for our revolutionary leaders (mainly in the 1860s). Publicists of the sixties readily argued that “natural selection” and a “struggle for existence” were taking place in society. Within the framework of this superficial “teaching,” the so-called “theory of rational egoism” has matured, which guides the heroes of Chernyshevsky’s novel in their behavior.
Vera Rozalskaya's sewing workshops (in which she saves former prostitutes by re-educating them through labor, and also works as a cutter herself, captivating the “girls” by personal example) looked rather naive as a positive program. The utopian lifelessness of this storyline The novel was proven by imitators of the image of Vera Pavlovna, who more than once tried to create similar workshops (sewing, bookbinding, etc.) in the Russian reality of the 1860s and 70s - these undertakings usually ended in material problems, quarrels between women and the rapid collapse of the “communes” .
All this must be stated, having now the opportunity to look at the novel historically retrospectively. However, the undoubted fact remains that Chernyshevsky’s book at one time played a huge role in the public life of Russia.
N.G. It is impossible to deny Chernyshevsky’s talent as a novelist and high literary skill. The images of the main characters cannot be considered lifeless diagrams - they are written with brilliance, Chernyshevsky made their behavior, their inner appearance realistically convincing (otherwise they could not have caused a huge number of life imitations among Russian youth over the next decades). In short, it is hardly correct to inflate a literary personality, to study Chernyshevsky’s work in detail, turning him into a “great Russian writer” (which was sometimes observed in the conditions of the USSR), but in this author it is necessary to see who he really was - great, due to objective reasons for an artist who has not fully developed.
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