What is to Be Done?

Nikolai Chernyshevsky´s great novel, originally published in 1863, transformed Russian views of the peasantry in much the same way that Harriet Beecher Stowe´s novel Uncle Tom´s Cabin changed American perceptions of slavery. In its pages, a group of idealistic Russian intellectuals go back to the land, easing the lot of the peasants with scientific methods of farming and liberating the serfs from hardship. The intellectuals´ socialist vision offers the promise of a world that subsequent events did not bear out, and it is fascinating to consider in the light of historical reality. Fyodor Dostoyevsky gave Chernyshevsky´s tale, full of sermonizing and idealism, a darkly pessimistic twist in his masterpiece The Possessed.