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Intro
Stepan is an academic who lives in a provincial Russian town outside of Petersburg. He likes to think that he has retired to the Russian town to escape persecution from the Russian government after evincing radical ideas. In reality, though, no one in the Russian government knows who Stepan is, and his ideas of persecution come from his impulse toward self-aggrandizement. Stepan lives on Skvoreshniki, a large estate that belongs to Varvara, a wealthy landowner in town. Stepan and Varvara have a platonic relationship, though at times it seems as if they are both in love with each other.
Varvara’s only son, Nikolay—who Stepan tutored when Nikolay was a child—returns to the town. He gets into trouble when he kisses another man’s wife and pulls another man’s nose. Nikolay doesn’t seem to have any sense that what he’s done is wrong and offers only perfunctory apologies. Not long after, he leaves town. Four years later, Nikolay resurfaces in Switzerland. He’s traveling with an old friend of Varvara’s named Praskovya and Praskovya’s daughter Liza. Liza and Nikolay seem to be romantically involved. Varvara goes to see Nikolay in Switzerland with her confidant, Darya. When Varvara returns to town, she asks Stepan if he would marry Darya. Stepan is surprised. He is in love with Varvara and has always thought that she loves him, too. He begins to think that Varvara wants him to marry Darya because something may have happened between Darya and Nikolay in Switzerland. Stepan agrees to Varvara’s plan. Varvara is upset because she harbors feelings for Nikolay as well and secretly wanted him not to agree to marry Darya.
While waiting for Nikolay’s return to town from Switzerland, after church one day, Varvara has an interaction with a woman named Marya. Varvara brings Marya and Liza back to her house. While they are at Varvara’s house, Nikolay arrives. He is accompanied by Stepan’s son, Pyotr, who was raised by relatives of Stepan’s late wife. Marya walks up to Nikolay and attempts to take his hand. Nikolay knows her and reminds Marya that he is not her husband or related to her in any way. He then offers to take her home and leaves. When Nikolay returns to the house, Shatov (Darya’s brother) rises from his seat and strikes Nikolay in the face. At first, no one knows why. (Later, it becomes clear that Nikolay and Marya are in fact married. Shatov guessed as much and is upset because he thinks that Nikolay married Marya as a kind of joke, something Shatov believes is beneath Nikolay, who he once thought of as a great man.) Shatov then leaves.
Nikolay goes to see another friend who lives in town, Aleksey. Aleksey explains to Nikolay that he plans to take his own life. He hopes that by doing so, he will be able to triumph over the fear of death, which, in his mind, will mean that he will become God. Nikolay then goes to the house where Marya is staying. She lives with her brother, Lebyadkin. Lebyadkin frequently beats Marya, who has epilepsy, when she has seizures. On the way to the house, Nikolay is accosted by a man known as Fedka the Convict. Fedka asks Nikolay for money and implies that in exchange for money, he can help out Nikolay by taking care of Marya. Nikolay tells Fedka to leave him alone and says that if he sees him again, he’ll take him to the police.
At Marya’s house, Nikolay says that he plans to make his marriage to Marya public soon. Once that happens, Nikolay says, he’ll no longer need to send money to Lebyadkin. Lebyadkin is distraught. As Nikolay walks back to his house, Fedka stops him again. Nikolay initially moves to seize Fedka but then lets him go before emptying the contents of his wallet at Fedka’s feet. As Fedka collects the money, Nikolay thinks that Fedka could interpret the gesture as Nikolay putting down a deposit to secure Fedka’s services to murder Marya. When Nikolay returns home, he talks with Darya, who says that she knows she’ll be the one who is by his side at the end of everything. Nikolay says that he may have just become involved in a murder-for-hire plot involving Fedka and his wife Marya. He asks Darya if she would still want to be with him if that were true. Darya leaves the room without responding.
Meanwhile, Pyotr inserts himself into the political life of the town and befriends the governor’s wife, Yuliya. Yuliya is planning a literary gala that will be followed by a ball. Pyotr takes advantage of his favored position in Yuliya’s entourage to advance the cause of the revolutionary faction he leads and pass out revolutionary manifestos in town.
Pyotr goes to see Aleksey and tells Aleksey that he intends to use Aleksey’s planned suicide to support the revolutionary cause. Aleksey agrees. Pyotr then attends a meeting of the revolutionary faction. Believers in the cause like Lyamshin, Liputin, and Virginsky are in attendance along with Shatov and Nikolay, who are not strictly involved in the cause. During the meeting, Pyotr attempts to assess the group’s readiness to commit violence in the name of the revolution and to determine whether any of the members may be informers. He asks each person whether they would sanction a political assassination. Shatov gets up and leaves without answering the question, which leads the remaining members to wonder whether he may be an informer.
Pyotr leaves the meeting with Nikolay. As the two walk together, Pyotr reveals his true intentions. He is not really devoted to the kind of revolutionary socialism he claims to support. Instead, he wants to destabilize the established order and then overthrow it so that he can seize power for himself. He wants Nikolay to be the charismatic leader of his movement after the revolution occurs. Nikolay doesn’t agree or disagree with Pyotr’s plan and says that he’ll think about it.
The governor’s assistant, Blum, becomes convinced that Stepan is behind the recent political agitation in town and searches Stepan’s house. The governor, Andrey, insists to an angry Stepan that the search was a mistake. The same day, Liza approaches Nikolay and says that she has been receiving cryptic and vaguely threatening letters from Lebyadkin, who claims to be Nikolay’s relation. Nikolay says that the man is his brother-in-law, as he is the brother of his wife, Marya. Liza is shocked and enraged because she is in love with Nikolay, although she is engaged to a man named Mavriky.
The day of Yuliya’s literary gala and ball finally comes. At the literary gala, chaos breaks loose after Stepan addresses a restless crowd and tells them that the revolutionaries in town overlook the importance of art. Yuliya is disconsolate because the literary gala was a disaster, but the ball goes ahead as scheduled. At the ball, someone cries out that there’s a fire raging through a group of houses on the other side of the river. The authorities succeed in putting it out, but they also find another house, away from the others, that seems to have been deliberately set on fire. Lebyadkin, Marya, and a servant’s bodies are inside. Their throats have been cut.
At the same time, Liza runs off with Nikolay. People in the crowd hear rumors that Marya was Nikolay’s wife and that Nikolay had her killed so that he could marry Liza. Pyotr rushes to find Nikolay, who is with Liza, and tells Nikolay that Lebyadkin and Marya have been murdered. He says that Nikolay is in the clear both morally and legally because the murderer, Fedka, had killed Lebyadkin to try and get the money that Lebyadkin had been waving around. Liza asks if that’s true, and Nikolay says it’s not. Morally, he’s culpable for the murders on some level, he says, because he knew they would happen and didn’t intervene. Liza cannot bear what she’s heard and runs out of the house.
Mavriky is outside waiting for her. Liza says she wants to see the bodies of the people who were murdered. When they arrive at the scene, people in the crowd point out Liza and say that Marya was killed so Nikolay could marry her (Liza). People begin to strike Liza, and the blows ultimately kill her.
Pyotr then begins to plan the murder of Shatov. He convinces the faction that Shatov plans to inform on them, and he (Pyotr) thinks that if the revolutionary faction bands together to commit a murder, then they will be forced to remain loyal to the cause of the revolution lest they reveal their complicity in the crime. Before the plan goes into effect, Shatov’s wife, Marie, returns to his home. The two have been separated for years, though they were never divorced. Marie reveals that she is pregnant, and it later becomes clear that Nikolay is the baby’s father.
Shatov is overjoyed that Marie has returned and is excited to become a father. He looks for a midwife and finds Arina, whose husband, Virginsky, is a member of the revolutionary faction. Arina helps with the birth and then tells Virginsky that Shatov won’t inform on them now that he’s a father. A representative from the revolutionary faction, Erkel, goes to fetch Shatov and lure him to the outskirts of Varvara’s estate, where members of the revolutionary faction lie in wait. As they wait, Virginsky tries to tell the group that Shatov poses no threat to them now that he’s a father, but Pyotr disagrees. When Erkel arrives with Shatov, the revolutionary faction seizes Shatov. Pyotr then shoots him in the head. Virginsky cries out that what they’ve done is wrong, and Lyamshin cries out uncontrollably.
Pyotr then goes to Aleksey’s house. He tells Aleksey that he will dictate a suicide note for Aleksey to sign in which Aleksey will confess to murdering Shatov and take credit for distributing the manifestos. Aleksey initially says he won’t say anything about Shatov but eventually agrees and writes the note. Pyotr and Aleksey then get into a skirmish. As Pyotr leaves the house, he hears a gun go off. When he goes back to the house, he finds Aleksey’s dead body.
Meanwhile, Stepan has departed town on foot and is unaware of the murder of Shatov. In a traveler’s hut, Shatov becomes gravely ill. Varvara eventually arrives with Darya. A doctor says that Stepan is on his last legs, and a priest reads Stepan his last rites. Stepan, who has flirted with atheism for much of his life, has a religious conversion on his deathbed. Varvara stays by his side until he dies three days later.
When Varvara and Darya return home, Darya receives a letter from Nikolay. He says that he wants Darya to join him, and they will live out their days in Switzerland. He adds that he feels guilty for Marya’s death. Darya shows the letter to Varvara. Just then, they hear that Nikolay has arrived at the house. They go and search for him but can’t find him until they look in the attic. There, they find his body. He has hanged himself.
