“Notes from the Dead House,” “Notes from Underground,” “Crime and Punishment,” “The Idiot”—all of these had already been written, yet Dostoevsky still felt a sharp dissatisfaction and, as he admitted himself, was only approaching his main work. However, something happened in Russia’s political life that forced Dostoevsky to change his literary plans and begin a novel with a challenging and symbolic title: “Demons.” The spiral development of events—both generally and in Russian history in particular—suggests that Dostoevsky’s “Demons” will remain interesting to new generations of readers, not only as a masterpiece of Russian classical literature.