In 1869 a young Russian was strangled shot through the head & thrown into a pond. His crime? A wish to leave small group of violent revolutionaries from which he had become alienated. Dostoevsky takes this real-life catastrophe as the subject & culmination of Devils a title that refers the young radicals themselves & also to the materialistic ideas that possessed the minds of many thinking people Russian society at the time. The satirical portraits of the revolutionaries with their naivety ludicrous single-mindedness & readiness for murder & destruction might seem exaggerated
- until we consider their all-too-recognisable descendants in the real world ever since. The key figure in the novel however is beyond politics. Nikolay Stavrogin another product of rationalism run wild exercises his charisma with ruthless authority & total amorality. His unhappiness is accounted for when he confesses to a ghastly sexual crime
- in a chapter long suppressed by the censor. This prophetic account of modern morals & politics with its fifty-odd characters amazing events & challenging ideas is seen by some critics as Dostoevskys masterpiece.