The standard-bearer of Russian nihilism who declared that what can be smashed must be smashed
"Here is the ultimatum of our camp: what can be smashed must be smashed; whatever withstands the blow is fit to survive, what flies into pieces is rubbish. In any case, strike out right and left, no harm can come of it." — Scholasticism of the 19th Century (1861)
The central theorist of Russian nihilism and the sharpest voice of revolutionary-democratic literary criticism in the 1860s. Alongside Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov he defined the radical intelligentsia of the decade, using his post as lead critic of The Russian Word (Russkoye slovo) to attack aesthetics and idealist philosophy while championing a natural-science-based 'realism.' Arrested in 1862 for an anti-government proclamation, he spent four and a half years in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he wrote most of his major works; two years after his release he drowned in the Baltic Sea at age 27. His concepts of 'rational egoism' and the 'thinking proletariat' anticipated the Narodnik generation, and he left a decisive mark on Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, Pavlov's scientific worldview, and Lenin's intellectual formation.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1858–1861Book reviewer for the women's journal Rassvet
- 1860–1862Critic and de facto lead editor of The Russian Word (Russkoye slovo)
- 1862–1866Imprisoned in Peter and Paul Fortress for anti-government proclamation; continued writing
- 1866–1868Contributor to The Task (Delo) and Notes of the Fatherland (Otechestvennye zapiski)
Bazarov and “Real Criticism”
In his 1862 essay “Bazarov,” on Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, Pisarev read the nihilist Bazarov as a representative type of the younger generation. He treated a literary character as a concentrated rendering of social traits found in contemporary life, extending Nikolai Dobrolyubov’s “real criticism.” For Pisarev, Bazarov relied on reason and empirical knowledge while rejecting the authority of inherited values. Pisarev understood literature less as an autonomous realm of beauty than as an activity concerned with describing reality and addressing social questions. His attack on aestheticism and “art for art’s sake” in “Realists” (1864) and related essays, and his call to bring literature together with journalism and scholarly inquiry, followed the same line. This criticism helped make Bazarov a widely recognized figure of the radical young intelligentsia, but it did not simply endorse the character’s moral outlook. In Pisarev’s account Bazarov recognized no binding moral law and acted according to will and individual judgment.