WEEK 11 INTRODUCTION TO READINGS Ivan Turgenev, excerpt from Fathers and Sons, Chs. 1-10(original Russian edition 1861; this translation 1867) Ivan Turgenev was born in 1818 to a landowning familyin Russia. He later recalled the family estate as exemplaryof an unjust social system, recalling for example that hisgrandmother had once lost her temper and killed a young boyserf by smothering him with a pillow. Turgenev studied atthe University of Berlin and became a critic of TsaristRussia. From 1850 onward he published fiction that waswidely read. (Incidentally, the young Lenin loved to readTurgenev, including Fathers and Sons).In this novel, Turgenev explored the dilemma ofRussian intellectuals regarding how to modernize Russiansociety. Contemporary debates arising from the “problem ofbackwardness” concerned every realm of social life, fromsexuality to technological and economic development. Therewere many factions in the debates; two were the“Slavophiles” and the “Westernizers.” Both confronted theissue of how to react to the greater technological andproductive power of states to the west of Russia. While theSlavophiles advocated, for example, a political formationof “democratic autocracy” that drew, they claimed, upon adistinctively Russian past, Westernizers proposed to borrowWestern ideas and create a synthesis of Russian and Westernways. “Nihilism” was the term given to some adherents ofthe latter faction—a term which itself suggests thecomplexity of efforts to transform Russian thought andlife. Because his writing was often critical of serfdom,Turgenev was arrested in 1852 and imprisoned for one andone-half years. After Fathers and Sons was published, theharassment of Turgenev was so great that he left Russia tolive in Germany for most of the rest of his life. He diedin Paris in 1883.Vera Figner, excerpt from memoirs Vera Figner was one of thousands of Russians whobecame involved in revolutionary populism from the 1870sonward. About 15% of those arrested for such activities were women. The emancipation of serfs in 1861 had notsolved the crisis of agrarian life in Russia, because theformer serfs still often lacked title to any, or sufficientland, and they were still under the control of their formerlandlords. As a result, peasant revolts continued the olderpattern of serf revolts. Populists believed that thepeasants were not only unjustly oppressed, but also thatthey, the peasants, held the key to the revolutionarytransformation of Russia. There were many groups in Russianradical politics of those years; Figner was part of onecalled “People’s Will,” a group which carried out theassassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. In the 1920s,her memoirs were published in English as Memoirs of aRevolutionist; this excerpt comes from anotherautobiographical manuscript. WEEK 11 QUESTIONS Ivan Turgenev, excerpt from Fathers and Sons, Chs. 1-10(original Russian edition 1862; this translation 1867) 1. What was truly “Russian” according to Bazarov? Accordingto his opponents? 2. What role do science and progress play in the novel? 3. How do the main characters think about or behave toward peasants? Vera Figner, excerpt from memoirs 4. Why did Figner become a revolutionary?5. How do you think Figner’s life would have been differentif she were a