SLOVO, VOL. 28, NO. 2(SPRING 2016), 48-68.
DOI: 10.14324/111. 0954-6839.045
The Debate around Nihilism in 1860s Russian Literature SASHA ST JOHN MURPHY School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London The city of St. Petersburg erupted in flames in the spring and summer of 1862. 1 Students of St. Petersburg and Moscow Universities, acting on an upsurge of revolutionary activism, had begun demonstrating their frustrations. Fyodor Dostoevsky blamed Nikolai Chernyshevsky, who at the time was a radical writer. The tale goes that Dostoevsky went to the home of Chernyshevsky to plead to him to stop fuelling the fires. While Chernyshevsky was no arsonist, this story is symptomatic of the 1860s atmosphere. This period was a time of great social and economic upheaval within Russia and nowhere were these issues so passionately argued as in the novels of the country’s leading writers.2 Fourteen years after the 1848 Revolutions spread across Europe, Russia was facing its own internal problems. The work of authors and critics during this period all demonstrate their desire for progress within Russian society, but reflects their uncertainty on how to go about realizing it. This period saw a new generation of literary critics who criticised the process of reform and raised a series of “accursed questions” about Russian life more generally.3 The literary establishment was frantically looking for “intellectual” solutions to “political” problems. The works of literature I have selected are as follows: Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What is to be Done? I have not attempted to cover all of Russian literature, or read the extensive criticism available as there is such an abundance. These authors are particularly interesting and noteworthy as much of their writing provides a canon of work with the message of their novels being intertwined through their reactions to each other. Each piece offers an explicit critique of Russian society. They are representative of different aspects of Russian society, and were focusing on different criticisms thereof. Although I address them as individuals, a writer can be viewed as part of a larger section of society and the views and opinions they deliberately, or unwittingly, express tell us much about the opinions of
1 Catherine Evtuvhov and Richard Stites, A History of Russia since 1800 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
2004), p.114. 2 Jane Barstow, ‘Dostoevsk’s Notes From Underground Versus Chernyshevsky’s What Is To Be Done?’, College Literature 5 (1978), p. 24. 3 Evtuhov and Stites, A History of Russia, p. 114. © School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, University College London, 2016.