Nikolai Chernyshevsky, the chief editor of Sovremennik ("Contemporary"), publishes his main literary reviews and his essays on philosophy, propounds his belief in the political, didactic function of literature in 1855 in “Aesthetic Relations of Art and Reality.”

Nikolay Chernyshevsky, the son of a priest, was born in Saratov in 1828, and stayed there till 1846.

He graduated at the local seminary where he learnt English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek and Old Slavonic., and where he gained a love of literature.

At St. Petersburg university, where he often struggled to warm his room, he kept a diary of trivia, like the number of tears he shed over a dead friend; here he had become an atheist and had been inspired by the works of Ludwig Feuerbach and Charles Fourier, After graduating from Saint Petersburg University in 1850, he had taught literature at a gymnasium in Saratov.

From 1853 to 1862, he lived in Saint Petersburg, and became the chief editor of Sovremennik ("Contemporary"), in which he published his main literary reviews and his essays on philosophy.

In 1862, he had been arrested and confined in the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul, where he wrote his famous novel What Is to Be Done?

The novel will be an inspiration to many later Russian revolutionaries, who will seek to emulate the novel's hero Rakhmetov, who is wholly dedicated to the revolution, ascetic in his habits and ruthlessly disciplined, to the point of sleeping on a bed of nails and eating only raw steak in order to build strength for the Revolution.

Among those who will referenced the novel include Lenin, author of a work of political theory of the same name.

Sentenced to civil execution (mock execution), followed by penal servitude (1864-72), and by exile to Vilyuisk, Siberia (1872-83), Chernyshevsky will return to Moscow in 1883 after 21 years of exile in Siberia.

A founder of Narodism, Russian populism, Chernyshevsky agitates for the revolutionary overthrow of the autocracy and the creation of a socialist society based on the old peasant commune.

Chernyshevsky's ideas are heavily influenced by Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, and Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach.

He sees class struggle as the means of society's forward movement and advocates for the interests of the working people.

In his view, the masses are the chief maker of history.

He is reputed to have used the phrase "the worse the better", to indicate that the worse the social conditions become for the poor, the more incline they will be to launch a revolution.

Chernyshevsky, contending that science can solve all problems and that Russia requires radical economic reorganization, is arrested and confined in the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul, where, in response to Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, he writes his famous novel What Is to Be Done?

Nikolay Chernyshevsky is exiled to Siberia in 1863, the year his novel What is to Be Done? a fictional illustration of his political theories, sees print.

The book will inspire many later Russian revolutionaries, who would seek to emulate the novel's hero, who was wholly dedicated to the revolution, ascetic in his habits and ruthlessly disciplined, to the point of sleeping on a bed of nails and eating only meat in order to build strength for the Revolution. (Among those who will draw inspiration from the character is Lenin, who will name a work of political theory of the same name, and who will be ascetic in his personal life: lifting weights, having little time for love, and so on).

Among the leaders of the Populist movement are radical writers, idealists, and advocates of terrorism.

In the 1860s, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, the most important radical writer of the period, posits that Russia can bypass capitalism and move directly to socialism.

His most influential work, What Is to Be Done? (1861), describes the role of an individual of a "superior nature" who guides a new, revolutionary generation.

Other radicals such as the incendiary anarchist Mikhail Bakunin and his terrorist collaborator, Sergey Nechayev, urge direct action.

The calmer Pyotr Tkachev argues against the advocates of Marxism, maintaining that a centralized revolutionary band has to seize power before socialism can fully develop.

Disputing his views, the moralist and individualist Pyotr Lavrov makes a call "to the people" that is heeded in 1873 and 1874 when hundreds of idealists leave their schools for the countryside to try to generate a mass movement among the narod.

The Populist campaign fails, however, when the peasants show hostility to the urban idealists and the government more willingly begins to consider nationalist opinion.

Russia's radicals reconsider their approach, and in 1876 they form a propagandist organization called Land and Liberty (Zemlia i volia), which leans toward terrorism.

It becomes even more oriented toward terrorism three years later, renames itself the People's Will
(Narodnaia volia), and in 1881 is responsible for the assassination of Alexander II.

In 1879, Georgi Plekhanov forms a propagandist faction of Land and Liberty called Black Repartition (Chernyi peredel), which advocates reassigning all land to the peasantry.

This group studies Marxism, which, paradoxically, is principally concerned with urban industrial workers.

The People's Will remains underground, but in 1887 a young member of the group, Aleksander
Uyanov, attempts to assassinate Alexander III and is arrested and executed.

Another Ulyanov, Vladimir, is greatly affected by his brother's execution.

Influenced by Chernyshevskys writings, he also joins the People's Will and later, under the influence of Plekhanov, will convert to Marxism.

The younger Ulyanov will later change his name to Lenin.

Lenin—at this time Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov—has immersed himself in the radical writings of Marx and Chernyshevsky and continued his education.

His father had died in January 1886, when Lenin was fifteen, of a brain hemorrhage.

His subsequent behavior became erratic and confrontational and he renounced his belief in God.

Shortly afterward his older brother Aleksandr had been arrested in St. Petersburg for plotting against the tsar, convicted, and hanged in May 1887.