The story in one page
Stepan Verhovensky, an aging intellectual who enjoys the glamour of being a 'persecuted' liberal, has spent years living on the patronage of the wealthy Varvara Stavrogin. Their comfortable social bubble bursts when their sons return to town. Stepan’s son, Pyotr, is a frenetic nihilist bent on tearing down Russian society through a secret cell of five. Varvara’s son, Nikolay Stavrogin, is a cold, magnetic figure whom everyone — from revolutionaries to religious zealots — looks to for meaning. As Pyotr incites a local fete into a riot and organizes a group murder to bind his conspirators together, Stavrogin’s hollow soul leads him toward a final, self-destructive end.
Who's who
- Nikolay Stavrogin
A lethargic, magnetic aristocrat whose absence of moral conviction inspires others.
- Pyotr Verhovensky
A manipulative revolutionary organizer who uses chaos to bind his followers.
- Stepan Verhovensky
A sentimental old liberal whose vanity inadvertently raised a generation of nihilists.
- Varvara Stavrogin
A powerful, wealthy landowner who manages the lives of those around her.
- Shatov
A former radical who finds God but becomes the revolutionaries' sacrificial victim.
- Kirillov
An engineer obsessed with the logic of suicide as the ultimate freedom.
What it's really about
- Nihilism
- The destructive outcome of ideas when detached from moral reality.
- Generational Conflict
- The 1840s idealists inadvertently birthing the 1860s terrorists.
- Spiritual Void
- The internal paralysis of those who believe in nothing.
Why it's memorable
- A man biting a governor's ear during a formal social introduction.
- The discovery of a silk cord, a hammer, and a piece of soap in a loft.
The ending, explained
Spoilers — show the ending
After the revolutionary cell murders Shatov and flees, Stavrogin retreats to his estate, where he hangs himself with a pre-soaped silk cord, leaving a note stating that no one else is to blame.
For your book club
- The psychological profile of a man who feels neither indignation nor despair.
- How a town’s collective boredom can be weaponized into a political catastrophe.