La rivoluzione è un gioco da ragazze! Rileggere Che fare? di Nikolaj Černyševskij come romanzo femminista

Re-reading What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky as a Feminist Novel. The quintessential political novel of Russian literature, the “catechism” that inspired generations of revolutionaries, Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? (1863) is, above all, a story of female emancipation. The liberation of a young woman oppressed by the rules of patriarchal society is the cornerstone of the transformation of Russian society as a whole and, consequently, of the revolution. The author’s revolutionary vision is set within a utopian framework that closely aligns with the social reality of Russia in the second half of the 19th century, a period marked by profound transformations, including shifts in gender relations. The paper proposes a reinterpretation of this classic of revolutionary and philosophical Russian literature, placing feminist discourse at the center – a perspective that has never been seriously considered by critics. The article also seeks to demonstrate how the novel What Is to Be Done? anticipates slogans, practices, and myths of feminism in the decades that followed.