Demons Study Guide

Fyodor Dostoevsky was one of the most influential and important writers of the 19th century. He was born in Moscow, Russia, and his mother died when he was 15 years old. After his mother’s death, Dostoevsky studied to become an engineer. While working as an engineer, he published his first novel, Poor Folk. He then became a member of the Petrashevsky Circle, a literary group that championed progressive causes. Due to its criticism of the Russian government, the group came under scrutiny from governmental authorities. Authorities arrested several members of the group, including Dostoevsky, and sentenced them to be executed. The execution was called off at the last moment. Dostoevsky’s punishment was commuted, and he was sentenced to prison in Siberia for four years. After that, he served a compulsory six-year term in the Russian military. When Dostoevsky finished his time in the military, he traveled throughout Europe and developed a gambling addiction. He went on to publish his most well-known works after that, including the novella Notes From the Underground (1864) and the novels Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880).

Demons is loosely based on historical events and historical people. Specifically, Sergey Nechayev serves as the basis for the character of Pyotr. Sergey Nechayev was a Russian anarcho-communist who led a nihilistic revolutionary group. In 1869, that group murdered one of its former members, Ivan Ivanov. Pyotr’s murder of Shatov in Demons is then based on the murder of Ivan Ivanov. Sergey Nechayev also wrote a manifesto titled Catechism of a Revolutionary, which was published in 1869. Dostoevsky based the ideology and philosophy of the revolutionary faction in Demons in part on Nechayev’s book. In particular, the manifesto calls for complete commitment to the cause of revolution and impels revolutionaries to be willing to commit any crime or immoral act to destabilize the established political order. In Demons, when Lyamshin confesses to his part in the murder of Shatov, he echoes many of those sentiments. Nechayev was involved in the Russian nihilist movement, which represented a radical dissatisfaction with established modes of politics and morality. It also showed a deep dissatisfaction with the attempted incremental social reforms of previous generations. In Demons, Stepan can be interpreted as representing the previous generation that the Russian nihilist movement rebels against. Dostoevsky uses the fact that Pyotr is Stepan’s son to suggest that the liberal reform movements of the 1840s (Stepan’s generation) directly led to the nihilist movement of the late 19th century (represented by Pyotr).

Demons touches on themes that are hallmarks of Dostoevsky’s other novels, including philosophy, theology, morality, and Russian politics. Crime and Punishment in particular touches on questions of philosophy and morality similar to Demons, while The Brothers Karamazov is a wide-ranging philosophical novel that discusses ideas of morality, free will, and theology. One of the characters in Demons, Karmazinov, is a satirical representation of the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev. Turgenev’s most well-known work is Fathers and Sons, published in 1862. Dostoevsky’s work has been particularly influential on philosophers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. Dostoevsky’s novella Notes from the Underground is often considered one of the first works of existentialist literature, a movement that Sartre and Camus are often associated with. Modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce both cited Dostoevsky as an influence on their work. Franz Kafka also claimed Dostoevsky as one of his most important influences. Kafka noted Dostoevsky’s particular influence on his novel The Trial. Dostoevsky was perhaps most influenced by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. One of Gogol’s most well-known works is Dead Souls, which, like Demons, uses satire to interrogate political and social issues in Russia.