The Devils - Fyodor Dostoevsky.

 

They say that what inspired Dostoevsky's novel 'The Devils', was the trial of the Russian anarcho-communist Sergey Nechayev. He and others comrades in 'People's Vengeance', had murdered fellow comrade Ivan Ivanov in 1869. Ivanov had questioned Nechayev's political ideas. Nechayev was tried for the murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died.

A character called Shatov, gets murdered by his comrades in Dostoevsky's novel. The character of Pyotr Verkhovensky is based on Nechayev. The character of Stavrogin is said to be based on the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, but I can't see the similarity. Nechayev and Bakinin had written 'The Catechism of a Revolutionary', that also inspired Dostoevsky's novel. Nechayev knew both Bakunin and the Russian socialist Alexander Herzen.

I read the novel many years ago and enjoyed it. But Dostoevsky's Russian characters are very bizarre and fanatical and you find that in most of his novels. How typical these characters are of Russians in general, is a moot point. You could say the same thing about the characters in a novel by Charles Dickens. There's a suicide maniac called Kirillov, who commits suicide and leaves a note confessing to the murder of Shatov. Stavrogin also commits suicide. I think in part of the book, there's a section where a young man had been sent by his mother to town to buy something for his sister's imminent wedding. He books into a hotel and blows his mother's money on food and drink. Rather than go home and confess to what he's done, he commits suicide. when the town gets to hear of it, people start to turn up at the hotel to gawp at the body.

I think there's little doubt that Dostoevsky's novels contributed to Tsarist repression in Russia and a crackdown on civil and political rights. They would've put the fear of death in the Romanovs. Yet Dostoevsky's novels seem to predict the murders of Tsar Alexander II and Tsar Nicholas II.