Russians are fond of asking two vitally important questions about life: «Who is to blame?» and «What is to be done?»

These questions are also titles of two Russian novels written in XIX century by two Russian journalists and literary critics, Alexander Herzen and Nikolai Chernyshevsky, later (in 1902) on these questions tried to respond Vladimir Lenin, a famous Russian revolutionary, who played a leading role in the October revolution of 1917.

Let’s try to answer these questions.

Who is to Blame?

Probably, the very formulation of the question is erroneous. It means seeking and finding guilty persons. When people live in poverty, when they lack education and intelligence (at the same time I know that a lack of education says absolutely nothing about people’s intelligence!), they seek someone who can lead them to a better life. As Nietzsche says, «No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse».