into the fresh air." He graduated in 1861, the same year as serfdom was abolished and the first major student demonstrations were held in Saint Petersburg, by which time he had thoroughly adopted the nihilist outlook and abandoned his Orthodox Christian faith. After graduation he worked as editor for various publications. He was arrested in 1862 for anti-government writings and was imprisoned until 1866. After his release, he continued his literary work. During the summer holidays of 1868 he died as a result of a drowning accident at Dubulti on the Gulf of Riga (in present-day Latvia). Legacy Pisarev was one of the writers who propelled the democratic-revolutionary trend in Russia during the 1860s. The next generation of Russians, made famous by the events of 1905 and 1917, acknowledged Pisarev's influence. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, once wrote, "Lenin was of the generation that grew up under the influence of Pisarev". Pisarev was also noted for his support of Russian natural science, particularly biology, and his works greatly influenced the career choice of the young Ivan Pavlov. He considered himself a positivist, although his incorporation of imagination and style somewhat contradicted that school of thought. He did not believe in romantic ideas because they reminded him of the oppressive tsarist government under which he lived. His basic beliefs were "an extreme anti-aesthetic scientistic position." He focused his efforts on defining the relation between literature and the environment. Pisarev wanted, more than anything else, for his readers to learn to think independently. This desire he pursued through philosophy, literary criticism and social and family analyses. Influence on Lenin Lenin, in the fifth chapter of What Is To Be Done?, quoted these lines from an article by Pisarev: According to the recollection of Menshevik Georgiy Solomon, who held offices in the Soviet government from 1918 until he became a nevozvrashchenets in 1923, Lenin once quoted in a private conversation to him the following from Pisarev, with "a purely sadistic expression" and in an apparent "fit of hysteria": "Break, beat up everything, beat and destroy! Everything that's being broken is rubbish and has no right to life! What survives is good." Lenin allegedly used this quote in response to Solomon's remark that the activities of the Bolsheviks in power had a primarily destructive nature, and then threatened Solomon with the Cheka if he were to object to him again. Works Translated works in English