The Possessed

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In The Possessed, Fyodor Dostoevsky tells the gripping tale of a small Russian town overtaken by political turmoil. A group of revolutionaries, led by the cunning Pyotr Verkhovensky, seeks to upend the social order with radical ideas. Amidst this chaos, the enigmatic Nikolai Stavrogin grapples with his own inner demons and moral dilemmas. As tensions rise, the town plunges into violence and disorder, revealing the dangerous consequences of extreme beliefs.This powerful novel explores themes of ideology, faith, and the human spirit, making it a timeless classic of Russian literature.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Philosophy

Paperback

Published April 11, 2013

About the author

Alternate spelling, see main profile Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

What the heck is going on in Russia 7/10.

[David Sweeney · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is so much to enjoy in this book but it to get the most out of it, attention needs to be paid.
This is only my second Dostoyevsky and I was very pleasantly surprised that I found myself having a laugh or two (admittedly very far apart) along the way.
I suspect most will come to this for the politics, and the foreshadowing of the politics, but in addition to that is a thoroughly entertaining melodrama.

[Mikkel Syverstuen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Could not put it down. A collection of small trickles and streams end up in one big river. Stavrogin was my favorite character because it is so difficult to get at what lays beneath the act, and still so human. The psychological insight one would have to be able to write this baffles me.

[David Arthur Smithers · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of my recent reading of The Possessed ,1872, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Signet Classic from New American Library, 1962, translation by Andrew R. MacAndrew, with an afterword by Marc Slonim. This moder edition has “Stavrogin’s Confession” as Part Two, Chapter 9, in the body of the work, as the original publisher refused to print it and the author agreed, and most modern editions place it as an appendix.
“So far as I understand—and it’s impossible not to understand it—you yourself at first and a second time later, drew with great eloquence, but too theoretically, a picture of Russia covered with an endless network of knots. Each of these centres of activity, proselytising and ramifying endlessly, aims by systematic denunciation to injure the prestige of local authority, to reduce the villages to confusion, to spread cynicism and scandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an eagerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires, as a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a given moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words which I tried to remember accurately? Is that the programme you gave us as the authorized representative of the central committee, which is to this day utterly unknown to us and almost like a myth?” (Part 3, chapter 4)
Possessed are the group attached to the leaders of what they think is a larger movement to transform imperial Russia of the 19th Century, presumably after the decree that ended serfdom, before the American Civil War was to end slavery in the United States. Dostoyevsky, himself, was saved from death by the Tsar, and sent to military service in Siberia. In 1859, the author was allowed to return to St. Petersburg and to launch his later periods of novel production. His last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, published shortly before his death, has the description of the inquisition in Spain, which occurred as or after the ejection of the Jews and Muslims. The thing I remember of that is the inquisitor telling Christ why his religious philosophy wasn’t needed or wanted by the people there in post Islamic Spain. It seems to me that similar mental devils (devils are quite well believed in by the superstitious Russian Christians) afflict the people of Russia in this intense story.
Like the speaker quoted, the narrator, is restricted in what he knows, and depends much on what he has heard, or on rumors. So, we understand about as little or as much as any of those plotting and discussing their wish for a better deal in Russian society. Russian society at that time was one where the Tsar was everything and even the aristocracy wasn’t in total possession of their lives.
One quote I mislaid was something to the effect that revolutionary conspiracies were more criminal conspiracies than anything else. In a society where the peasant did not read, the workers read Russian, if they could, and the well off spoke French, the spirit of revolution had to be limited, in my view. Bringing down society, in some way, is, thus, a very inefficient and ineffective process. I think Russian and Soviet history bore that out, and that Dostoyevsky, with profound respect for imperial Russia, understood.

[Michael P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

William Archer accused George Bernard Shaw of not writing characters but animated points of view. At least Shaw's animated POVs are charming. Dostoyevsky's are a bore.

[Naila · Rating 4 out of 5]

This fried my brain.