Demons

"Demons" is a novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. He wrote it under the impression of the budding terrorist and radical movements among Russian intelligentsia, the raznochintsy, and others. The direct prototype of the novel’s plot was a case of murder of a student, Ivan Ivanov, that caused a huge public stir—planned by S. G. Nechaev with the aim of strengthening his power in a revolutionary terrorist circle. It is almost a historical sketch, which I wished to use to explain the possibility, in our strange society, of such monstrous phenomena as the Nechaev crime. My view is that these phenomena are not an accident, not isolated—they’re therefore present in my novel with no copied events and no copied characters. These phenomena are the direct consequence of the centuries-long severing of all Russian education from the native and original foundations of Russian life. Even the most talented representatives of our pseudo-European development have long come to the conviction of the criminality of everything for us, Russians, dreaming of our own distinctiveness <…>. Meanwhile, the chief preachers of our lack of distinctiveness would be horrified by the Nechaev affair, and the first to turn away. Our Belinskys and Granovskys would not have believed it if you told them that they were Nechaev’s direct fathers. It is this kinship and continuity of thought—from fathers to children—that I wanted to express in my work.