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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. How did Herzen see history?

2. Who was Mikhail Bakunin's mentor?

3. Which of the following describes Russian censorship during the middle of the nineteenth century?

4. How does Berlin describe Bakunin?

5. What does Berlin say was the "French" attitude toward the arts?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Describe the difference between Herzen and Bakunin's personalities.

3. What example does Tolstoy use to explain why human beings cannot know all the actions and causes that affect their experiences?

4. What influence did censors have on Russian intellectuals and literature?

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

6. What conspiracy group did the Second of April Committee unveil, and what was the result of the trial?

7. What saying of Schelling's represents the relationship of artists to their times in Russian ideology of the mid-nineteenth century?

8. How did the revolutions of 1848 affect western European intellectuals and Russians differently?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the tension between Alexander Herzen and Ivan Turgenev as exemplars of the idea of artistic commitment and freedom respectively. What were the options for artists? Could they stand aside and simply create? How did other Russian writers resolve this opposition?

Essay Topic 2

Which two or three writers had the greatest effect on Russian society? Define your argument, and use examples from the text.

Essay Topic 3

Which writer or character is most representative of the tensions and conflicting desires that characterize the writers Berlin profiles? Define your terms, and use examples from the life of the author you choose.

(see the answer keys)

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