Daniel R. Brower
Training the Nihilists: Education and Radicalism in Tsarist Russia.
Cornell University Press, 1975. First edition. 0801408741 248 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9", is bound in burnt orange cloth, with black lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket are like new.
"What motivated young Russians to join the radical movement during the nineteenth century? Why did schools, year after year, turn out a steady flow of recruits for the revolutionary movement? In his valuable and original book, Daniel R. Brower explores these questions and offers convincing anwers to them.
In analyzing the unusual relationship between radicalism and Russian society, Professor Brower traces the evolution of the student community in secondary and higher education, and shows how by the 1860's a unique student movement had appeared which spread unrest among the schools and made defiance of authority a part of the educational experience of many students. He argues that with this movement a "school of dissent" arose, the creation of rebellious students and intellectuals, which trained recruits for revolution. This peculiar form of schooling, not class conflict, caused radicalism to flourish in autocratic Russia."