Dostoevsky's Demons, probably the greatest novel ever inspired by a revolutionary conspiracy, was not the book that its author had intended to write. The story of how it came into being in its present form is rather a complicated one, involving...
"The Gentle Spirit" (Russian: Кроткая, Krotkaya), sometimes also translated as "The Meek One", is a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1876. The piece comes with the subtitle of "A Fantastic Story", and it chronicles the relationship...
When Pushkin first read some of the stories in this collection, he declared himself "amazed." "Here is real gaiety," he wrote, "honest, unconstrained, without mincing, without primness. And in places what poetry! . . . I still haven't...
Considered the high point of Gogol's writing for the stage and a masterpiece of dramatic satire, The Inspector General skewers the stupidity, greed, and venality of Russian provincial officials. When it is announced that the Inspector General is...
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite...
Pyotr and Stavrogin are the leaders of a Russian revolutionary cell. Their aim is to overthrow the Tsar, destroy society, and seize power for themselves. Together they train terrorists who are willing to lay down their lives to accomplish their...
Returning to Russia from a sanitarium in Switzerland, the Christ-like epileptic Prince Myshkin finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of love, torn between two women—the notorious kept woman Nastasya and the pure Aglaia—both involved, in turn, with...