PETER VERKHOVENSKY - central character Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" (1870-1872). With the figure of P.V. associated identity of the organizer secret society"People's massacre" S.G. Nechaev (1847-1882), under whose leadership in November 1869 a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I.I. Ivanov was murdered. Nechaev appeared in Moscow with a mandate issued to him in Geneva by Bakunin and certifying that "the giver of this is one of the trusted representatives of the Russian branch of the World Revolutionary Alliance," and also with instructions to create a party of anarchist revolutionaries in Russia, the program of which was set out in the Catechism revolutionary." When one of the members of the "five" formed by him, the student Ivanov, who did not accept the leader's dictatorial habits, threatened to leave the circle, Nechaev, allegedly fearing a denunciation, obtained consent from his associates to kill. “One of the biggest incidents of my story,” Dostoevsky explained his plan in a letter dated October 8/20, 1870, “will be a murder known in Moscow ... I hasten to make a reservation: I did not know either Nechaev or Ivanov, nor the circumstances of that murder, and did not know at all I know, except from the newspapers. Yes, if I knew, I would not copy. I'm just taking a fait accompli." P.V. in the drafts for the novel he is directly called Nechaev; however, it is also correlated with Petrashevsky: “Stick more like Petrashevsky”, “Nechaev is partly Petrashevsky”. In the article “One of the modern falsehoods”, Dostoevsky defined the purpose of “Demons” in “Shv.V.: “I wanted to raise the question and, as clearly as possible, in the form of a novel, give an answer to it: how in our transitional and amazing modern society possible - not Nechaevs, but Nechaevs, and how can it happen that these Nechaevs recruit Nechaevs at the end? In a letter (dated February 10, 1873) to the heir to the throne, the future Alexander III, the author clarified his comment: “This is almost a historical sketch, by which I wanted to explain the possibility in our strange society of such monstrous phenomena as Nechaev's crime. My view is that these phenomena are not accidental…” P.V. formed in creative imagination Dostoevsky as a figure of a gloomy villain - a political adventurer and a killer fanatic, whose activity is determined by the formula of the "Catechism" - "who is not with us is against us." The materials of the trial of the Nechaevites (July 1871) helped the author to more accurately formulate the main principles of P.V. and contributed to the deepening of the image of the "chief demon". In the prehistory of the novel, P.V., the only son of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, is an unfortunate orphan who did not know either his father or mother, who from infancy lived somewhere in the pgushi “with aunts”, a child “sent by mail” from his father’s eyes Down with. In the novel, he is a complete villain, whose political biography full of dark spots and spattered with blood. His past arises from rumors and omissions, his figure of a “foreign revolutionary” has a certain secret flaw, however, a dubious reputation, a trail of betrayal and renegade, suspicions of connections with the secret police do not prevent “ours” from recognizing P.V. central committee”, “engine” and leader. The organization that short period stay in Russia managed to blind P.V., made four "five", but none of the members knows the true scale of the party: its construction is based on a bluff, the legend of a single center and a huge network, as well as the principle of hierarchical centralism with the dictatorship of the center - united by charter and program, it is conceived as a society of total obedience, as a collection of "like-minded people". All members of it must observe and notice each other, each is obliged to "the highest report", denunciation and surveillance turn out to be a way of survival. A powerful lever of the personnel policy of the organization is its total bureaucracy. “The first thing that works terribly is the uniform. There is nothing stronger than a uniform. I deliberately invent ranks and positions: I have secretaries, secret spies, treasurers, chairmen, registrars, their comrades - I like it very much and it was accepted very well. The actual political task of P.V. there is a struggle for ends that justify any means, and a cynical denial of moral considerations if they are not linked to the interests of the organization; "the right to dishonor" is proclaimed cornerstone new revolutionary doctrine, substantiating the tactics and strategy of the coming turmoil. The old theses of Raskolnikov - "blood according to conscience" and "everything is permitted" - in the practice of unrest come out of the underground and are introduced into life without prior notice. The farce of the political performance "At Ours", where P.V. carries out the first test of the newly minted "five", consists in publicly identifying the enemy of the organization, a spy and a traitor, in an instructive lesson in vigilance. A joint criminal action, a common shared sin of villainy must become a guarantee of group unity and unquestioning obedience. The act of political banditry, committed by the "five" led by its leader, highlighted the code of the future, if it follows the plans of P.V. However, P.V. himself, a hybrid of low politics and criminality, relies in his calculations not only on the “political paste” - jointly shed blood. The main thing for him is the methods and techniques of power, which should ensure the final victory. “Only we will remain,” says P.V., “those who have destined ourselves in advance to receive power: we will attach the smart to ourselves, and we will ride the fools.” “We will penetrate the very people,” proclaims P.V. The most urgent, primary goal of the leader of the turmoil is the moral corruption of the people: “one or two generations of depravity ... unheard of, petty, when a person turns into a nasty, cowardly, cruel, selfish scum - that’s what you need.” Repeatedly throughout the novel P.V. appoints the terms of the turmoil: "in May, start, and finish by the Intercession." In the draft plans for “What Nechaev Wanted,” the issue of a new regime of power and timing is discussed even more clearly: “A year of this order or closer - and all the elements are ready for a huge Russian revolt. Three provinces will flare up at once. Everyone will begin to exterminate each other, legends will not survive. Capitals and fortunes will burst, and then, with the population distraught after a year of rebellion, to introduce a social republic, communism and socialism at once ... I don’t care what happens next: the main thing is that the existing one should be shaken, shaken and burst. The image of turmoil is presented by P.V. in apocalyptic detail. Russian God, who could not resist the "Geneva" ideas; Russia, to which a certain mysterious index is directed as the country most capable of achieving "great destructive goals"; the Russian people, who have to sip the rivers of "fresh blood", will not resist. And when the turmoil begins, “such a buildup will go on, which the world has never seen before ... Rus' will become clouded, the earth will cry for the old gods ...”. Furiously striving for power impostor, author and conductor of turmoil, maniac and possessed, manipulator and hoaxer, P. V. accurately indicates the plan for future construction. Under the guise of a revolutionary, socialist and democrat, hiding behind the sanctimonious ideology of "bright red liberalism", he intends to arrange "equality in the anthill" under the condition of his complete submission to the despotic dictatorship and idolocracy. The country, which he has chosen as an experimental field for the experiment, is doomed to a dictatorial regime, where the people, united around a false ideology, turns into a crowd, where the rulers, planting idolatry and the cult of man-god, manipulate the consciousness of millions, where everyone and everything is subject to "one magnificent, idolized, despotic will. “... And then we will think about how to put up a stone structure. For the first time! We will build, we, we alone!” "God! Petrusha engine! What times are we living in! - S.T. Verkhovensky is amazed, looking at his son. “Oh caricature! .. Do you really want to offer yourself to people instead of Christ?” - the father guesses the blasphemous plan of his son. The idea of "everything is allowed" appeals to P.V. into the right to lie and crime, from an atheistic premise he deduces the theory of political immorality. “False mind” (as Kirillov certifies him), “bug, ignoramus, fool” (as Shatov calls him), “half-mad enthusiast” (as Stavrogin sees him), P.
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Composition based on the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Demons"
The novel "Demons" Dostoevsky began to write as a sharply modern thing, in direct connection with the events of the "Nechaev trial". In November 1869, a crime was committed in Moscow, which was reported by all Russian newspapers: a group of conspirators led by Sergei Nechaev killed a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I. Ivanov. The crime was committed in a remote part of the academy park, in a grotto, the body was thrown into a pond. Soon, the participants in the murder were arrested, while Nechaev fled abroad. It turned out that student Ivanov decided to break with the secret revolutionary circle due to changed views. Nechaev persuaded other members of this circle to kill in order to avoid denunciation from Ivanov, but secretly he wanted to completely enslave all these people, "bind them with blood." Dostoevsky closely followed the vicissitudes of this process. He carefully read Nechaev's Catechism of a Revolutionary, which outlined the principles of the revolutionary activities of this radical secret organization. A revolutionary, according to Nechaev, has no family, no friends, no Fatherland. His whole being is aimed at achieving the main goal: revolution, rebellion. This goal justifies any means to achieve it, including criminal ones. So this terrible ideology led Nechaev and his comrades to murder.
speak out. I hope to succeed."
In "Demons" a small circle of conspirators is shown, whose actions are controlled by the ""supervisor") the main "nihilist" Peter Verkhovensky, a cynic, a provocateur, a man beyond morality and morality. He organizes the murder of Shatov, who, like the student Ivanov, decided to break with the circle Shatov acquired other values: he believed in the special mission of Russia and the Russian people. Subsequently, Dostoevsky wrote that he did not know Nechaev or other conspirators. His Verkhovensky is not a portrait real person, but an artistic image designed to generalize the phenomenon that the author saw in "nechaevism". The nihilists in the novel are a miserable handful of "demons" who have brewed up turmoil that brings suffering and death to people, sometimes not even knowing about them.
The plot of "Demons" absorbed real fact- the murder of a member of the secret society "People's Reprisal", a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I. Ivanov, by members of this society, headed by its organizer - Sergei Nechaev. This one of the closest associates of Mikhail Bakunin, having mastered his anarchist ideas in Geneva, undertook to put them into practice in Russia, organizing, for a start, the “People's Reprisal” society in Moscow.
During the trial, according to reports about him in the newspapers, Dostoevsky got acquainted both with the “plot” of the execution of the “Geneva ideas”, and with these ideas themselves, which were artistically reflected in the novel. The Catechism of the Revolutionary, developed and put into practice by Nechaev’s group, demanded that the revolutionary “crush all human feelings, including the sense of honor, with a single cold passion of the revolutionary cause, because “our cause is a terrible, complete, widespread and merciless destruction” . The revolutionaries were asked “to bring the people to inevitable rebellion by a series of brutal acts,” for which they were recommended to unite with the “wild robber world, this true and only revolutionary in Russia.” It was proposed as one of the effective methods to "compromise utterly" "many high-ranking cattle or personalities", to make them "their slaves and stir up the state with their hands."
Of course, Dostoevsky's contemporaries could not have been unaware of the reality of the material that formed the basis of his novel. He was not accused of being invented, but because the writer accused supposedly all revolutionaries of nechaevism. Nevertheless, the material that formed the basis of the novel was lively, concrete, and by no means secondary to the nature, methods and goals of future revolutions, and therefore the fate of Russia throughout the world.
The novel "Demons" was written in 1871-1872. In the center of it was the darkest of artistic images writer - Stavrogin.
N. Stavrogin - a handsome man, an aristocrat; endowed with the gift to subdue almost everyone around him. From a young age, he has been stricken with the disease of unbelief and is trying to find at least some application for his strength. He revels and debauchery in St. Petersburg, travels the world, even reaching Iceland (the end of the world in those days), visits Orthodox shrines in Greece, stands in churches for six hours of services, but if there is no faith in the soul, this will not help either. He, a favorite of women, marries the wretched lame-foot Maria Lebyadkina on a bet in order to leave her the very next day. He finally goes to the United States, where many of the "advanced" Russian youth left, trying to find the fulfillment of their aspirations in a new democratic state.
In America, Stavrogin inspires two immigrants from Russia, Shatov and Kirillov, with two mutually exclusive ideas. Shatov - that without faith in God the people cannot exist and that the mission of the Russian people is to show the lost faith in the world the image of the Russian God, Christ, preserved in Russia. And even if it is mathematically proved that the truth is outside of Christ, one must remain with Christ, and not with the truth.
Kirillov - that God is dead. That is, that He forgot about people, and His existence means nothing to them. A person who has realized this is obliged to “declare his will”, replace God with himself, become him. And the most decisive step towards this is to commit suicide, that is, to show that you are the complete master of your life.
In Switzerland, Stavrogin “out of boredom” joins a revolutionary organization created by the “fraudulent socialist” Petrusha Verkhovensky (Nechaev served as his prototype).
But all this is just the prehistory of the novel, its exposition, the very same action begins in a small provincial Russian town where Stavrogin's mother, a general, lives, and with her, Petrusha's father and Nikolai Stavrogin's tutor, Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, lives as a "accommodator".
S.T. Verkhovensky belongs to the generation of "beautiful" liberals of the 1840s, who began to introduce "advanced" ideas into the Russian public consciousness, but still in a civilized form, without any calls for violence. Verkhovensky saw his son Petrusha “only twice in his life”: as soon as he was born (then he was sent to be raised by “some distant aunts”), then in St. Petersburg, where his son was preparing to enter the university. Thus, Dostoevsky shows, Stepan Trofimovich (like the entire generation of “elegant” liberals of the 1840s) is to a certain extent responsible for the appearance of the most gloomy figures of our time: the soul-dead atheist (Stavrogin) and the revolutionary nihilist (P. Verkhovensky).
Around Stepan Trofimovich, a circle of local Fronders - "ours" - is gathering. They spend time talking political topics and look forward to future changes. It was then that Petrusha Verkhovensky and Nikolai Stavrogin returned to the city. Verkhovensky Jr. declares that he came with an instruction from a secret revolutionary center in Switzerland (“Internationalka”) to form “five” throughout Russia to prepare a revolutionary action. Gradually, the atmosphere of the novel thickens and gloomy apocalyptic notes begin to sound more and more clearly...
Meanwhile, its own intrigue unfolds around Stavrogin. It seems to him that he is in love with the beautiful Lisa Tushina, the daughter of General Drozdova. Like any weak-minded person, Nikolai thinks that Lisa is the last thing he could cling to in life and be saved. He doesn't want to lose her. Lisa loves him. In anticipation of Stavrogin, Marya Timofeevna, his lawful wife, and her brother, retired captain Ignat Lebyadkin, a drunkard and buzzer, who was accustomed to spending the money sent by Stavrogin and intending to blackmail him, had long since moved to the city.
For Stavrogin, the crippled wife is now only an obstacle on the way to Lisa Tushina, for the dissolution of a church marriage in Russia at that time was practically impossible. Crazy Marya Timofeevna refuses to recognize him when they meet. She shouts: “Get away, impostor!”, “Grishka Otrepyev is anathema!” Stavrogin leaves in horror, but pride does not allow him to succumb to Ignat Lebyadkin's blackmail: he tells the captain that he will soon "announce" his marriage.
Petrusha also leads his intrigue. He understands that for the success of a revolutionary coup, a leader is needed who has charm, influence on people, and he himself does not pull on the role of such a leader. He does not suspect that Stavrogin is just an impostor in every sense. That he only pretends to be a regal, omnipotent person, but is actually weak. IN candid conversation at night, Petrusha reveals his plans to Stavrogin: “We will proclaim destruction ... We will start fires ... Well, sir, and confusion will begin! Such a buildup will go on, which the world has never seen before ... Rus' will become clouded, the earth will cry for the old gods ... Well, then we will let ... Ivan Tsarevich; you, you!"
Guessing Stavrogin's secret desire to "get rid" of the Lebyadkins, Petrusha offers his help: he supposedly has a fugitive convict Fedka Katorzhny in reserve, ready for any job for money. Stavrogin rejects the offer in horror, but this thought sinks into his clouded heart.
Soon Fedka convict brutally kills Marya Timofeevna and Captain Lebyadkin. Fires break out in the city, organized by people hired by Petrusha (to sow confusion). Riots and indignations begin, caused by fires, and a brutal murder, and the sacrilege that occurred shortly before (Petrusha's people, and maybe he himself, desecrated the icon of the Mother of God in the temple).
Lisa, realizing from Stavrogin's words that there is his fault in the death of the Lebyadkins, decides to find out everything herself and goes to the scene of the murder, but, finding herself in an angry crowd, she dies ...
In this novel, many heroes die - almost everyone who sincerely (unlike Petrusha Verkhovensky) connected his life with the "demon" - Stavrogin.
Members of the "five" headed by Petrusha kill Shatov. The dead body is thrown into the pond. Like Nechaev, Petrusha "tied up" the members of his gang with blood; now they are all in his hands.
After committing this atrocity, Verkhovensky pushes Kirillov to suicide, who promised Petrusha to take the blame for the riots on himself.
Shatov's wife, rushing in search of her husband, caught a deadly cold herself and caught a cold in the baby. Stavrogin and his entourage sweep through the city like a plague. As a result, Petrusha urgently leaves the city. The crime will soon be revealed. Stavrogin, finally despairing, hanged himself in his country estate.
But, this is only an external outline of events. In the course of reading, the reader is not left with a vague suspicion that Stavrogin has another terrible and carefully concealed crime on his conscience, which torments him most of all. Living in St. Petersburg, Stavrogin, wanting to test to what extent he could fall, first deliberately accused the young daughter of his landlady Matryosha of theft, and then went to even greater evil, cold-bloodedly and prudently seducing her. For little Matryosha, this was a terrible shock. She was afraid to tell anyone about it. Stavrogin, in turn, was afraid that Matryosha would tell and then he would not escape hard labor. But the thought that she "killed God," that is, destroyed God's world in herself, tormented the girl unbearably. And then one day, when no one was at home, Stavrogin saw Matryosh appear in the doorway and, shaking him with a small fist, went into the closet ... He guessed why she went there - he would run, save, but then everything would have to explain, and so no one will know anything. And Stavrogin waits right time, and then, entering the closet, he is convinced of the correctness of his guess: Matryosh hanged herself.
Since then, the image of little Matryosha has haunted Stavroga-well. And he, already on arrival in the city, having written "Confession", goes on the advice of Shatov to the local monastery to the elder Tikhon for help. But Tikhon, having read the Confession, understands that it does not testify to Stavrogin's true repentance, that his intention to publish the Confession, that is, to publicly confess his crime, is also nothing more than a challenge to society and another attempt at self-exaltation. Tikhon knows that only "Orthodox labor" can help someone like Stavrogin, that is, a long and hard work self-improvement, and if at once, as Stavrogin wants, then instead of the Divine work, a demonic one will come out. Stavrogin refuses Tikhon's advice and leaves him angrily...
So, the novel seems to end tragically, all the main characters die, and the fate of Stepan Trofimovich, who, at the end of his life, finally decided to break with his former existence and goes on a trip to Russia, looks like a small gap against this background. Naturally, he does not go far and, sick and weakened, is forced to stop at the nearest station. There he meets a woman who sells religious literature and asks her to read the Gospel to him, which he, according to own confession, has not opened for thirty years. He listens with joyful tenderness as the bookseller reads to him that very chapter from the Gospel of Luke, which tells how Christ cast out a legion of demons from the body of the possessed, and they asked Christ for permission to enter a herd of pigs grazing nearby. Christ allowed them, the demons entered the pigs, the herd went mad and threw itself into the sea. The people who came found the man from whom the demons had come out, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.
Stepan Trofimovich, the only one of the characters in the novel, dies in peace and even in joy.
CHARACTER OF THE NOVEL - KIRILLOV
KIRILLOV is the central character in F.M. Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" (1870-1872). According to L.P. Grossman, the real prototype of Alexei Nilovich K. was partly a Petrashevite K.I. Timkovsky (1814-1881), a retired naval officer: »: fast track from religiosity to atheism, the readiness to blow up the whole world with serious practical work in the state, a kind of revolutionary and self-sacrifice with the mania of the dominant idea - all this marks one of the outstanding heroes of Dostoevsky with the sharp features of his historical prototype ”(L.P. Grossman).
During interrogations by the commission of inquiry, Timkovsky admitted that he fell into the abyss of disbelief and wickedness, having been brought to it by all the subtleties of the most cunning and crafty dialectics; the tempter, through whose fault he fell into an atheistic temptation, was named Speshnev. Dostoevsky, testifying to the commission about Timkovsky, said: "This is ... one of those exceptional minds who, if they accept any idea, then accept it in such a way that it takes precedence over all others, to the detriment of others." Twenty-seven-year-old engineer, builder of bridges, K. met Stavrogin four years before the start of the novel and became one of the objects of his spiritual corruption
“... You poisoned the heart of this unfortunate, this maniac Kirillov with poison ... You affirmed lies and slander in him and brought his mind to a frenzy,” Shatov Stavrogin will reproach. Several years spent by Kirillov abroad (in America, together with Shatov) and in Europe (where he got along with Pyotr Verkhovensky), turned him into an ascetic, unsociable and fanatic, obsessed with a "fixed idea." (Knowing that Kirillov does not sleep at night, constantly drinks tea, walks around the room and thinks, Pyotr Verkhovensky tells him: “It was not you who ate the idea, but the idea ate you.”) Having reached the mind to deny God, Kirillov tries to master the thought to end: “If there is a God, then all His will, and from His will I cannot. If not, then all my will, and I am obliged to declare self-will ... I am obliged to shoot myself, because the most complete point of my self-will is to kill myself ... To kill another will be the lowest point of my self-will ... I want the highest point and I will kill myself.
According to Kirillov's logic, to realize that there is no God and at the same time not to realize that oneself has become God is absurdity; and the one who first understands this must certainly kill himself in order to “begin and prove”: “I am still only God, unwillingly, and I am unhappy, for I am obliged to declare self-will ... But I will declare self-will, I am obliged to believe that I do not believe. I will start and finish and open the door. And I will save. Only this alone will save all people and in the next generation will regenerate physically... For three years I have been looking for an attribute of my deity and found: an attribute of my deity - Self-will! This is all I can do to show my disobedience and my new terrible freedom in the main point. Having told Peter Verkhovensky about his intention, K. suggested using his future suicide for purposes beneficial to society - and on this, as his leader of the "fives" would later begin to assure, "a certain plan of local actions was then based, which is now to be changed already absolutely impossible” (that is, the murder of Shatov). A few minutes before the shot and the suicide letter, in which K. must declare himself the murderer of Shatov (which is demanded by Peter Verkhovensky), K. lights a lamp in front of the image of the Savior and actually admits that he believes in Christ: “This man was the highest on the whole earth, constituted what she should live for. The whole planet, with everything that is on it, without this person is one madness ... And if so, if the laws of nature did not spare even This, they did not even spare their miracle, but forced Him to live among lies and die for lies, then, therefore, the whole planet is a lie and stands on lies and stupid mockery. Therefore, the very laws of the planet are lies and the devils are vaudeville."
HERO OF THE NOVEL "DEMONS" PETER VERKHOVENSKY
With the figure of P.V. the personality of the organizer of the secret society "People's Reprisal" S.G. Nechaev (1847-1882) is connected, under whose leadership in November 1869 a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I.I. Ivanov was murdered. Nechaev appeared in Moscow with a mandate issued to him in Geneva by Bakunin and certifying that "the giver of this is one of the trusted representatives of the Russian branch of the World Revolutionary Alliance," and also with instructions to create a party of anarchist revolutionaries in Russia, the program of which was set out in the Catechism revolutionary." When one of the members of the "five" formed by him, the student Ivanov, who did not accept the leader's dictatorial habits, threatened to leave the circle, Nechaev, allegedly fearing a denunciation, obtained consent from his associates to kill.
“One of the biggest incidents of my story,” Dostoevsky explained his plan in a letter dated October 20, 1870, “will be a murder known in Moscow ... I hasten to make a reservation: neither Nechaev, nor Ivanov, nor the circumstances of that murder, I did not know and do not know at all, except from newspapers. Yes, if I knew, I would not copy. I'm just taking a fait accompli." The materials of the trial of the Nechayevites (July 1871) helped the author to more accurately formulate the main principles of P. Verkhovensky and contributed to the deepening of the image of the “chief demon”. In the prehistory of the novel, P. Verkhovensky, the only son of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, is an unfortunate orphan who did not know either his father or mother, who from infancy lived somewhere in the wilderness “with his aunts”, a child “sent by mail” by his father out of sight .
In the novel, he is a complete scoundrel whose political biography is full of dark spots and spattered with blood. His past arises from rumors and omissions, his figure of a “foreign revolutionary” has a certain secret flaw, however, a dubious reputation, a trail of betrayal and renegade, suspicions of ties with the Okhrana do not prevent “ours” from recognizing P. Verkhovensky, “a representative from the foreign central committee” , "engine" and leader. The organization, which P. Verkhovensky managed to mold during the short period of his stay in Russia, amounted to four "five". However, none of the members knows the true scale of the party: its construction is based on a bluff, the legend of a single center and a huge network, as well as the principle of hierarchical centralism with the dictatorship of the center - united by charter and program, it is conceived as a society of total obedience, as an assembly " unanimous." All members of it must observe and notice each other, each is obliged to "the highest report", denunciation and surveillance turn out to be a way of survival. A powerful lever of the personnel policy of the organization is its total bureaucracy.
“The first thing that works terribly is the uniform. There is nothing stronger than a uniform. I deliberately invent ranks and positions: I have secretaries, secret spies, treasurers, chairmen, registrars, their comrades - I like it very much and it was accepted very well. The actual political task of P. Verkhovensky is the struggle for goals that justify any means, and the cynical denial of moral considerations if they are not linked to the interests of the organization; "the right to dishonor" is proclaimed the cornerstone of the new revolutionary doctrine, substantiating the tactics and strategy of the coming turmoil.
In the political performance "At Ours", P. Verkhovensky performs the first test in the newly minted "five". It consists in the public exposure of the organization's enemy, the spy and traitor, in an edifying lesson in vigilance. A joint criminal action, a common shared sin of villainy must become a guarantee of group unity and unquestioning obedience.
However, P. Verkhovensky himself, a hybrid of low politics and criminality, relies in his calculations not only on "political paste" - jointly shed blood. The main thing for him is the methods and techniques of power, which should ensure the final victory. “Only we will remain,” he says, “predestined ourselves to receive power: we will attach the smart to ourselves, and we will ride the fools.” “We will penetrate the very people,” proclaims P.V. The most urgent, primary goal of the leader of the turmoil is the moral corruption of the people: “one or two generations of depravity ... unheard of, petty, when a person turns into a nasty, cowardly, cruel, selfish scum - that’s what you need.” Repeatedly throughout the novel, P. Verkhovensky sets the dates for the turmoil: “start in May, and finish by the Intercession.” In the draft plans for “What Nechaev Wanted,” the issue of a new regime of power and timing is discussed even more clearly: “A year of this order or closer - and all the elements are ready for a huge Russian revolt. Three provinces will flare up at once. Everyone will begin to exterminate each other, legends will not survive. Capitals and fortunes will burst, and then, with the population distraught after a year of rebellion, to introduce a social republic, communism and socialism at once ... I don’t care what happens next: the main thing is that the existing one should be shaken, shaken and burst.
The image of turmoil is presented to P. Verkhovensky in apocalyptic details. Russian God, who could not resist the "Geneva" ideas. The Russian people, who have to sip the rivers of "fresh blood", will not resist. And when the turmoil begins, “such a buildup will go on, which the world has not yet seen .... Rus' will be clouded, the earth will cry for the old gods ... ". Furiously striving for power, an impostor, the author and conductor of unrest, a maniac and an obsessed man, a manipulator and a hoaxer, P. Verkhovensky accurately outlines the plan for future construction. Under the guise of a revolutionary, socialist and democrat, hiding behind the sanctimonious ideology of "bright red liberalism", he intends to arrange "equality in the anthill" under the condition of his complete submission to the despotic dictatorship and idolocracy. The country, which he has chosen as an experimental field for the experiment, is doomed to a dictatorial regime, where the people, united around a false ideology, turns into a crowd, where the rulers, planting idolatry and the cult of man-god, manipulate the consciousness of millions, where everyone and everything is subject to "one magnificent, idolized, despotic will. “... And then we will think about how to put up a stone structure.
For the first time! We will build, we, we alone!” "God! Petrusha engine! What times are we living in! - S.T. Verkhovensky is amazed, looking at his son. “Oh caricature! .. Do you really want to offer yourself to people instead of Christ?” - the father guesses the blasphemous plan of his son. The idea “everything is allowed” turns for P. Verkhovensky into the right to lie and crime; from an atheistic premise, he derives the theory of political immorality. “False mind” (as Kirillov attests to him), “bug, ignoramus, fool” (as Shatov calls him), “half-mad enthusiast” (as Stavrogin sees him), P. Verkhovensky, having made the first test of turmoil on the scale of a provincial city, throws to the mercy of fate of his comrades-in-arms and, having escaped punishment, hides abroad.
CHARACTERISTIC OF THE HERO OF THE NOVEL "DEMONS" IVAN SHATOV
SHATOV - the central character of the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Demons" (1870-1872). With the image of Ivan Pavlovich Sh., a twenty-seven-year-old office worker, a repentant nihilist, is associated I.I. Ivanov, who was killed in November 1869 by Nechaev and his group for political reasons and in accordance with the principles of the Revolutionary Catechism. Some facts of the biography of the Fourierist and Petrashevist, then the “repentant nihilist” N.Ya. “It was one of those ideal Russian creatures,” it is said about Shatov in the novel, “that some strong idea will suddenly strike and immediately crush them with itself, sometimes even forever. They will never be able to cope with it, but they will passionately believe, and then their whole life then passes, as it were, in the last writhing under the stone that has fallen on them and has already completely crushed them.
Shatov was born a serf V.P. Stavrogina, was a student of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, studied at the university and was expelled after one student story, married out of passionate love to a poor governess who left him after three weeks, wandered around Europe for a long time, was in America, where he tried the role of the proletarian. Abroad, Shatov changes some of his former socialist convictions. He falls under the strong influence of Stavrogin. Shatov wants to break with the society of P. Verkhovensky and give "ours" buried in secluded place underground printing house, but, as Stavrogin informs him, Pyotr Verkhovensky is not at all going to let him go, but intends to exterminate him, "as he knows too much and is able to convey." Shatov, however, is much more concerned about Stavrogin's spiritual history than his own life. “I am an unhappy, boring book and nothing else for the time being ... But perish my name! It's about you, not me... I'm a man without talent and I can only give my blood and nothing more... Perish my blood too!.. We are two beings and came together in infinity... last time in the world, ”he calls out to the adored teacher, in whom he passionately and wholeheartedly believed. “How could you rub yourself into such shameless, mediocre lackey absurdity! - he angrily reproaches the teacher, having learned that he is related to the society of "ours". - Is this the feat of Nikolai Stavrogin! Shatov refers to those heroes of Dostoevsky who, like the author, are "consciously and unconsciously" tormented by the "existence of God" all their lives. To a direct question from Stavrogin: “Do you yourself believe in God or not?” Shatov replies: “I believe in Russia, I believe in its Orthodoxy… I believe in the body of Christ… I believe that the new coming will take place in Russia… I… I will believe in God."
STEPAN TROFIMOVICH VERKHOVENSKY
Stepan Trofimovich, whose story begins and ends the action of the novel, belongs to a galaxy of famous figures of the 40s who received a European education and managed to shine in the university field at the very beginning of their career; "a whirlwind of converging circumstances", however, his career was destroyed, and he found himself in provincial city- first as a tutor of the eight-year-old general's son, and then as a hanger-on in the house of the despotic patroness of the general's wife Stavrogina.
Stepan Trofimovich is presented in the novel as the father of the "demon" Petrusha and as the tutor of the "demon" Stavrogin. Gradually, the liberal-idealist descends to cards, champagne and club lounging, regularly falling into “civil sorrow” and cholera: for twenty years he stood before Russia “the incarnation of reproach” and considered himself persecuted and almost exiled. With the arrival in the city of his son, whom he hardly knew (since he had given his aunts to raise from childhood), in him, a relaxed aesthete and capricious, absurd, empty man(this is how General Stavrogina certifies him), a sense of honor and civic indignation ignites.
THE MAIN CHARACTER OF THE NOVEL "DEMONS" NIKOLAY STAVROGIN
The artistic chronology of The Possessed, the novel action of which lasts one month, nevertheless allows us to reconstruct and date Stavrogin's biographical background: 1840 - the year of his birth; 1849 - the beginning of home education; autumn 1855 - December 1860 - years of study at the St. Petersburg Lyceum; 1861 - service in the guard and success in high society; 1862 - duels, trial and demotion to the soldiers; 1863 - participation in the Polish campaign, promotion to officers and resignation; 1864 - adventures in St. Petersburg "corners", rapprochement with Peter Verkhovensky, Lebyadkin and Kirillov; June 1864 - "incident" with Matryosha; March 1865 - marriage to Lebyadkina; June 1865 - visit to the mother ("the beast released its claws"); spring 1866 - departure from Russia to Europe, the beginning of a four-year journey; autumn 1867 - intellectual experiments on Shatov and Kirillov (“At the same time when you planted God and the homeland in my heart ... you poisoned the heart of this ... maniac, Kirillov, with poison ... You affirmed lies and slander in him”, participation in the reorganization secret society according to a new plan and writing a charter for it; May 1868 - the appearance of hallucinations that gave birth to the idea of \u200b\u200brepentance and confession; end of 1868 - renunciation of Russian citizenship and purchase of a house in Switzerland; January-July 1869 - connection with Maria Shagova in Paris, infatuation with Lisa , a scandalous story with Dasha, the idea of bigamy: “I felt a terrible temptation to a new crime ... but I fled, on the advice of another girl, whom I opened up in almost everything”; July - August 1869 - writing a confession and printing it in a foreign printing house; August 1869 - arrival in Russia, along with the circulation of "leaflets scheduled for distribution"; September 12, 1869 - the beginning of the novel action.
For a month of novel time, Stavrogin lives a whole life: between intentions, decisions and actions lies an abyss - hopes, doubts, "trials", disappointments and collapse. Each step of Stavogin is conditioned by another one that happened long ago, every moment of the ongoing catastrophe, every point of the crisis is weighed down by the burden of the past. The desire to get rid of the hated memories-hallucinations through confession, repentance (his new thought) and the publication of "leaflets" borders on a daring challenge ("I will announce it suddenly and precisely at some vengeful, hateful minute ..."). A visit to Elder Tikhon, who unraveled Stavrogin’s underground plans, and the failure of the act of confession provoke a public confession made by Stavrogin in the pride of “boundless arrogance” and turned into a total disaster (“I did not kill and was against it, but I knew that they would be killed, and not stopped the assassins.
The spring of the novel's action and the secret intrigue of "Demons" is the opposition of the demon-politician Pyotr Verkhovensky, who seeks to draw Stavrogin, an aristocrat and demonic handsome man, into a large-scale provocation involving the murder of Shatov and the suicide of Kirillov, as well as to subordinate Stavrogin to his influence and, through blackmail, impose on him the role of an impostor and the Liar Tsar, accomplice and co-leader of turmoil. The reasons why Stavrogin got involved in a political adventure are accidental and unintentional: “I don’t belong to this society at all, I didn’t belong before ... On the contrary, from the very beginning I declared that I was not their comrade, and if I helped by chance, then only in this way, like an idle person ... "The novel states the tragic outcome of the path of" an aristocrat who went to democracy ": Stavrogin condoned political swindlers, succumbed to a momentary temptation of passion and ruined Lisa, committed the mortal sin of suicide. At the same time, the “prince and the clear falcon” refused the throne and the crown of the impostor king, did not accept the demonic idea of \u200b\u200btaking over the world, and with it the title of the idol-idol of the living god, gave a moral assessment to the “Verkhovenets”: “I could not be a comrade here , because I did not share anything ... because, after all, I have the habits of a decent person and I was disgusted.
EVALUATION OF THE ACTIONS OF THE HEROES OF THE WORK
A person's character is shaped by his environment. Nikolai Stavrogin was born and raised in a wealthy household. He had a high title, his mother was a very domineering woman, so pride developed in him. He was a vain man: his title, the state of his parents and his beautiful, mysterious appearance made him famous. His tutor S.T. Verkhovensky had a reputation as a dissolute man. He had a revolutionary spirit. N. Stavrogin had two main educators: a despotic mother and a libertine S.T. Verkhovensky. For six years, the tutor managed to plant in the mind of the child all the rudiments of human perversions. For five years of study at the Moscow Lyceum, these rudiments were formed in passion, which push a person to commit evil deeds. Passions include: gluttony, love of money, fornication, anger, sadness, despondency, vanity, pride.
A person's worldview is formed by the age of twenty. By the end of his studies, Nikolai Stavrogin had his own worldview. He did not believe in God, secretly from people he considered himself a god. Many thoughts were born in his head, and he sought to put them into action. Only in this way could he see the result. He wanted to live the way his feelings wanted. He wanted to subdue the legal and moral laws. He believed that laws could be easily bypassed. In order not to commit evil deeds, you need to have in your character good feelings. They are called virtues. These include faith, compassion, obedience, patience, long-suffering, courage, humility.
All the kindness of Stavrogin was insincere, since virtue did not live in his character. He carefully considered all his planned actions. Before raping ten-year-old Matryosha, he intimidated her, accusing her of theft. After committing a criminal act, he coolly watched how the girl would behave. He knew that if exposed, hard labor awaits him. But he was not afraid, because he believed that he could give the mother a lot of money, which would make her turn a blind eye to the rape of her child. The girl was in a fever and going into his room shook her fist. When she left the room, Stavrogin immediately realized that she was about to commit suicide. He was glad of this, because he had conquered the law. No one after the death of the girl could no longer prove his guilt in relation to her. The passion "fornication" pushed him to rape the child.
Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina was a crazy (crazy) woman. She limped in one leg, so she was nicknamed Lameleg. The prehistory of the scandalous marriage that happened in St. Petersburg at a time when Stavrogin led a “mocking” life is described by himself in a confession: “I was thinking about shooting myself a year ago; seemed to be something better. Once, looking at the lame Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkina, who served in the corners, then not yet crazy, but simply an enthusiastic idiot, secretly madly in love with me (which our people tracked down), I decided to marry her. The thought of marrying such a last being stirred my nerves.”
He developed a plan for this marriage in advance, and then, when an opportunity presented itself, he put it into action. After a drunken dinner, he made a bet on wine with his drinking companions: he told everyone that he was ready to marry an idiot, lame Lebyadkina. Reason Stavrogin was subordinated to feelings. After marriage, he did not have sexual intercourse with her, as she was disgusting to him. This act of his shows that vanity spoke in him at that moment. He wanted to attract the attention of the public in any way. When Lebyadkina's brother threatened him to expose this marriage, Stavrogin accepted this challenge in cold blood. He said that he wanted to reveal this secret to everyone. After the death of Matryosha, hallucinations began to torment him. In them he saw Matryosha. He became afraid to live. He bought himself a house in Switzerland and wanted to settle there on permanent residence. Stavrogin decided to invite Lebyadkina to go with him to Switzerland. He knew that his brother would eavesdrop on the conversation. She didn't recognize him, her speech was incoherent. She went from crazy to a real crazy woman.
Local nobleman Artemy Gaganov, for insulting his father, challenged N. Stavrogin to a duel. Seething with anger, Gaganov shoots three times and misses. Stavrogin, on the other hand, announces that he does not want to kill anyone else, and defiantly shoots into the air three times. This story greatly raises Stavrogin in the eyes of society. But in fact, Stavrogin did not shoot Gaganov because he wanted to die. After studying at the Lyceum, Stavrogin led a wild life. He drank a lot of alcohol and he started "delirious tremens". This disease is accompanied by hallucinations. At that time he wanted to shoot himself. Secondary hallucinations began after the death of the girl Matryosha. He again began to have thoughts of suicide. In a duel, he wanted his opponent to shoot him. He was not directly involved in any cases for which he could be held criminally liable. He hanged himself because he did not want to live. Stavrogin led a wild life that shook his psyche. He was in constant depression.
Lisa Tushina was in love with Nikolai Stavrogin. She had a fiancé, whose name was Mavriky Nikolaevich. He was young and handsome. He loved Lisa deeply and endured her indifferent attitude towards him. He decided to alleviate Liza's suffering for Stavrogin and came to him with an offer to marry her. Stavrogin replied that he could not do this, since he was married. Liza was a frivolous girl and deliberately brought suffering to her fiancé. She left before his eyes to Stavrogin. Lisa wanted to know about Stavrogin's marriage from his lips. Convinced that this was true, she decided to spend the night with him and leave him in the morning, since he could not marry her. She did not want to live with him out of wedlock. Upon learning of the death of his wife, she told Stavrogin that if he was not involved in her death, then she would go with him, even to the ends of the world. But at that moment, he no longer needed Lisa. Marriage was not part of his plans. Therefore, he confessed to her that he knew about the bandit's plans, but did not stop this murder. Stavrogin destroyed Lisa's reputation and abandoned her. Lisa realized that Stavrogin had never loved her, and became despondent. She ran to the house where the Lebyadkins lived to make sure they were dead. There she was torn to death by an angry mob.
Dasha Shatova was passionately in love with N. Stavrogin. She knew him from childhood, as she was brought up with him in the same house. Her character was similar to that of Stavrogin. She forgave him all his sins, because if she were in his place, she did the same. Stavrogin constantly fell in love with someone for a short while. The passion "fornication" lived in him.
Shatov was a nihilist. He became them under the influence of the tutor S.T., Verkhovensky and N. Stavrogin.
A nihilist is a person who does not bow to any authority, who does not take a single principle on faith, no matter how respected this principle may be. "People who don't recognize anything" "People who don't recognize anything"
The meaning of the word Nihilist according to Ozhegov:
Nihilist -
Verkhovensky is a former university professor, the novel begins with him and ends with him. It has a prototype in real life. This is a professor of history at Moscow University - the famous T.N. Granovsky (1813-1855), who in the 40s was one of the leaders of the "Westerners". He was a liberal who enjoyed great prestige among the educated sections of society. In his sketches for the novel, Dostoevsky wrote that “Granovsky is a portrait of a pure and ideal Westerner with all the beauties,” and in his “Diary of a Writer” (July-August 1876) that “Granovsky was the purest of those people of that time. Idealist of the forties.
However, there is nothing in common between the "novel" Granovsky, that is, Stepan Verkhovensky, and the real Granovsky. In the provincial town there are no possibilities for the realization of Verkhovensky's dreams, he indulges in his beautiful dreams, he is intoxicated by them and by himself. He manages to live his life in captivity of his optimistic illusions. He lived in the house of the active and domineering Varvara Stavrogina, but for twenty-two years he managed to maintain his posturing. He invariably appears as a man who strives to be an ideal liberal, and he does not accept any other image. He - pure water simulator.
Granovsky is the prototype of Stepan Verkhovensky, but Dostoevsky molds the image of a person who is completely false, he deforms the prototype to the point of ugliness. He had such an ability (it is visible both in "Bad Joke" and in "Crocodile") - to distort reality to the point of absurdity. In this respect, Dostoevsky treated his "positive" prototypes mercilessly.
By portraying Stepan Verkhovensky as a pathetic imitator, Dostoevsky ridicules Russian intellectuals who recklessly bow to the West. Stepan Verkhovensky speaks a monstrous mixture of Russian and French. Dostoevsky wants to show that the Westernizing intellectuals of the 1940s are not Russian at all, they are cut off from their native soil, the Russian language alone is not enough for them.
He also wants to say that these idealistic Westerners gave birth to a new generation of the 60s and 70s - the negators of tradition, the nihilists. Almost all representatives of this younger generation were brought up, according to the novel, by dreamers and idealists, imitators who belonged to the generation of the 40s. And they could not learn from their “teacher” Stepan Verkhovensky what it means to be an adult and responsible person. He himself did not at all take into account that there were children in front of him, and, without making any allowance for age, poisoned them with his dreams. In this respect, he himself is a child. Pure and unspoiled children idolized this "poetic" man, they wanted to be near him, they wanted to dream with him, they sought warmth from him, they wanted to cry and rejoice with him. Intellectuals like Stepan Verkhovensky were naive and conscientious, but without knowing it, they disfigured the souls of children with their beautiful dreams. Pupils of Verkhovensky fascinated listened to his speeches and became their captives. Fantasies served as a bond for two generations.
Dostoevsky believed that the worship of Russian educated people before Western culture disfigures children's souls, that it is not able to cultivate rootedness in Russian life. This is a “generational” critique that includes itself. In other words, Dostoevsky tells us that the good dreamer Stepan Verkhovensky set in motion pure and immature children's souls, the owners of which ceased, in the end, into "demons."
One of the most unpleasant figures in the novel "Demons" by Dostoevsky is Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky. This is the son of Stepan Trofimovich, the accustomer of Varvara Petrovna, the mother of the protagonist, Nikolai Stavrogin.
Pyotr Stepanovich is about thirty years old, outwardly quite good-looking: long hair with tufts, a little unshaven and a mustache. He dresses in fashion, but not like a gentleman.
Pyotr Stepanovich is the main revolutionary in the novel, the tempter of everyone and everything. It is difficult to come up with a hero who would be even more disgusting and disgusting than Verkhovensky. He incites people to revolutionary actions, he forces Kirillov to take responsibility for the murder of Shatov, he also kills Shatov.
Pyotr Stepanovich tries on different roles and faces, he pretends to be a fool for higher strata society, thereby circling them around the finger. Mrs. von Lembke sees in him capable person, a representative of the new generation, who can help her in her plans for how to direct the younger generation in the right direction. Only she does not even realize that it is not she who pushes him around, and it is not she who uses him, but he holds her for a stupid and naive woman. It is precisely Pyotr Stepanovich who drives Mr. von Lembke, the governor of the city, to madness.
Verkhovensky Jr. is a real snake-tempter, which is sometimes impossible to understand. Stavrogin says about him that he is an enthusiast until it comes to a certain turning point when Pyotr Stepanovich is already bordering on insanity. This is confirmed in a situation where Verkhovensky is trying in every possible way to beg Nikolai Stavrogin to remain "in business", because he is an idol for Verkhovensky, without which the whole revolution is impossible.
The philosophy of Pyotr Stepanovich is similar to the philosophy of Shatov, but very different from it. The highest manifestation of self-will in life for Shatov is to kill himself, thereby proclaiming himself a god, for Verkhovensky, the highest manifestation is the murder of others. After arriving in the city, Verkhovensky leaves behind only corpses and confusion, which he sows in society with fire and proclamations, disrupted balls and murders.
I think that Pyotr Verkhovensky is a real image of the devil who has a muse - the young Stavrogin. He skillfully deceives naive relatives and people around him, he inspires people with thoughts that they themselves could not come up with, he manages human destinies with his charisma and acting skills. And knowing that he must be offended by the whole world, because his father, Stepan Trofimovich, abandoned him in childhood, I can conclude that Verkhovensky is the product of Stepan Trofimovich himself and a reflection of his actions.
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Verkhovensky Pyotr Stepanovich (Petrusha)("Demons"), the main "demon", the head of a secret organization; son of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. “He was a young man of about twenty-seven or so, a little above average height, with thin blond, rather long hair and with a ragged, barely visible mustache and goatee. Dressed cleanly and even in fashion, but not smartly; as if at first glance round-shouldered and baggy, but nevertheless not at all round-shouldered and even cheeky. As if he were some kind of eccentric, and yet everyone with us later found his manners very decent, and his conversation always going to the point.
No one will say that he is ugly, but no one likes his face. His head is elongated towards the back of the head and, as it were, flattened from the sides, so that his face seems sharp. His forehead is high and narrow, but his features are small; the eye is sharp, the nose is small and pointed, the lips are long and thin. The expression on his face is as if painful, but it only seems. He has some kind of dry fold on his cheeks and near his cheekbones, which gives him the appearance of recovering from a serious illness. And yet he is perfectly healthy, strong, and has never even been ill.
He walks and moves very hurriedly, but he is not in a hurry to get anywhere. It seems that nothing can embarrass him; under all circumstances and in any society he will remain the same. There is great self-satisfaction in him, but he does not notice it in himself at all.
He speaks quickly, hastily, but at the same time self-confidently, and does not go into his pocket for a word. His thoughts are calm, despite his hurried look, clear and final, and this is especially outstanding. His accent is remarkably clear; his words flow like even, large grains, always picked up and always ready for your service. At first you like it, but then it becomes disgusting, and it is precisely from this too clear reprimand, from this bead of eternally ready words. You somehow begin to imagine that the tongue in his mouth must be of some special shape, some unusually long and thin, terribly red and with an extremely sharp, constantly and involuntarily twisting tip ... "
Petrusha, as he is often called in the novel, will later say and confess about himself to Stavrogin: “Well, what is my own face? The golden mean: neither stupid nor smart, rather mediocre and jumped off the moon, as prudent people say here, right? .. "
Well, maybe so, - Nikolai Vsevolodovich smiled a little ... "
The same Stavrogin will respond unambiguously about Verkhovensky Jr. - "a half-mad enthusiast." Shatov will characterize him even more contemptuously - "a bug, an ignoramus, a fool." However, this "ignoramus" and "fool" managed to "stir up" the whole district, to confuse the minds of many previously pious inhabitants.
Petrusha, the only son of a liberal in the 1840s. Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky, who grew up like an orphan with strangers, brought his father's liberalism to extreme anarchism and extremism. He appears to readers as a completely finished scoundrel, with a dark past, there are many omissions and dark spots in his biography, he is suspected of renegade and provocateurism, which does not prevent “ours” from recognizing him as a leader and completely obeying him. The main act of Peter Verkhovensky is the organization of the murder of Shatov in order to finally seal him with the blood of the members of the gang-organization in order to continue the "distemper" and ignite the struggle to seize power in the county, country, world. Power, leaderism - that's the main objective this political adventurer and fanatic. He wants, according to his father, to take the place of Christ.
The main prototype of Pyotr Verkhovensky was S. G. Nechaev (in the drafts he was called that at first), individual features of M. V. Petrashevsky were reflected in this image (in the same drafts: “Nechaev is partly Petrashevsky”), even more obviously - the Petrashevsky R. A. Chernosvitov, as well as D. I. Pisarev.
