In a provincial Russian town, the house of the wealthy Varvara Petrovna Stavrogina sees her son, Nikolai Vsevolodovich, come back, and on the same day Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky arrives, son of old Stepan Trofimovich and her protégé. Over a few weeks, beginning on a Sunday in September, the town that had condemned Nicolas for his scandals begins to acquit him with a single phrase, and it is on this ground that Pyotr, an agitator who claims to speak for a worldwide revolutionary network, forms a quintet, prepares the murder of Shatov and leaves the bill for others to pay. The story is driven by one question (how a respectable society opens the way for people like these) and by a web of debts: Stavrogin and the lame woman Marya Timofeyevna, whom he married in secret; Liza Tushina, who loves and hates him; Kirillov and Shatov, who take seriously the ideas they received from him; Stepan, father and teacher of the two young men the novel stages. The arc runs from the father's portrait to the salon where everything is exposed, passes through Shigalyov's system, the confession to Tikhon, the fire and the night in the park, and ends in four fates: Stepan's road, Marie and the boy, Kirillov, and Stavrogin in the attic.
Part One: The Genealogy
The chronicler, a townsman and confidant of Stepan Trofimovich, opens the narrative with the professor's portrait: an idealistic liberal who imagines himself persecuted though he was never under surveillance, who did not write the work he promised, and who for more than twenty years has lived on a friendship with Varvara Petrovna, who invented him and was the first to believe in the invention. In his circle are Liputin, Virginsky, Lyamshin and Shatov, her former serf and the professor's former pupil, who tells him to his face that his generation never loved the people and that whoever has no people has no God (Chapter I). Varvara has another attachment, her son Nikolai Stavrogin, educated by Stepan and returned from abroad like Shakespeare's Prince Hal, with a face too handsome, which the chronicler compares to a mask. Six months after his return he pulls old Gaganov by the nose at the club, kisses Liputin's wife on the mouth in front of everyone and bites the governor's ear, and the town, unwilling to admit that a lucid man humiliated it, calls what it saw an illness. After more than three years of travel and a riddle brought by Praskovya Ivanovna Drozdova about a quarrel between him and her daughter Liza, Varvara decides one night to marry Stepan to her ward Darya Pavlovna Shatova, and persuades him through the debt he owes her son Pyotr, still absent (Chapter II). During the week of waiting, Stepan feels ashamed, does not see his bride, and hears from Liputin rumors about money sent from Switzerland to the Lebyadkins and about Varvara's questions regarding her son's sanity, until he tells the chronicler that he cannot marry with "other people's sins." Karmazinov, the great writer, appears; Lizaveta Nikolaevna rides up on horseback and kisses the professor on the forehead; and Kirillov, the engineer who wants to know why no one kills himself, and for whom God is the pain of the fear of death (Chapter III). The next day Liza proposes to Shatov a society for an annual book and speaks of a printing press, and he leaves the room. That evening, at his home, Shatov tells of his trip to America and of the name of the man who sent him a hundred rubles, Nikolai Stavrogin, and takes the chronicler to the Lebyadkins' house, where Marya Timofeyevna, the lame woman, speaks of a son she threw into the lake. On Sunday she kneels before Varvara in the cathedral porch, is taken to Varvara's house, and Varvara, seeing her walk, exclaims: "You are lame!" (Chapter IV). In Varvara's salon, Pyotr arrives talking nonstop and Nikolai comes in. His mother asks whether Marya is his lawful wife, and he answers by kissing his mother's hand without a word, tells Marya that she is a stranger to him, neither husband, nor father, nor fiancé, and takes her to the carriage. While he is away, Pyotr offers Varvara an "anecdote" that does honor only to Nicolas, and Captain Lebyadkin confirms it point by point. On his return, Nicolas hears Pyotr read aloud his father's letter about "other people's sins," Varvara expels Stepan, Shatov crosses the room and strikes Nicolas, who seizes him by the shoulders, lets him go and clasps his hands behind his back, and Liza faints (Chapter V).
Part Two: The Conspiracy
Eight days later, on a Monday evening, Pyotr is received by Stavrogin and announces a new tactic: now everything depends on his will. Stavrogin asks Kirillov to be his second in a duel with Gaganov, and Kirillov speaks to him of moments when time stops and of the man-god. Pyotr goes up to Shatov, warns him that they want to kill him, declares that Marya Timofeyevna is Stavrogin's lawful wife, hears the thesis of the people who carry God and the chain of "I believe" that does not name God, and receives from him the suggestion to visit Bishop Tikhon (Chapter I). On the bridge, Fedka, a runaway serf from Siberia, offers to solve the problem of the Lebyadkins for fifteen hundred rubles without ever saying the word. The captain hears that the marriage will be made public in two days, and Marya Timofeyevna, woken up, calls Stavrogin an impostor and Grishka Otrepyev, the false Dmitry (Chapter II). In the woods, Gaganov fires three times, and Stavrogin, who does not want to kill anyone, fires twice into the air and once into the woods, which Gaganov takes as a new insult. Kirillov tells him that he is looking for burdens, and at home Darya Pavlovna tells him that in the end only she will be left with him (Chapter III). A remark by Yulia Mikhailovna von Lembke, the governor's wife, makes the town start admiring Stavrogin, because he could not challenge to a duel a former serf of his own. Pyotr humiliates his father, calling him a hanger-on, and surrounds Governor Andrei Antonovich von Lembke with the logic of his own liberalism (Chapter IV). While Yulia prepares the party, the young people of her circle laugh at everything: an icon of the Nativity is robbed and Liza kneels on the filthy pavement, a nineteen-year-old boy kills himself in a hotel room and the ladies go to look, and before the holy fool Semyon Yakovlevich, Liza orders her fiancé, Mavriky Nikolaevich, to kneel, then raises him up in terror. At Skvoreshniki, Varvara offers Stepan three thousand rubles a year to live far from her, and he promises to read at the party about the Sistine Madonna (Chapter V). In a single day Pyotr gives Lembke the name of Shatov and the promise that the movement fits within seven people, gives Karmazinov the date of Russia's ruin, and collects from Kirillov the agreed death. Mavriky Nikolaevich cedes his bride to Stavrogin and hears from him that he is married. On the way to the meeting, Pyotr explains to Stavrogin the cement of the group, the shame of having an opinion of one's own, and Stavrogin, laughing, suggests arresting a group by having four of them kill the fifth (Chapter VI). At Virginsky's house, at a gathering no one knows whether to call a session, the quintet Pyotr shaped (Liputin, Virginsky, Shigalyov, Lyamshin and Tolkachenko) hears Shigalyov read his system, which starts from unlimited freedom and ends in unlimited despotism. The lame professor sums it up as one-tenth who command and nine-tenths who obey, and Pyotr gets a yes to an action without saying which, and asks who would inform on a political murder. Shatov leaves without answering (Chapter VII). Returning from Kirillov's house, on the street, Pyotr begs, threatens, exalts Shigalyov's system and despises it as the work of a goldsmith, and reveals the plan to make Stavrogin Ivan Tsarevich, the pretender who hides and from whom the people would expect a new truth: "I invented him abroad," he says, and gives him three days (Chapter VIII).
"With Tikhon," which the author wanted at this point, was rejected by the magazine in which the novel was running and was published separately. On the morning after the night of Chapter VIII, Stavrogin takes to the retired bishop Tikhon, in a town monastery, the document "Of Stavrogin," the confession of what he did to a girl in Petersburg and of her death, which he intends to print and distribute. Tikhon says there is no greater crime, points to a tone of defiance in the text, names the risk Stavrogin did not measure, the laughter of readers, and proposes, in place of publication, a long and secret obedience. Faced with the refusal, he predicts that Stavrogin will commit another crime rather than confess ("With Tikhon").
On the same morning, an official of the governor brings Stepan's papers, and Stepan orders a lamp lit before the icon so the police will see it. He fears Siberia less than the humiliation of being released and suspected by Varvara for the rest of his life (Chapter IX). Seventy workers from the Shpigulin factory go to the governor's house, and Lembke, who had lost control at dawn, shouts "On your knees!" and asks for rods, while Stepan comes to him demanding his own rights. In Yulia's salon, Liza asks Stavrogin aloud about Captain Lebyadkin, and he answers before his mother and the whole town that he has been the husband of the captain's sister for almost five years (Chapter X).
Part Three: The Disaster
Yulia's matinée begins as a party and ends in scandal: Captain Lebyadkin appears drunk on stage and Liputin reads his verses, Karmazinov reads the farewell "Merci," and Stepan, who climbs up to reconcile the generations with a eulogy of beauty above bread, is booed and accused by a seminarian of having lost at cards the serf who became Fedka. A professor disgraces Russia to applause (Chapter I). Stepan locks himself in and says goodbye to the chronicler. Yulia weeps before Pyotr, who tells her that Liza left with Stavrogin for Skvoreshniki. The ball, without the families, includes a quadrille of literature and a publisher who falls head over heels, and Lembke orders the arrest of the first lady, that is, his own wife. The cry that Zarechye is burning in three places empties the hall. Lembke, hatless, shouts that the fire is in people's minds and is knocked down by a plank, and at dawn Captain Lebyadkin, Marya Timofeyevna and the maid are found stabbed to death in the house that Stavrogin had rented (Chapter II). At Skvoreshniki, Liza refuses to be Stavrogin's nurse and speaks to him of a huge spider. Pyotr brings news of the dead and swears he did not have them killed, because Fedka took advantage of the money Lebyadkin was showing. Liza asks Stavrogin whether he is guilty, and he answers that he did not kill and was against it, but knew and did not stop the murderers. She goes to see the bodies and, in the crowd, a hand knocks her down (Chapter III).
The next day, at the house of Ensign Erkel, the quintet rebels against Pyotr's despotism. Pyotr turns the game around with an invented denunciation by Shatov and proposes killing him, pinning the blame on Kirillov, who promised to kill himself. Shigalyov returns to Pyotr the program of propaganda and arson that Pyotr himself had drawn up, and the revolt collapses within ten minutes. At Kirillov's house, Fedka demands from Pyotr the money promised and calls him an atheist, and Pyotr, who draws his revolver, is knocked down with fists (Chapter IV). Marie, Shatov's wife, returns to him sick and pregnant, saying she did not come to repent. Shatov runs to Kirillov, who speaks to him of seconds of eternal harmony, and to the midwife Arina Prokhorovna, and a boy is born, whom Marie names Ivan (Chapter V). In the Stavrogins' park, Pyotr and the quintet shoot Shatov and throw the body into the lake with stones tied to it. Virginsky cries that it is not it, Lyamshin squeals like an animal, and Shigalyov refuses the murder and goes away. Pyotr dictates to Kirillov the note that claims the crime, and Kirillov, who says that if there is no God he is God, shoots himself after about ten "now"s and after biting Pyotr's finger. Pyotr boards a train to Petersburg (Chapter VI).
Stepan sets out on foot along the road, meets Sofya Matveyevna, who sells Gospels, falls ill at an inn, confesses that he has lied his whole life, and asks for the passage of the pigs, which he applies to Russia, to himself and to his son. Varvara arrives, expels Sofya Matveyevna and then calls her back, and he dies confessed and communed, after a profession of faith about love and immortality (Chapter VII). Marie, who has seen Kirillov dead, runs into the street with the boy, saying they have killed her husband, and dies with him of the cold and panic. Lyamshin hands everything over to the authorities, Virginsky and Erkel are arrested, Liputin and Tolkachenko flee and are arrested later, and Pyotr, abroad, passes for a genius within three months. Stavrogin writes to Darya Pavlovna, calling her to Switzerland and saying he fears suicide as a last deception. Varvara and Darya rush to Skvoreshniki and find him hanged in the attic, with a note that says only that no one is to blame, and the doctors rule out madness (Chapter VIII).