The time of the novel, as indicated by the author himself, is the late 1860s; however, it also reflects later events: the so-called “going to the people” movement of 1874-1875. At that time, the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia was experiencing a tragic awareness of its disunity with the people, who were deprived of a true understanding of the causes of their desperate condition and therefore alien to the goals to which these people had devoted themselves.