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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who spread German Romantic philosophy in student circles?

2. What was de Maistre's position?

3. Which thinker affected Herzen?

4. What events proved the limitation Tolstoy described?

5. What was Pavel Annekov's role in Russian culture?

Short Essay Questions

1. Where in Europe were there revolutions in 1848?

2. What was the effect of the "moral quarantine" of Western ideas in Russia?

3. What do foxes and hedgehogs represent in Archilochus' adage, and how does Berlin apply the distinction to Russian thinkers?

4. What were the three accomplishments of the intellectuals who rose to prominence in the 1830s and 40s?

5. What was Leo Tolstoy's as a thinker, and how does Berlin see him?

6. What did Russian students learn in German universities?

7. What was the heart of the Romantic notion that held the Russian intelligentsia in Germany's influence?

8. What was Herzen's reaction to Hegelian ideology?

9. Why, according to Berlin, did Tolstoy resist subscribing to a totalizing theory of history?

10. Who was Joseph de Maistre and what ideas did Tolstoy share with him?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Why was Russian culture so ripe for revolution and transformation? What traits of inherited Russian culture made it so receptive to external ideas such as Hegel's ideas about history or Rousseau's ideas about the innocence of children?

Essay Topic 2

What are the strengths of the kind of biography Berlin is practicing here? What are the limitations? What does Berlin show effectively? What questions remain unaddressed, or unresolved?

Essay Topic 3

How accurate is the stereotype of the Russian intellectual as gloomy and pessimistic? Why was that stereotype conceived, and what cultural factors would induce an intellectual to be gloomy and pessimistic? In what cases was the stereotype grossly inaccurate?

(see the answer keys)

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