Nabokov's final Russian-language novel, <i>The Gift</i>, includes a devastating mini-biography of Chernyshevsky, ostensibly written by the protagonist. Think of it as a Russian equivalent to Twain on Fenimore Cooper. That it happens to be the best biography of Chernyshevsky available in English (translated by Nabokov's son) is icing on the cake.<p>The whole novel is great, but Chapter 5 (the biography) is a beautiful introduction to possibly the worst writer in all of Russian literature.
Years ago I read an introduction to a collection of Chekhov's letters that provided an illuminating context to the intellectual & aesthetic climate of Russia in the 19th century. It explained that authors like Chernyshevsky asserted that all novels, really all art, ought to be of a politically salient character; that it ought to highlight the suffering the marginal & subaltern. So many of the authors we now revere -- Dostoevsky, Chekhov, even Tolstoy, aroused the ire of the Russian intelligentsia for failing to meet this standard, for writing for purposes other than political and revolutionary utility. The introduction asserted that this was an overwhelmingly unanimous sentiment among the Russian left.
It is usually discussed in the context of this other novel <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Is_to_Blame%3F</a>
For another angle: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_to_Be_Done%3F_(novel)</a>
I like to recommend Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" as it gives a contemporary critical view of the nihilistic and utopian ideologies that shaped Russian intellectual discourse of the 1860s.
Currently reading The Brothers Karamazov for the first time and while I knew it was supposed to contain a lot of theological/philosophical ideas, it's also very political. Socialism was already in the air in 1870s Russia such that it's often discussed by characters in the novel.<p>There's one scene where one of the Russian nobleman who has often lived in Paris suggests to some Russian Orthodox priests that he had heard it said in Paris that the worst socialists were not the atheistic ones, but the Christian Socialists. The Priest takes umbrage with this asking if the nobleman was lumping these priests into that category. This on the heels of a multi-page discussion on the separation of church and state and whether the state will eventually subsume the church or whether the church will eventually subsume the state.
Chernyshevsky -> Lenin -> Solzhenitsyn -> Dugin<p>This is the trajectory of the Russian intellectuals striving for the "better world".