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.
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)