Nikolay Chernyshevsky
Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was a Russian revolutionary democrat, materialist philosopher, critic, and socialist . He was the leader of the revolutionary democratic movement of the 1860s, and had an influence on Vladimir Lenin, Emma Goldman, and Serbian political writer and socialist Svetozar Markovi.
The son of a priest, Chernyshevsky was born in Saratov in 1828, and stayed there till 1846. He graduated at the local seminary where he learnt English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Greek and Old Slavonic. It was there he gained a love of literature. At St Petersburg university he often struggled to warm his room. He kept a diary of trivia like the number of tears he shed over a dead friend. It was here that he became an atheist. He was inspired by the works of Ludwig Feuerbach and Charles Fourier. After graduating from Saint Petersburg University in 1850, he taught literature at a gymnasium in Saratov. From 1853 to 1862, he lived in Saint Petersburg, and became the chief editor of Sovremennik , in which he published his main literary reviews and his essays on philosophy.
Source: Wikipedia