I would point out that the tern Nihilism in those days meant something a bit different from what we mean by the term nowadays. The Russian Nihilists of the mid-19th century were militant materialists and positvists, who promoted science and reason, while rejecting religious superstition and political autocracy.
BTW many of the statements that the character Bazarov makes in Turgenev's famous novel, Fathers and Sons, were lifted almost word for word from editorials that Turgenev's erstwhile friend, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, had published in the magazine, The Contemporary, which Turgenev sometimes wrote for as well. Chernychevsky, who was then an important writer and editor, was the author of the novel, What is to be Done?, which despite the fact that it was panned by most critics, influenced several generations of Russian revolutionaries including the young Lenin who borrowed the novel's title for a famous political tract of his own.
The popularity of Nihilism among Russia's intellectual youth during the mid-19th century both intrigued (and in some cases appalled) Russia's finest writers of the time. Turgenev devoted his novel, Fathers and Sons, to this issue, while Nihilism figured in several of Dostoevsky's novels including, Crime and Punishment, Notes from the Underground, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Possessed. Ultimately, Nihilism, by popularizing the ideas of such materialistic and positivist thinkers from the West such as Feuerbach, Comte, Darwin, and J.S. Mill, opened the door for the later introduction of such doctrines as Marxism and anarchism, which ultimately had a profound effect on Russian politics. Chernychevsky himself was a socialist and is considered to be the father of revolutionary socialism in Russia. He often corresponded with Karl Marx, who had a high opinion of him. As an enemy of the Russian autocracy, he was eventually sentenced to prison by the Czarist regime, and later was released in broken health to live in exile in Siberia.
Another important Nihilist writer was Dmitry Pisarev, who died at the age of 27 while imprisoned in a fortress. His writings, like Chernychevsky's, were quite influential too. They, for example, inspired the young Ivan Pavlov, the son of a Russian Orthodox priest, to lose his religious faith and to switch from studying for the priesthood in a seminary to attending medical school, instead. He then went on to become a physiologist and one of Russia's foremost scientists.
Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math ____________________________________________________________ Ally Bank, Member FDIC Consistently competitive rates, 24/7 customer care, Member FDIC http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/568483742644e372232est04vuc