Summary
The Possessed is a dark, satirical, and prophetic novel about the rise of radical political ideologies in 19th-century Russia. Set in a small provincial town, the novel follows a group of nihilists and revolutionaries who plot to overthrow the existing social and political order.
At the center of the story are:
Nikolai Stavrogin – a charismatic, enigmatic aristocrat with a disturbing moral emptiness.
Pyotr Verkhovensky – a fanatical revolutionary who manipulates others to achieve violent political ends.
Stepan Trofimovich – a liberal intellectual and father figure, increasingly irrelevant in the new ideological age.
As Verkhovensky spreads radical ideas and instigates chaos, the town descends into paranoia, violence, and moral disintegration.
Stavrogin, whose internal torment is central to the novel, embodies the spiritual and philosophical vacuum that Dostoyevsky believed modern atheistic ideologies would create.