Why did not Chernyshevskiy emigrate?

Abstract

The problem of the differences between the reformer and the emigrant is considered, exemplified by N.G. Chernyshevskiy life story. While the reformer wants to make his country a better one (Peter the Great, A. Pushkin, N.G. Chernyshevskiy), the radical emigrant willy-nilly goes to revolutionism, renounces the possibility of reconstruction and thinks of the destruction insted, creating an empty space where one could build something new. Unfortunately, autocracy confused the independence of thought and revolutionarism, and Chernyshevskiy, who, according to V.V. Rozanov, could arrange well Russia and whom V.V. Rozanov also called “the tree of life”, paid for his independence with 20 years in Siberia.