What Is to Be Done? (novel)
What Is to Be Done? (Russian: Что делать?, tr. Chto delat'?; also translated as "What Shall We Do?") is an 1863 novel written by the Russian philosopher, journalist and literary critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky. It was written in response to Fathers and Sons (1862) by Ivan Turgenev. The chief character is a woman, Vera Pavlovna, who escapes the control of her family and an arranged marriage to seek economic independence. The novel advocates the creation of small socialist cooperatives based on the Russian peasant commune, but oriented toward industrial production. The author promoted the idea that the intellectual's duty was to educate and lead the laboring masses in Russia along a path to socialism that bypassed capitalism. One of the characters in the novel, Rakhmetov, became an emblem of the philosophical materialism and nobility of Russian radicalism despite his minor role. The novel also expresses, in one character's dream, a society gaining "eternal joy" of an earthly kind. The novel has been called "a handbook of radicalism" and led to the founding of the Land and Liberty society.
What Is to Be Done?
What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement (Russian: Что делать?, tr. Chto delat'?), is a political pamphlet written by the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in 1901 and published in 1902. Its title is inspired by the novel of the same name by the 19th century Russian revolutionary Nikolai Chernyshevsky.
In What Is to Be Done?, Lenin argues that the working class will not spontaneously become political simply by fighting economic battles with employers over wages, working hours and the like. To convert the working class to Marxism, Lenin insists that Marxists should form a political party, or "vanguard," of dedicated revolutionaries to spread Marxist political ideas among the workers. The pamphlet precipitated in part the split of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) between Lenin's Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks.
In 1904 Leon Trotsky published his reply Our Political Tasks, observing that Lenin's approach will inevitably lead to a bloody takeover of the party by a dictator akin to the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution.
What is to Be Done? (disambiguation)
What Is to Be Done? is a 1902 political pamphlet by Vladimir Lenin, and it also may refer to:
See also
To Be
I tied on my boots and strapped on my bracelet
to go out and meet some new faces.
Went to the store to buy some dark gin,
and now I know my night's ready to begin.
A dozen friends in my big 'ol car,
my '62 Buick can't take us too far.
Out for the night, it'll be so rude,
gotta hold us down before the night is through.
In Grand Rapids, there's nothing to do.
When you're down it's the same way too.
Gotta get up, do the best that you can.
To be a fool, is to be a man.
Well I went to the party with the big 'ol keg.
They said the way I drank, they thought I had a hollow leg.
Standing around, starting to groove,
with my beer in hand I think I'll plot my next move.
I spot a pretty girl giving me a wink
trying to catch my eye, or so I think.
Such a fool I am, should not have overlooked
that her eyes were only clouded by the smoke.
Well I went to Denny's to buy me some food,
said it's the only place that can put me in the mood.
I order my fries and always complain,
but the way they taste I think I'd rather eat them plain.
But I'm still with my friends, still having fun
talking shit while the night is still young.
But I bet they watch me drink as much as I'm able,
I know they'll laugh when they find me passed out on the table.