Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) is a figure of monumental importance in Russian literature and culture. An influential journalist and literary critic, a theoretician of the aesthetic relations of art to reality, and a prominent political activist, Chernyshevsky is the author of What Is to Be Done? (1863), the novel that has had the greatest impact on human lives in the history of Russian literature. This book approaches culture from a semiotic perspective,...