Shigalyov

Who He Is

Shigalyov is the brother of the wife of the official Virginsky, a guest in town for about two months when the book introduces him, and the author of a thick notebook in small handwriting in which he proposes the final organization of society. The chronicler, who had only heard that he published an article in a progressive Petersburg journal, had never seen a face so somber and scowling: he has enormous ears, long and open, slow and clumsy movements, and the air of someone waiting for the end of the world the day after tomorrow, at twenty-five minutes past ten in the morning (ch. IV, Part One). He is one of the five of the group that Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky shaped in town. The formula of his system, starting from unlimited freedom and arriving at unlimited despotism, sums up what the novel says about the logic of equality carried to its end. He is not one of Stavrogin's disciples: the system is his, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin only listens to it, silent, in the room. The trait that defines him is a honesty that cannot fix its own conclusion, and does not retract it.

Trajectory

In ch. IV, Part One, the chronicler finds him one evening in the room of Ivan Shatov, with Alexei Kirillov. The three of them are arguing aloud, fall silent when he comes in, and spend three minutes in silence. Shigalyov pretends not to recognize him and looks at him severely, in the naive hope that he will get up and leave. When Shatov rises and everyone goes out without saying goodbye, he says from the doorway that Shatov must answer for it. Shatov tells him to spit on his accounts, says he owes nothing to any devil, and calls the two of them greenhorns.

In ch. VII, Part Two, at the gathering in Virginsky's house, which is also his sister's house, Shigalyov is among the five. The quintet was born wounded, treated with severity and indifference by Pyotr, and Shigalyov already wants satisfaction, but not in front of so many people. When the student tries to voice the students' suffering, he stands up, somber, and puts his notebook on the table. He opens with a preface: the builders of social systems, from Plato to Fourier, were dreamers and fools who understood nothing of the strange animal called man, and his formula would require ten nights of reading, one per chapter. While Pyotr asks for scissors and trims his nails, he confesses that the system is unfinished, because he has tangled himself in his own data:

The room splits. The younger ones laugh, while the hostess, Liputin, and the lame professor grow irritated, and he does not give way. Whoever does not like it may go into the civil service or into the kitchen, which will come back to the same thing. The lame professor is the one who sums up the book:

Shigalyov answers the cry that it is a piece of villainy with a distinction:

When Liamchin jokes that it would be better to blow up the nine tenths, he takes him seriously and says that perhaps it would be the best solution, only impracticable. In ch. VIII, Part Two, Stavrogin tells Pyotr to keep Shigalyov and leave him alone. Pyotr, who in the room had called Shigalyovism a provincial people's aesthetic pastime, praises it as the work of a genius bolder than Fourier, who invented equality, and will despise it minutes later as the work of a goldsmith:

In ch. IV, Part Three, at the house of Ensign Erkel, after the fire and the dead Lebyadkins, the quintet wants a categorical explanation from Pyotr. Shigalyov asks leave to state a fact. With the calm of an opinion, he repeats the program Pyotr laid out for them, and asks what exactly Pyotr is complaining about:

When Pyotr proposes killing Shatov with a denunciation no one has seen, and pinning the blame on Kirillov, Shigalyov doubts that Kirillov, a madman, will do what he promised. In ch. VI, Part Three, in the park, he observes that no one has seen the denunciation. When Pyotr says that those who tremble at the moment of danger are bribed by the government, he takes three steps forward and declares, with his usual method, that murder is a waste of time and a deviation that has always harmed the cause, by handing it over to frivolous and political people instead of pure socialists, and that it contradicts his program from start to finish. He leaves, but not out of fear, nor out of any feeling for Shatov, whom he does not want to kiss, and he promises there will be no denunciation. Pyotr loads the revolver and calls him Mr. Fourier. He replies that Pyotr is mistaken about the name and about the calculation, since killing him gains nothing today, and whether he kills him or not, Pyotr will sooner or later arrive at his system. As he walks away through the park, he does not warn Shatov. He hears the cry and the shot from afar, but according to his own later testimony, he does not look back or stop. In ch. VIII, Part Three, when the group comes apart, the chronicler hears that he will soon be released, since he fits none of the categories of the accused, though it may only be talk.

Themes Embodied

Shigalyov is the reasoning that arrives at despotism against its own will, and for that reason is more dangerous than cynicism. He does not want what he concluded. He measures a proposal by what it resolves and not by what it costs, and he answers the charge of villainy with the word paradise. The Revolution that Pyotr organizes uses exactly this: one man's logical despair supplies the argument, and the others' vanity supplies the obedience. What remains of the system in Pyotr's hands is only the part that tears down, the mutilation of talent and an equality that levels downward. The part that would build, he calls goldsmith's work.

His leaving the park supports two readings, and the text gives reason to both. The first is that of coherence without scruple:

In the second, the exit is that of someone who keeps out of the crime without stopping it. He knows what it is about, does not warn Shatov, and does not turn back when he hears the shot. His final line to Pyotr, that sooner or later Pyotr will arrive at the system, can be read as lucid prophecy or as the comfort of someone who leaves with the doctrine intact.

Under the theme Individual and Society, Shigalyov's system is the barest version: the individual is worth only as raw material, and nine tenths lose their personality so that one tenth can have it. Kirillov carries the idea to his own death, Shatov carries it to a faith he cannot declare, and Pyotr uses it without believing it. Shigalyov carries it to the end of the argument and goes no further. The text does not show him carrying out anything. What he is in the book is the proof that the system can be produced by someone who does not want it.

Divergent Readings

Dostoevsky himself distanced himself from the system he gave Shigalyov:

Readings diverge over what kind of text the system is. The author's note shows him keeping his distance from it, and some read the formula as the prophetic core of the book, what the twentieth century would carry out. The two are not mutually exclusive, and the novel does not decide between them. It gives the formula to a man who produces it without wanting it and despairs of what he concluded, and it is this refusal, added to its execution by others, that makes it legible in both directions.

Relationships

• Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky: the head of the quintet, who treats him with indifference, who exalts the system and despises it in the same breath (ch. VIII, Part Two), and who calls him Mr. Fourier when he refuses the murder (ch. VI, Part Three).
• Ivan Shatov: the one he demands an account from in the room (ch. IV, Part One), and whom he fails to warn on the night in the park (ch. VI, Part Three).
• Alexei Kirillov: the companion of that evening at Shatov's house (ch. IV, Part One), whose promise of suicide he considers the work of a madman (ch. IV, Part Three).
• Liputin: the fellow member of the quintet who, like him, is irritated by the system in the room and, unlike him, stays in the park (ch. VII, Part Two, ch. VI, Part Three).
• Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin: the silent listener at Virginsky's house (ch. VII, Part Two), and the man to whom Pyotr wants to hand over the leadership, in place of Shigalyov's system (ch. VIII, Part Two).