This chapter pursues a twofold goal: first, it examines the contribution of Russian philosophers and critics to the development of the pedagogical ideal of Bildung/obrazovanie and of the ‘Bildungsroman’ as an aesthetic category; second, it traces the reflection of these intellectual ideals in Russian literary history from the age of Enlightenment to the end of the Soviet period. The political repercussions of the new conception of humanity as a self-determined evolving organism, which underlay eighteenth-century formulations of Bildung, became obvious in the age of the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars. However, most German and Russian thinkers who subscribed to the ideal of Bildung/obrazovanie, from Herder and Schiller to Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, believed that a proper moral education that instils in individuals a respect for humanity in themselves and other human beings could prevent a revolutionary implosion. Thus literature came to be regarded as a major vehicle of education and sociocultural transformation. Unsurprisingly, many nineteenth-century Russian novels were either overt pedagogical narratives or included subplots that resembled Bildungsromane. Although subsequent historical upheavals undermined the idealistic belief in humanity projected by these classical works, Russian and Soviet authors continued to draw on the Bildungsroman tradition throughout the twentieth century.