Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done a Reevaluation
- List Price: $79.95
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Northwestern Univ Pr
- Publish date: 07/01/2001
In this reexamination, Andrew M. Drozd argues that What Is to Be Done? has consistently been misread by both its detractors and its admirers, in large part because of a refusal to treat the novel as a literary text. While agreeing that the novel contains political content, Drozd claims it must be studied as fiction first and foremost. Traditionally seen as preaching materialism, utilitarianism, revolutionary asceticism, and socialism, Chernyshevskii is seen by Drozd as critical of these trends in radical ideology. The character of Rakhmetov, universally regarded as a revolutionary superman, is in fact a parody of a particular phenomenon in Russian society.
Interest in What Is to Be Done? has increased in recent years as scholars look again at texts that were casually dismissed during the East-West tensions of the Cold War. Employing in-depth scholarship as well as an original approach, Drozd uncovers the novel's distorted artistic merits and restores Chernyshevskii to his rightful place as a literary subversive.