Quotes About Chernyshevsky

Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a writer and critic who assumed intellectual leadership of the intelligentsia in the fifties, had in 1848 confided to his diary the thought that Russia needed an autocracy that would champion the interests of the lower classes in order to realize future equality. He added: "Peter the Great acted thus, in my opinion, but such a power must realize that it is temporary, that it is a means, not an end."[10]

He went on to explain that "the greatest merit of Chernyshevsky lies not only in showing that any right-minded and truly decent person must be a revolutionary, but also something still more important: he showed what sort of person a revolutionary should be, what rules of conduct he should follow, how he should proceed to his goal, and by what means he should attain it."[18]