The Theme in the Work
The novel does not ask whether the revolution will win. It asks how one is manufactured in a provincial town, with few people, little doctrine, and a great deal of exploitation of what was already there. The starting point is a genealogy: the idealistic liberals of the 1840s created, without meaning to, sons who no longer want to talk. On the other side is a group of five who believe they belong to a worldwide network no one has seen, a system that starts from freedom and arrives at despotism, and an organizer, Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky, who has no need of doctrine because he uses other people's. What the book shows in detail is the method: offering each person the size of conspiracy he needs to believe, tying the group together with blood, giving it a chief who never appears, and letting the town yield out of vanity and comfort.
In Part One, Chapter I, the chronicler sets up the genealogy, and the revolution of the sons comes out of it.
«Высший либерализм» и «высший либерал», то есть либерал без всякой цели, возможны только в одной России, the "superior liberalism" and the "superior liberal," that is, the liberal with no aim whatsoever, are possible only in Russia.
In Part Two, Chapter VI, Pyotr, who has just told Lembke that the movement fits into three and a half men, lays out for Nikolai Vsevolodovich Stavrogin the real organization: the uniform, the sentimentality, the swindlers, and above all the cement of the shame of having one's own opinion.
Да кто управляет-то? три человека с полчеловеком. Ведь, на них глядя, только скука возьмет, so who is running things, anyway? Three men and half a man. Just looking at them is enough to bore anyone.
Earlier, Karmazinov had already told Pyotr what he judges to be the essence of the Russian revolutionary idea.
вся суть русской революционной идеи заключается в отрицании чести [...] Русскому человеку честь одно только лишнее бремя. Да и всегда было бременем, во всю его историю. Открытым «правом на бесчестье» его скорей всего увлечь можно, the whole essence of the Russian revolutionary idea lies in the denial of honor. [...] For the Russian, honor is only one more burden. And it has always been a burden, throughout his whole history. It is through the open "right to dishonor" that he can most readily be carried away.
In Part Two, Chapter VII, at Virginsky's house, the chronicler describes the faith that holds the five together.
Все эти пятеро деятелей составили свою первую кучку с теплою верой, что она лишь единица между сотнями и тысячами таких же пятерок, как и ихняя, разбросанных по России, и что все зависят от какого-то центрального, огромного, но тайного места, которое в свою очередь связано органически с европейскою всемирною революцией, all these five activists formed their first little group with the warm faith that it was only one unit among hundreds and thousands of quintets just like theirs, scattered across Russia, and that all depended on some central, enormous but secret place, organically linked in turn to the European world revolution.
Shigalyov, gloomy, with a thick notebook in small handwriting, reads the system he wrote and confesses the contradiction.
Выходя из безграничной свободы, я заключаю безграничным деспотизмом, starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism.
The lame professor, who always speaks with a smile that does not let you know whether he is mocking, sums up what this means in practice.
Он предлагает, в виде конечного разрешения вопроса, — разделение человечества на две неравные части. Одна десятая доля получает свободу личности и безграничное право над остальными девятью десятыми. Те же должны потерять личность и обратиться вроде как в стадо и при безграничном повиновении достигнуть рядом перерождений первобытной невинности, вроде как бы первобытного рая, хотя, впрочем, и будут работать, he proposes, as the final solution to the question, the division of humanity into two unequal parts. One tenth receives freedom of the person and unlimited right over the other nine tenths. The others must lose their personality and turn, as it were, into a herd, and through unlimited obedience attain, by a series of rebirths, the primal innocence, a kind of primeval paradise, although, for all that, they will work.
In Part Two, Chapter VIII, on the way back from Kirillov's house, Pyotr praises Shigalyov's system as the work of genius and, minutes later, dismisses it as the work of a goldsmith. What he wants is something else, a chief who never appears.
Мы скажем, что он «скрывается», we will say that he "is in hiding."
In Part Three, Chapter I, after the disaster, the chronicler explains how a town works in a time of transition.
эта сволочь, сама не зная того, почти всегда подпадает под команду той малой кучки «передовых», которые действуют с определенною целью, и та направляет весь этот сор куда ей угодно, this rabble, without knowing it, almost always falls under the command of that small group of the "advanced," who act with a definite aim, and that group directs all this rubbish wherever it pleases.
In Part Three, Chapter IV, when the quintet rebels, Shigalyov repeats to Pyotr the program he himself drew up, and Pyotr can only accuse them of acting on their own.
систематическою обличительною пропагандой беспрерывно ронять значение местной власти, произвести в селениях недоумение, зародить цинизм и скандалы, полное безверие во что бы то ни было, жажду лучшего и, наконец, действуя пожарами, как средством народным по преимуществу, ввергнуть страну, в предписанный момент, если надо, даже в отчаяние, by means of systematic denunciatory propaganda, ceaselessly undermining the authority of local government, creating bewilderment in the villages, breeding cynicism and scandal, total unbelief in anything whatsoever, a thirst for something better, and finally, employing fires as the people's preferred means, plunging the country, at the prescribed moment, if need be, even into despair.
In Part Three, Chapter VI, after the shot in the park, Pyotr promises those who cried out that they are the ones destined to receive power.
Останемся только мы, заранее предназначившие себя для приема власти: умных приобщим к себе, а на глупцах поедем верхом. Этого вы не должны конфузиться. Надо перевоспитать поколение, чтобы сделать достойным свободы, only we shall remain, we who have destined ourselves in advance to receive power. The clever ones we shall draw to us, and on the fools we shall ride. You must not be embarrassed by this. The generation must be re-educated to make it worthy of freedom.
And Liputin, on the way back, asks the truth he has always known.
Глупый вы человек! Ведь уж теперь-то, кажется, вам всё бы равно — одна пятерка или тысяча. — Значит, одна! Так я и знал! — вскричал Липутин. — Я всё время знал, что одна, до самых этих пор, what a foolish man you are! Surely now, it seems, it would make no difference to you whether it is one quintet or a thousand. So it's one! I knew it! cried Liputin. I knew all along that it was one, right up to this very moment.
The book's revolution has no doctrine of its own. Shigalyov supplies the logic, which Shigalyov himself cannot use; Kirillov supplies the death that serves as a signature; Shatov supplies the potential informer; Karmazinov supplies the thesis that honor is a burden. Pyotr combines them according to the listener: seven tedious figures for the governor, an international network for the quintet, a hidden prince for Stavrogin. What gives the whole its unity is the shame of having one's own opinion and the fear of seeming backward, and neither of these is a doctrine. The novel shows that such an organization stays upright until the first body appears, when those who cried out in terror discover that they can no longer get out.
Who Embodies It
Pyotr is the method: he gives each person the lie he needs, invents posts and committees, and comes out unscathed. Shigalyov is logic without scruple: he reaches despotism against his will, refuses Shatov's murder because it contradicts the program, and goes away without renouncing the system. Virginsky is the idealist of pure heart, who cries out "it isn't that" after the shot. Liputin is the swindler who only wants to know whether the network exists once he has already done what it asked. Stepan Trofimovich is the origin, the liberal who never did anything and whom his son, in Part Two, Chapter IV, calls a hanger-on.
Where It Appears
- Part One, Chapter I: Stepan Trofimovich and his circle practice what the chronicler calls superior liberalism, light talk about Europe's future and the wait for emancipation.
- Part Two, Chapter IV: Pyotr surrounds the governor with the logic of his own liberalism, and Lembke replies that government and revolutionaries need each other and differ only in timing.
- Part Two, Chapter VI: Pyotr describes to Stavrogin the cement of the group, the shame of having one's own opinion, and Stavrogin, laughing, gives the recipe for having four people kill the fifth.
- Part Two, Chapter VII: Shigalyov reads the system that starts from unlimited freedom and ends in unlimited despotism, and Pyotr asks the room who would inform on a political murder.
- Part Two, Chapter VIII: Pyotr proposes making Stavrogin Ivan Tsarevich, a hidden chief, and dismisses as the work of a goldsmith the Shigalyov system he had just praised.
- Part Two, Chapter X: Seventy workers go to the governor, and Lembke shouts "On your knees!" and "Rods!" without knowing he is going to shout them, and authority collapses without Pyotr's help.
- Part Three, Chapter I: The chronicler says that in a time of transition the rabble falls under the command of a handful of the advanced, and the literary matinée shows the audience discovering that it can answer back.
- Part Three, Chapter II: Zarechye burns in three places during the ball, and Lembke shouts that the fire is in people's minds and not in the roofs of the houses.
- Part Three, Chapter IV: Pyotr invents a denunciation by Shatov to tie the quintet to a murder, and Shigalyov returns to him the program of propaganda and arson that he himself drew up.
- Part Three, Chapter VI: Shatov is killed in the park by the five, who cry out after the shot, and Pyotr promises them power: the clever ones will be drawn in and the fools ridden.
- Part Three, Chapter VIII: Pyotr leaves by train for Petersburg, and three months later people at the club treat him almost as a genius, finger raised, for his organization.
Where the Readings Diverge
Pyotr can be read as the competent conspirator, and the club that praises him after the disaster makes that reading: an organization. He can be read as a swindler who hits the mark by chance: the same chronicler notes that some people recognize in him both sharpness and ignorance of reality, a crooked development in a single direction. Reading the novel as a pamphlet against an ideology also has its supporters, and Joseph Frank, reading it as myth and not as reportage, rejects it.
Of course your novel is not limited to the real, somewhat insignificant dimensions of the Nechayev case.
The facts the book shows support both readings of Pyotr. In favor of his competence: the method works with each interlocutor, the group is held together by the crime, and he leaves the scene before paying. Against it: nothing he says about the network is verified, the denunciation of Shatov is invented, and the quintet, which cried out at the moment of the shot, is not the instrument he imagined. The answer Liputin almost hears in the park, that perhaps there is only one quintet, is the one the book leaves unconfirmed. What remains is an organizer whose strength depends on no one standing up to say that the center is him alone.