What Is to Be Done?

What Is to Be Done?
Author: Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 470
Release: 2014-05-30
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0801471583

No work in modern literature, with the possible exception of Uncle Tom's Cabin, can compete with What Is to Be Done? in its effect on human lives and its power to make history. For Chernyshevsky's novel, far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.―The Southern Review Almost from the moment of its publication in 1863, Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel, What Is to Be Done?, had a profound impact on the course of Russian literature and politics. The idealized image it offered of dedicated and self-sacrificing intellectuals transforming society by means of scientific knowledge served as a model of inspiration for Russia's revolutionary intelligentsia. On the one hand, the novel's condemnation of moderate reform helped to bring about the irrevocable break between radical intellectuals and liberal reformers; on the other, Chernyshevsky's socialist vision polarized conservatives' opposition to institutional reform. Lenin himself called Chernyshevsky "the greatest and most talented representative of socialism before Marx"; and the controversy surrounding What Is to Be Done? exacerbated the conflicts that eventually led to the Russian Revolution. Michael R. Katz's readable and compelling translation is now the definitive unabridged English-language version, brilliantly capturing the extraordinary qualities of the original. William G. Wagner has provided full annotations to Chernyshevsky's allusions and references and to the sources of his ideas, and has appended a critical bibliography. An introduction by Katz and Wagner places the novel in the context of nineteenth-century Russian social, political, and intellectual history and literature, and explores its importance for several generations of Russian radicals.

Chernyshevskii's What is to be Done?

Chernyshevskii's What is to be Done?
Author: Andrew Michael Drozd
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2001
Genre:
ISBN: 9780810117396

Chernyshevskii's 1863 novel What is to be Done? has often been dismissed as sociopolitical propaganda. Dostoevsky reviled it, while Lenin called it an inspiration. In this re-examination, the author argues that the novel has been misread through a refusal to see the novel as a literary text.

What Is to Be Done?

What Is to Be Done?
Author: Nikolai Chernyshevsky
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 470
Release: 1989
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780801495472

Almost from the moment of its publication in 1863, Nikolai Chernyshevsky's novel, What Is to Be Done?, had a profound impact on the course of Russian literature and politics. The idealized image it offered of dedicated and self-sacrificing intellectuals transforming society by means of scientific knowledge served as a model of inspiration for...

Belarus

Belarus
Author: Piotra P. Murzionak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2022-03-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1793654921

Belarus, a middle-sized nation with more than a thousand years of history, is not well known beyond periodic media headlines. Modern scholarly and popular literature covers only fragments from Belarus’s long history and current geopolitical, social, and cultural issues. Belarusian history in this book differs in many aspects from history and myths created by Russian scholars and propagated worldwide. The author argues for the existence of a Western-Ruthenian (Belarusian-Ukrainian) civilization as a sub-civilization of Western civilization and thus different from Eurasian civilization. With original, detailed. and critical views on Belarusian history from the ninth century to the present, it explores the latest information about Belarusian society regarding mentality, identity, religion, current elites, the Revolution of Hope 2020. It then analyzes the future prospects of Belarus based on an assessment of modern trends in human societal and political development. It provides detailed analysis of current activities of Belarusian national and ruling elites and their ideologies vis-à-vis the building of a nation-state.

The Odd Man Karakozov

The Odd Man Karakozov
Author: Claudia Verhoeven
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 247
Release: 2011-08-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801463718

On April 4, 1866, just as Alexander II stepped out of Saint Petersburg's Summer Garden and onto the boulevard, a young man named Dmitry Karakozov pulled out a pistol and shot at the tsar. He missed, but his "unheard-of act" changed the course of Russian history-and gave birth to the revolutionary political violence known as terrorism. Based on clues pulled out of the pockets of Karakozov's peasant disguise, investigators concluded that there had been a conspiracy so extensive as to have sprawled across the entirety of the Russian empire and the European continent. Karakozov was said to have been a member of "The Organization," a socialist network at the center of which sat a secret cell of suicide-assassins: "Hell." It is still unclear how much of this "conspiracy" theory was actually true, but of the thirty-six defendants who stood accused during what was Russia's first modern political trial, all but a few were exiled to Siberia, and Karakozov himself was publicly hanged on September 3, 1866. Because Karakozov was decidedly strange, sick, and suicidal, his failed act of political violence has long been relegated to a footnote of Russian history. In The Odd Man Karakozov, however, Claudia Verhoeven argues that it is precisely this neglected, exceptional case that sheds a new light on the origins of terrorism. The book not only demonstrates how the idea of terrorism first emerged from the reception of Karakozov's attack, but also, importantly, what was really at stake in this novel form of political violence, namely, the birth of a new, modern political subject. Along the way, in characterizing Karakozov's as an essentially modernist crime, Verhoeven traces how his act profoundly impacted Russian culture, including such touchstones as Repin's art and Dostoevsky's literature. By looking at the history that produced Karakozov and, in turn, the history that Karakozov produced, Verhoeven shows terrorism as a phenomenon inextricably linked to the foundations of the modern world: capitalism, enlightened law and scientific reason, ideology, technology, new media, and above all, people's participation in politics and in the making of history.

Lenin Rediscovered

Lenin Rediscovered
Author: Lars T. Lih
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 888
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004131205

This commentary to Lenin's landmark "What is to be Done?" (1902) provides hitherto unavailable contextual information about Lenin's outlook and aims that undermines previous interpretations. It challenges established views about Marxism, 'revolutionary Social Democracy' and Bolshevism.

Impulse to Act

Impulse to Act
Author: Othon Alexandrakis
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2016-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253023262

What drives people to take to the streets in protest? What is their connection to other activists and how does that change over time? How do seemingly spontaneous activist movements emerge, endure, and evolve, especially when they lack a leader and concrete agenda? How does one analyze a changing political movement immersed in contingency? Impulse to Act addresses these questions incisively, examining a wide range of activist movements from the December 2008 protests in Greece to the recent chto delat in Russia. Contributors in the first section of this volume highlight the affective dimensions of political movements, charting the various ways in which participants coalesce around and belong to collectives of resistance. The potent agency of movements is highlighted in the second section, where scholars show how the emerging actions and critiques of protesters help disrupt authoritative political structures. Responding to the demands of the field today, the novel approaches to protest movements in Impulse to Act offer new ways to reengage with the traditional cornerstones of political anthropology.

Avant-Garde Post–

Avant-Garde Post–
Author: Marijeta Bozovic
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2023-12-05
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 067429498X

The remarkable story of seven contemporary Russian-language poets whose experimental work anchors a thriving dissident artistic movement opposed to both Putin’s regime and Western liberalism. What does leftist art look like in the wake of state socialism? In recent years, Russian-language avant-garde poetry has been seeking the answers to this question. Marijeta Bozovic follows a constellation of poets at the center of a contemporary literary movement that is bringing radical art out of the Soviet shadow: Kirill Medvedev, Pavel Arseniev, Aleksandr Skidan, Dmitry Golynko, Roman Osminkin, Keti Chukhrov, and Galina Rymbu. While their formal experiments range widely, all share a commitment to explicitly political poetry. Each one, in turn, has become a hub in a growing new-left network across the former Second World. Joined together by their work with the Saint Petersburg–based journal [Translit], this circle has staunchly resisted the Putin regime and its mobilization of Soviet nostalgia. At the same time, the poets of Avant-Garde Post– reject Western discourse about the false promises of leftist utopianism and the superiority of the liberal world. In opposing both narratives, they draw on the legacies of historical Russian and Soviet avant-gardes as well as on an international canon of Marxist art and theory. They are also intimately connected with other artists, intellectuals, and activists around the world, collectively restoring leftist political poetry to global prominence. The avant-garde, Bozovic shows, is not a relic of the Soviet past. It is a recurrent pulse in Russophone—as well as global—literature and art. Charged by that pulse, today’s new left is reimagining class-based critique. Theirs is an ongoing, defiant effort to imagine a socialist future that is at once global and egalitarian.

Activism

Activism
Author: Afonso Dias Ramos
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2023-12-19
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0262376512

An edited collection that addresses the vital intersection of contemporary art and activism in this watershed cultural moment. Activism is a critical point of contention for institutions and genealogies of contemporary art around the world. Yet artists have consistently engaged in activist discourse, lending their skills to social movements, and regularly participating in civil and social rights campaigns while also boycotting cultural institutions and exerting significant pressure on them. This timely volume, edited by Tom Snow and Afonso Ramos, addresses an extraordinary moment in debates over the institutional frameworks and networks of art including large-scale direct actions, as well as a radical rethinking of art venues and urban spaces according to racial, class, or gender-based disparities, including demonstrations against the extractive and exploitative practices of neoliberal accumulation and climate catastrophe. From ACT UP and its affiliate groups since the dawn of the AIDS crisis to the counter-spectacle and street theatrics of the so-called Arab Spring and Occupy, to ongoing protest movements such as Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, and Decolonize This Place, activist aesthetics has proven increasingly difficult to define under traditional classifications. Resurgent campaigns for decolonial reckoning, ecological justice, gender equality, indigenous rights and antiracist pedagogies indicate that the role of activism in contemporary art practice urges a critical reassessment. One pressing question is whether contemporary art’s most radical politics now takes place outside, against, or in spite of, conventional sites of display such as museums, biennials, and galleries. Artists surveyed include: ACT UP, Basel Abbas & Ruanne Abou-Rahme, Allora & Calzadilla, Tania Bruguera, Black Audio Film Collective, Chto Delat, Andrea Fraser, Nan Goldin, Sanja Iveković, Gulf Labor, Amar Kanwar, Leslie Labowitz, Liberate Tate, Sethembile Msezane, Zanele Muholi, Jan Nikolai Nelles & Nora Al-Badri, Decolonize This Place, Michael Rakowitz, Oliver Ressler. Writers include: Dave Beech, Judith Butler, Amílcar Cabral, Elias Canetti, Douglas Crimp, Jodi Dean, Gilles Deleuze, T.J. Demos, Nina Dubrovsky, Süreyyya Evren, Catherine Flood, Matthew Fuller, David Graeber, Gavin Grindon Félix Guattari, Brian Holmes, Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Lucy Lippard, Yates McKee, MTL Collective, Gregory Sholette, Françoise Vergès, Peter Weiss, Eyal Weizman.