1. Nikolay Chernyshevsky was the dominant intellectual figure of the 1860s revolutionary democratic movement in Russia, despite spending much of his later life in exile to Siberia, and was later highly praised by Karl Marx, Georgi Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin.
The son of a priest, Chernyshevsky was born in Saratov in 1828, and stayed there until 1846.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky graduated at the local seminary where he learned English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek and Old Slavonic.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky was inspired by the works of Hegel, Ludwig Feuerbach and Charles Fourier and particularly the works of Vissarion Belinsky and Alexander Herzen.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky openly expressed his beliefs to students, some of whom later became revolutionaries.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky followed the events of the time and rejoiced in the gains of the democratic and revolutionary parties.
In 1855, Nikolay Chernyshevsky defended his master's dissertation, "The Aesthetic Relation of Art to Reality", which contributed for the development of materialist aesthetics in Russia.
In 1862, Nikolay Chernyshevsky was sentenced to civil execution, followed by penal servitude, and by exile to Vilyuisk, Siberia.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky was a founder of Narodism, Russian agrarian socialism, and agitated for the revolutionary overthrow of the autocracy and the creation of a socialist society based on the old peasant commune.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky exercised the greatest influence upon populist youth of the 1860s and 1870s.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky believed that American democracy was the best aspect of American life.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky's ideas were heavily influenced by Alexander Herzen, Vissarion Belinsky, and Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach.
Nikolay Chernyshevsky saw class struggle as the means of society's forward movement and advocated for the interests of the working people.