A Badly Written Novel that Inspired a Revolution
A look at What Is to Be Done?
Life’s been a bit busy, and the current section of the climate series is a bit dry, so today we’ll do something a bit more literary. We’re going to look at a novel that changed the world.
Once the current section of the climate series is done, I plan to answer a new question: “How do you create work that can change the world?” People who set out to write about subjects like climate change are generally aiming to do just that. So, we will look at that.
Most writing advice fails to answer that question.
Most writing advice is aiming to make you a “successful” author (i.e. best-selling or prize winning). You get taught how to do “good” writing. The key to “good” successful writing is one of two things. Be entertaining and follow genre conventions. Alternatively, be literary and emphasize character, plausibility, and never ever do stupid stuff like infodumps.
“Good” writing and influential writing are two very different things.
Today we will look at one of the most politically consequential novels of the past two-hundred years. This novel helped spark a revolution, and forever changed history.
Welcome to Lenin’s favourite novel: What Is To Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, published in 1863.
If one were to ask for the title of the nineteenth-century Russian novel that has had the greatest influence on Russian society, it is likely that a non-Russian would choose among the books of the mighty triumvirate Turgenev, Tolstoy, or Dostoyevsky. Fathers and Sons? War and Peace? Crime and Punishment? These would certainly be among the suggested answers; but . . . the novel that can claim this honor with most justice is N. G. Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?, a book few Western readers have ever heard of and fewer still have read. Yet no work in modern literature, with the possible exception of Uncle Tom's Cabin, can compete with What Is to Be Done? in its effect on human lives and its power to make history. For Chernyshevsky's novel far more than Marx's Capital, supplied the emotional dynamic that eventually went to make the Russian Revolution.
- J . Frank (1963). As quoted in the introduction to the Katz translation, the version I’ll be using for all quotes.
Learning From History
What Is To Be Done? is a political novel written to promote certain ideas. Those ideas eventually led to the Russian Revolution. We are concerned with the techniques used by the novel, not the ideological contents.
For the sake of context, the main idea that Chernyshevsky is advocating for is gender equality. To be more precise, he’s making the kinds of arguments that now show up in things like “relationship anarchy”. An obsession with relationships isn’t something we typically associate with Lenin, but there it is.
Chernyshevsky central argument is that true love can only exist in the context of equality and freedom for all people. To be yet more precise, he’s saying that true love can only exist with a new type of person, one who behaves according to enlightened self-interested, one who is produced by new arrangement of society, which is itself produced via socialist revolution and technological progress.
That’s the argument. True love requires a revolution.
Are these good ideas? Well…
We might compare it to Ayn Rand’s novels today (ironically their philosophies do in fact overlap). We’re talking books that are “badly” written, but influential. Some people have based their lives on it. Other people are practically gouging out their own eyes trying to tell you just how horseshit it all is.
Back in the 1860s, the annoyed guy was Dostoyevsky. Notes From The Underground is the work of a man who after reading What Is To Be Done? seems to have thrown his coffee mug at a wall. His critique is similar to what we looked at with The Weird, which is why characters like Raskolnikov and the Underground Man are so bat-shit crazy.
But man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
- Dostoyevsky, Notes From The Underground
Why should we care about a bad Russian novel?
We live in explosive times. Many writers today are trying achieve what Chernyshevsky successfully pulled off. Many people are explicitly calling for a new era of utopian political fiction.
We’re sick of the darkness! Bring in the light!
Well here it is. This is what that style of writing looked like last time in history. The 19th Century had a wave of utopian political fiction. What Is To Be Done? is likely the most consequential utopian novel of that time. You can take both encouragement and warning from this history.
Yes, you can inspire the Revolution. And yes, you really can inspire the Revolution.
For now, our question is simply: “How did he do it?”
Historical Conditions vs The Text
We will concern ourselves just with the text.
Every success is the result of both the thing itself, and the peculiarities of history. Chernyshevsky wrote a book for his time. His audience was specific to that time – newly educated young Russian intellectuals in a very conservative, backward, and unequal society undergoing slow reforms.
The power of What Is To Be Done? has largely evaporated now. Even so, keeping the context in mind, we can still get a sense of that original power.
And this was powerful. Very powerful. For the right people. At the time. Which included Lenin.
Is This The Worst Novel Ever Written?
Good writing and influential writing are very different things.
The book is hard going for a modern reader. I wouldn’t exactly read it for entertainment. The book is at times rather bad. (Insufferable? Weird? Tedious? Confusing?) But I can see what he’s up to.
For that right audience this book did make sense.
What Is To Be Done? is a weird book. If you can get your head around why this bizarre approach works, you’ll understand the difference between “good” and influential.
For example, Chernyshevsky will straight up mock you.
The author is in no mood for such things [i.e. literary techniques] dear public because he keeps thinking about the confusion in your head and about the useless unnecessary suffering of each and every one of us that results from the absurd muddle in your thoughts. I find it both pitiful and amusing to look at you. You are so impotent and spiteful all because of the extraordinary quantity of nonsense stuffed between your two ears.
- The Preface, AKA Chapter Two, AKA Chapter -1, AKA how to get yourself rejected by publishers (unless you’re writing from a Tsarist prison cell and your publishers are radicals). He does this a lot. Troublingly so.
Political writing is often trash, in literary terms.
What Is To Be Done? is exceptional among such work. He even has a plot! Its about a young woman who doesn’t want to get married. Some young guys help her out. A love triangle ensues. They sort it out. Everyone lives happily ever after.
Yes, What Is To Be Done? is bad. But mostly it’s just strange. Lets figure out how such a bonkers novel could inspire revolutionaries.
Meta-fiction and Critiquing Society
Let’s start with the most obvious “bad” writing.
At the surface level Chernyshevsky seems to be engaging in some outrageously bad writing. He repeatedly inserts direct commentary into the text. He doesn’t just break the fourth wall, he drives a tank through it.
Why?
Typically he’s commenting on something inherent to the nature of novels or on the literature of his time. It’s meta-fiction. This is a literary technique with an explicit purpose.
What Is To Be Done? itself is largely a comedy of manners (to the extent you can fit the book in a genre). These metafictional inserts are also comedic, but they are a comedy of manners applied to the comedy of manners itself.
As a novelist I very much regret that I wrote several pages in which I stooped to the level of vaudeville.
The main target of the comedic action (such as it is) is the heroine Vera’s mother, Marya – a scheming, greedy, wicked character. Marya assumes everyone is a wicked schemer like herself. Vera very much is not. Vera is one of the “New People” (with new radical values). The comedy comes from the mother constantly misunderstanding her daughter. Hi-jinks ensue.
So far, pretty standard.
Then comes the meta-fiction.
The meta-fictional comedy is making fun of you the reader. Like Marya you cannot understand the book you are reading (especially if you are a male “perspicuous reader” who thinks this is the worst novel ever). Your learned literary expectations are leading you astray. Therefore Chernyshevsky repeatedly inserts himself into the text, and says, “No, we’re not doing that.”
The comedy is on you.
Unless… you do get it. And now it becomes a shared in-joke between you and the author. “Ah yes, I am someone who gets this. But those other people would not.” You and the author are now in alignement against an imagined other.
Meanwhile he counter-acts the assumptions built into a comedy of manners, allowing him to highlight his ideological beliefs by smashing them into the your narrative expectations. This is bizarre writing. But it is clever.
For example, he directly rescues Marya’s reputation from the comedy. He makes you think she’s a fool. She fills that narrative role. And then in steps the meta-commentary. “Why are you laughing at her? I respect her. She’s just the product of a bad environment. She’s actually very resourceful. Screw you perspicuous reader!”
This can seem like madness, but it is purposeful madness.
This is a novel aimed at utopian revolution. The whole point of the novel is that such dramas need not exist. Love triangles and bad marriages are solvable problems resulting from social conditions. We could fix that.
“So in your opinion our entire story is no more than a stupid melodrama?”
“Yes, an entirely unnecessary melodrama mixed with entirely unnecessary tragedy.”
- Radical “superhero” Rakhmetov giving his view on Vera’s vexed love life.
If you set out to write literature that criticizes society then the very act you are engaged in is tied up with what you are critiquing. All the tropes, literary habits, and audience expectations reflect society as it is. You have to break that.
How?
Chernyshevsky chooses to go meta.
Comedy and Love
A comedy about marriage would seem an odd candidate for inspiring what would become Stalinist Russia. True, there is a worker’s cooperative. Good socialism there. True, the characters give long (insufferable) talks about the philosophy of rational egoism. Good radicalism there.
But...
Most of the book is about love.
All this was accomplished for my sake; I inspired it and inspire its completion. But it’s she, my elder sister, the worker, who’s bringing it into being. I merely delight in it.
- The goddess of love (referring to the goddess of revolutionary progress), in Vera’s dreamscape tour of utopia
We’ve already looked at why you’d want to use comedy (and by extension love) in the climate series. Comedy allows you to open up the trivial subjects of daily life for examination. Comedy is about affirming life.
Look around you at all the people trying to motivate others using fear, anger, hate... then remember: the Russian Revolution was inspired by a romantic comedy.
What is it that really motivates people?
That is one of the central concerns of What Is To Be Done? Chernyshevsky’s answer is rational egoism – self-interest. Is this true? Not our problem.
Rightly or wrongly, Chernyshevsky made an appeal to emotional self-interest. He does this in its most noble sense. He appeals to life. He appeals to the desire for love, joy, pleasure, beauty. That’s why you should have a revolution. He also contrasts these future joys with the horrible, grim, no good, terrible, bad, bad, bad reality that is life as it currently exists.
Presumably this worked, or we wouldn’t be talking about it.
“Tell everyone that the future will be radiant and beautiful. Love it, strive toward it, work for it, bring it nearer, transfer into the present as much as you can from it. To the extent that you succeed in doing so, your life will be bright and good, rich in joy and pleasure. Strive toward it, work for it, bring it nearer, transfer into the present as much as you can from it.”
- The goddess of revolutionary progress in Vera’s dream
However this does get complicated when we consider what he’s really recommending. Those worldly pleasures come in the form of minimizing desires (i.e. in an epicurean or buddhist fashion). The real “superhero” radical is an ascetic – dedicating everything to the cause, even as the author warns that this isn’t for everyone. That ideal of ascetic self-sacrifice was what his readers ended up aspiring to. After all, you are going to imagine yourself as the superhero, right?
Characters You Can Believe In
What does “good” writing advice say you need for a “good” character? Chances are you’ll be told to write more like Dostoyevsky – characters full of internal contradictions and flaws. Character’s like Raskolnikov.
Chernyshevsky’s characters just aren’t like this.
His characters are wooden. If anything he is more concerned with generic human types than well rounded people. These are not believable characters, in the usual sense.
And yet, you can believe in them.
These characters have plenty of internal struggle, but as with the meta-fiction, it’s mostly them just going, “Yeah. I probably should have thought this through better, my mistake, we can fix it, and things are turning out for the best.” At the surface level, this seems like bad writing. He presumably has the skill to write better characters. He chooses not to.
Why?
He is writing moral exemplars.
Vera and friends are people you can emulate. You too could be like Vera. Life would be better if you lived more like Vera. If you’re really hardcore you could even be like Rakhmetov. These people’s lives are great! Likewise, you can do the opposite with the villainous types.
The two-dimensional person types also allows you to categorize yourself and others according to his simple formula. Am I a “New Person”? Are they a fool or a swindler? Am I a Rakhmetov superhero? Your entire social world can be put into this moral framework. Is this crude stereotyping? Yes. Does it work? Ah! Once you have the scheme in place, it is tempting to apply, and therefore to start living according to this scheme.
In this scheme, the intended reader is made heroic.
Chernyshevsky was portraying a life path for those newly emerging young intellectuals stuck in a backward society. His characters lives demonstrate solutions to real problems readers were having. You could measure yourself against those characters. You could feel more heroic by identifying with them. Lenin probably did consider himself a bit of a Rakhmetov.
Chernyshevsky took these idealized characters and had them clearly work through their radical ideas in application to the problems of daily life. This gets personal. People don’t join movements just because of gee-whizz political theories. People join out of emotional, personal, social, and moral motivations. That is the level where Chernyshevsky spends most his time. Hence the love and romance. It’s about how to live.
Who has not read and reread this famous work? Who has not been charmed by it, who has not become cleaner, better, braver, and bolder under its philanthropic influence? Who has not imitated the purity of the principal characters? Who, after reading this novel, has not reflected on his personal life, has not subjected his personal striving and tendencies to a severe examination? We all draw from it moral strength and faith in a better future.
- Georgi Plekhanov (the father of Russian Marxism), as quoted in the introduction
Meanwhile the utterly flawed Raskolnikov is a great character. Fascinating. But you can’t base any action on his example. Such a character exists to expose flaws. He’s a warning. He’s a mess. That’s good writing, but not politically activating writing.
Moral exemplars are actually very common in fiction. They don’t have to be cheesy or engage in stereotypes.
The Refusal To Conform
So, we have our exemplary characters. What are they examples of? Obviously (and insufferably) they are perfect radical rational egoists. Okay? Great?
They also demonstrate a more fundamental quality.
If the aim of your writing is to transform society, then the core characteristic you need to portray (and inspire in your reader) is a rejection of the status quo. Your heroic characters must refuse to accept the world as it is. That is their defining feature.
We see this front and center in What Is To Be Done? The novel starts with a conflict between Vera and her mother. Vera refuses to adapt to the corrupting effects of society. This is what distinguishes her.
Hey Verochka do you think I don't know anything about those new systems described in your books? I know they're good ones. Only you and I won't live to see them! People are really stupid-how can you set up a new system with the likes of them? So let's keep on living in the old order. That includes you! What sort of a system is it? Your books say that the old order is one of filching and fleecing. That's true Verochka. So if there's no new order let's live by the old: filch and fleece. I'm telling you all this because I love you...
- Mother and daughter have an “Okay Boomer” moment
(As an aside: What Is To Be Done? has serious “Never trust anyone over thirty” vibes. His readers often joined radical circles in their teens or early twenties.)
This corrupting influence of society is a central theme. How do you escape from it? How do you live with it? What will life be like when it’s gone? Those are all vexed questions.
The central answer is the refusal to just give in, which ultimately means revolution.
I know only that I don't want to submit to anyone. I want to be free; I don't want to be obligated to anyone for anything. I don't want anyone ever to say, 'You're obligated to do this for me!' I want to do only what I desire and want others to do likewise. I don't want to demand anything from anyone. I don't want to impinge on anyone's freedom and I want to be free myself.
- Vera’s starting impulse which sets her story in motion
A contemporary equivalent would be Walkaway where the main characters have literally “walked away” from mainstream society to “escape the death cult” by joining communes. Chernyshevsky’s characters do much the same. In this case the metaphor is “escaping the dank cellar.”
Metaphor & Dreams
Other utopian works of this period were often proto-science fiction. A man goes to the future, gets a (very detailed) tour of utopia, then returns home. This makes intuitive sense. If you want to get people excited about a bright new future, then... just show it to them maybe?
Chernyshevsky is doing something very different.
Frankly, I suspect this is more powerful.
His novel is set in contemporary society. He does very little direct exploration of his imagined utopia. What he does have is almost entirely in the form of metaphors and dreams. Vera has a number of dreams. The most notable dream involves love and revolution personified as goddesses. They give her a tour of the “Crystal Palace”. This is the closest we get to a detailed tour of utopia, but even here this is still a dreamscape. Chernyshevsky just doesn’t care that much about how this future will actually work.
Practical details come second place even when he explores contemporary events. The story includes a cooperative commune. He does gives enough details to know how it works. But this is never the central focus.
Instead we linger in dreams, in metaphors, in long (insufferable) conversations and interior monologues and meta-fictional self-inserts by the author. The focus is ultimately on love. The focus is on how happy you will be if you become a radical.
Even when it comes to the big event, the revolution itself, Chernyshevsky merely leaves a blank space on the page – an implied revolution, fill in the details yourself.
Most people (then and now) go the science fiction route.
Why is he doing this instead?
One answer is censorship. Some of the metaphors are explained in the footnotes. It’s coded language. He is writing this from prison, after all. But that doesn’t seem to be the main driver.
First, if your plan is to appeal to self-interest, then you have to give people something that exists in the present. Will I live to see your utopia in the distant year 2000? No! Likewise, I cannot do anything with detailed outlines of how the postal system works in utopia. Cool ideas bro. Useless to me. Right now I’m in love with a girl, and I need advice....
So then, if you’re writing about utopia, but set in the present, how do you get the utopia in there?
You make proper use of the power art. The ability to use metaphors. Imagery. And by doing so you achieve something more powerful than merely describing the postal system.
Indeed, why write a novel? He could’ve written an essay.
"For a long time I have planned . . . to apply myself to literature. But I am convinced that people of my character must do this only in their later years . . . . A novel is destined for the great mass of the public. It is a writer's most serious undertaking, and so it belongs to old age. The frivolity of the form must be compensated for by the solidity of the thought."
- Chernyshevsky, as quoted in the introduction
By drawing on metaphor, and imagery, and literary tropes he can get into people’s souls. He’s writing in a religious society, so he repeatedly makes use of Christian imagery. Rakhmetov is more than just a weirdo. He’s a saint. We are modern day disciples of a new gospel, striving to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. All that emotive force can be pulled into the text.
He can “supply energy” to the text in a way no essay ever can.
[Chernyshevsky was] the greatest and most talented representative of socialism before Marx . . . . Under his influence hundreds of people became revolutionaries . . . . He plowed me up more profoundly than anyone else . . . . After my brother's execution, knowing that Chernyshevsky's novel was one of his favorite books, I really undertook to read it, and I sat over it not for several days but for several weeks. Only then did I understand its depth . . . . It's a thing that supplies energy for a whole lifetime.
- Lenin, as quoted in the introduction
Theory
Political writing tends towards being didactic and theoretical in the extreme. Intellectually interesting? Maybe. In literary terms? No.
Many of the other 19th Century utopias were little more than lectures with some plot gimmicks holding it all together. A contemporary equivalent would be Another Now, by Yanis Varoufakis – a “science fiction novel” which my library put in the non-fiction zone.
What Is To Be Done? is notable for not being one gigantic lecture about the joys of rational egoism (although it comes close). What Is To Be Done? is actually a novel. So, how does Chernyshevsky handle theory, when theory is so obviously the focus of such writing?
At least a few things are going on.
Yet more meta-fictional self-inserts: Letting the author comment means he can give commentary on anything he likes. He often does.
Name dropping: He does a lot of name dropping. Everyone from Dickens to Rousseau, to obscure figures no one can remember. This is the closest you can come to giving a novel academic references.
Socratic dialogues & Inner monologues: Characters do have long (insufferable) debates. Often it’s about how to best apply rational egotism to their love lives, and dissecting in (insufferable) detail just how rational they just were. These conversations also happen internally, or even with dream Goddesses.
Straight Up Info-dumping: Once upon a time Vera set up a co-op. Now, let me tell you about profit sharing, including a quick look at the accounts.
Tying the above to character: I wouldn’t call any of this great writing. Even so, it is typically tied to plot and character. Vera can weep, “Oh why did Charles Dickens never explain XYZ to me? I feel so alone!” Then Chernyshevsky can meta-jump in and say, “Hey Vera! This is why!” Alternatively, characters often spend time near bookshelves, with specific books on them. Entire characters exist as stand in for points in an arguments. It’s blunt, but it does work. For all it’s flaws the novel does remain a novel.
Naivety & Arrogance, or Technique?
The novel is unbelievably self-confident. The revolution is coming soon. It will be great. You will be happy.
There’s some serious wish-fulfillment going on too. Life as an underground radical is great! Really it’s all tea and cream! You’ll have friends and community. You’ll never let anyone look down on you. You’ll be rich and well regarded. Okay sure, I am in prison, but... um... the revolution will be soon!
So, what is going on here?
It is possible that Chernyshevsky is an idiot (pause here to listen for Dostoyevsky throwing his coffee at the wall). Either way, not our problem. This is how he wrote. It worked.
Why?
First, some amount of seduction is going on. Saying, “Yeah it’s kind of miserable and you’ll get shot.” is not a selling point. He consistently aims to paint radical life as Fantastic!
Second, oversimplification is effective for motivating people (provided they don’t think about what you said). Nuance typically involves doubt, ifs, buts, and maybes. Doubt inhibits action unless you have a philosophy that can act in the presence of doubt. Chernyshevsky does not, because he’s trying to treat life like a maths problem. Doubt screws that project up (Hello Dostoyevsky? Hello?).
Third, he is portraying an idealized state. This can be read as aspirational, rather than actual. His readers already know what life is like. Yes, it’s not really like that. But it could be! If we just got it right. This is how we want it to be.
In brief: this is the most appealing and easy to understand vision he can give. Therefore you are most likely to be sucked into it, just like with advertising for a used car (provided you’re not Dostoyevsky).
Pulling it Together – The Power of a Novel
You’re 18 years old.
You’re getting an education. You feel isolated in a society where that’s uncommon. You don’t know what your role in this world should be. You’re unhappy. Many things are wrong in this world. What is to be done?
You pick up a book.
This book winks at you, and says you’re on the inside of an inside joke. Other people won’t get it, but you do. This book tells you why your parents are wrong (just as you suspected!). This book tells you why everyone who isn’t you is wrong. This book tells you how to escape your unhappiness.
This book gives you a new set of values, better values. A way to live, a better way. This book talks to you about the issues you’re facing – relationships and career choices. This book tells you who you can become.
This book is light and laughter. This book tells you that life will be great if you do this. You can be a hero. Your life will have purpose. A brighter future is coming. People exactly like you are exactly the people who will bring this future into existence. This could be you.
This book gives you role models (seeing as your parents won’t do). You can imagine yourself as one of them. You can think, “Yes, my friends are only like a Vera or a Kirsanov. But me? Could I be a Rakhmetov? Yes, I think I am a Rakhmetov!”
The images linger in your mind long after you set the book down. Powerful images. You could dedicate yourself to the cause, just like Rakhmetov. You could dedicate yourself to science just like Kirsanov. We will build the Crystal Palace. To do anything else would just be silly, irrational. So, you join in with the radical circle.
You go deeper.
A few years later, you’ve read many other works too. You’re a new person. You’re in a counter-cultural movement. This is your identity. Beliefs held with religious zeal. Everyone in your circle has read the same books. They too imagine themselves as a Rakhmetov. You hold each other’s behaviour to the standard of superheroes.
Perhaps you go deeper still?
Now you’re in a world that the book only ever hinted at. You learn how to make bombs. You throw one at Tsar Alexander II. You get caught. You are lead to the gallows. You have no regrets. The revolution will come.
That, in brief, seems to be how What Is To Be Done? functioned.
Worse Problems than Bad Writing – Learning From (not repeating) History
What kind of person wants utopias? What kind of person wants to be a special person on a mission to create utopia? Who is it that needs simple creeds to live by?
Someone very unhappy.
That is the insight of Dostoyevsky in Notes From The Underground. Whoever wrote What Is To Be Done? is surely mentally ill. That optimism is a cover for spite, contempt, shame, unfulfilled desires, a lack of a sense of self, loneliness, ennui, and generally having your head stuck up your own theoretical ass. This is the feminism of a man who fantasizes about rescuing women. This is the socialism of a man who fantasizes about marrying into inherited capitalist wealth. What Is To Be Done? is a novel written as vengeance against reality. It’s a narcissistic self-defense coupled with a wish-fulfillment fantasy. Dostoyevsky calls bullshit on this guy.
He has a point.
If you combine the utopian optimism of What Is To Be Done? with the morbid irrationality of Notes From The Underground what you get is the Soviet Union.
We should like to do better.
A tension exists here. Giving people a clear sense of purpose and values is fine. Doing so seems to be how you create an influential work of this kind. The risk is to slide into cult-like fanaticism where you lie to teenagers in order to get them into your cause. Sure, you may get your revolution, but it will be created by dogmatists and descend into a totalitarian nightmare.
The trick then, perhaps, is to take What Is To Be Done? and do it honestly. Drop the wish-fulfillment. Stop pretending to be what you are not. Drop the smug superiority. Be real.
This kind of writing will appeal most to people who feel lost. These people need and want dreams. You can give them dreams, just don’t stuff nonsense between their ears.
Next time we’ll either be back to the climate psychology, or take another diversion into a badly written novel that changed the world.