In this "lucid primer of Russian thought" (The Times Literary Supplement), Lesley Chamberlain finds that during the last two centuries Russian intellectuals have asked two fundamental questions, "what makes a good man?" and "what is the right way to live?"
The nineteenth-century ideal of a happy man living in a just society became, in Russia, a quest to effect the wholesale transformation of society. Chamberlain shows how this moral passion, manifesting itself in philosophy and literature, existed in both pre- and post-revolutionary Russia. She reveals that 1917 did not represent the watershed we once thought, and shows how the dreams of a plain and simple life reached its negative apotheosis under Lenin. In Motherland, Lesley Chamberlain has produced a radical new interpretation of Russian intellectual history that, finally, gives a glimpse in to the soul of that singular country.
- ISBN10 1843542862
- ISBN13 9781843542865
- Publish Date 14 July 2005 (first published 1 July 2004)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 August 2021
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Atlantic Books
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback
- Pages 352
- Language English