Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky Born July 12 [24], 1828, Saratov Date of death October 17 [29], 1889, Saratov — Russian utopian philosopher, democratic revolutionary, scientist, literary critic, publicist and writer.

Biography
Born in Saratov into the family of a priest, Saratov cathedral archpriest Gabriel Ivanovich Chernyshevsky (1793-1861). 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.

Over the years of studying at the university, the foundations of a worldview were developed; 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 the St. Petersburg Gazette and in Otechestvennye Zapiski.
At the beginning of 1854, he moved to the Sovremennik magazine, where in 1855-1862 he was the leader 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 from writers — liberals (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, and is involved in the creation of the secret revolutionary society “Land and Freedom”.
In June 1859, Chernyshevsky went to London to see Herzen for an explanation about the article “Very dangerous!” (“Very dangerous!”), published in Kolokol.

Since September 1861 it has been under secret police surveillance. The chief of the gendarmes, Dolgorukov, gives the following description 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, Sovremennik was closed for 8 months.

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 seven years; in total, Chernyshevsky spent more than twenty years in prison and hard labor.

On May 19 (31), 1864, the civil execution of a revolutionary took place in St. Petersburg on Horse Square. He was sent to Nerchinsk penal servitude; in 1866 he was transferred to the Aleksandrovsky plant of the Nerchinsk district, in 1871 to Vilyuysk. In 1874, he was officially offered release, but he refused to apply for clemency.
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 transferred to Astrakhan (according to some sources, during this period Konstantin Fedorov worked as a copyist for him).

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 on the night of October 17 (29), 1889 from a cerebral hemorrhage. On October 20 he was buried in the city of Saratov at the Resurrection Cemetery.

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.

Philosophical views

He was a follower of Russian revolutionary-democratic thought and progressive Western European philosophy (French materialists of the 18th century, 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.”

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 determines his “essence,” and is 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, 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 royal 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
19.06. — 08/20/1846 — Prilutsky apartment building — Nab. Catherine Canal (now Griboyedov Canal), 44;
21.08. — 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 Prospekt, 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 — 12.03.1851 — Ofitserskaya street, 45;
13.05 — 01.08.1853 — Ofitserskaya street, 45;
1853-1854 — apartment of I. I. Vvedensky in the Borodina apartment building — embankment of the Zhdanovka River, 7;
08/22/1855 — end of 06/1860 — Povarsky lane, 13, apt. 6;
end 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 from descendants
In the USSR, Chernyshevsky became a cult figure in the history of the revolutionary struggle due to V.I. Lenin’s high 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.
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 — into 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 changes lead to changes in the entire society as a whole and in each individual individual. 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.

Quotes

“Progressive people in Europe, who so admired the North American States, who so proudly held them up as an example to all European nations, are embarrassed and compromised by the weaknesses that have been revealed in their ideal” (From Chernyshevsky’s review (1861) of “Political and Economic Letters to the President American United States» by the American economist G. Carey).

“If economists of a backward school understood the inevitability of the state’s influence on economic relations, they would probably, instead of empty talk about a utopian system of non-intervention, begin to define truly useful objects and truly reasonable limits for inevitable intervention” (Economic activity and legislation).

Memory of Chernyshevsky
In 1978, an artistically marked envelope dedicated to the writer was published.
The name of N. G. Chernyshevsky was given to:
Saratov State University;
Vilyuisky Pedagogical School.
The Transbaikal State Humanitarian Pedagogical University and the Borisoglebsk Drama Theater are named after N. G. Chernyshevsky.
The State House Museum has been opened in Saratov.
Chernyshevsky served as the prototype for Chernov, the hero of S. V. Kovalevskaya’s story “The Nihilist.”
In the village of Aleksandrovsky Zavod there is a museum named after N. G. Chernyshevsky, located in the house where the writer lived.
A monument was erected in the city of Vilyuysk.
Secondary School No. 1 named after N. G. Chernyshevsky in the city of Semipalatinsk (Kazakhstan). One of the oldest schools in the city, in 1928 it was named after the writer.

In memory of Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky the following were named:
Avenue and Square, Chernyshevskaya metro station, as well as the Chernyshevsky Garden in St. Petersburg.
The urban-type settlement of Chernyshevsky is located on the Vilyuy River upstream from Vilyuysk, the place of Chernyshevsky’s exile.
Drama Theater named after. Chernyshevsky in the Voronezh region, Borisoglebsk.
State Republican Library named after N. G. Chernyshevsky (Frunze).
a number of streets, squares and alleys in many cities.