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Demons (Penguin Classics)

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He travelled abroad as a tutor with a merchant's family, but the employment came to an end when he married the family's governess who had been dismissed for 'freethinking'.

He also lets her know that the town is ringing with the news of another scandal: Lizaveta Nikolaevna has left her home and fiancé and gone off to Skvoreshniki with Stavrogin. His first book, Poor Folk, did very well but on 23rd April 1849 he was arrested for subversion and sentenced to death. She berates Stepan Trofimovich for his financial irresponsibility, but her main preoccupation is an "intrigue" she encountered in Switzerland concerning her son and his relations with Liza Tushina—the beautiful daughter of her friend Praskovya. Socially he is self-assured and courteous, but his general demeanour is described as "stern, pensive and apparently distracted.A hint is given when Varvara Petrovna asks the mentally disturbed Marya, who has approached her outside church, if she is Lebyadkina and she replies that she is not. By the time of the events in the novel Shatov has completely rejected his former convictions and become a passionate defender of Russia's Christian heritage.

The character of Stepan Trofimovich, who encapsulates these tensions more than any other character, is the most pitiful in the entire book. The speech amounts to a declaration of love, reaching a climax with the exclamation "Stavrogin, you're beautiful! Andrey Antonovich von Lembke is the Governor of the province and one of the principal targets of Pyotr Stepanovich in his quest for societal breakdown. After a mock-execution his sentence was commuted to hard labour in Siberia where he developed epilepsy. He was originally a serf belonging to Stepan Trofimovich, but was sold into the army to help pay his master's gambling debts.When he was a child she took him and his sister Darya Pavlovna under her protection, and they received tutoring from Stepan Trofimovich. Liza becomes engaged to her cousin Mavriky Nikolaevich, but remains fixated on Stavrogin even after he openly acknowledges his marriage.

This, from a Russian nationalist and defender of Tsarist autocracy, and a ‘renegade’ from the revolutionary politics of his youth no less, should give the lie to the idea that only Marxists have true foresight into the future, despite what Alan Woods and his lackeys in the IMT claim. When she realizes that he is extremely ill and that Sofya Matveyevna has been looking after him, her attitude softens and she sends for her doctor.

The enormity of his crimes, the desolation of his inner being, the madness born of his "sacrilegious, proto-Nietzschean attempt to transcend the boundaries of good and evil", are hidden realities that only become visible in the confession and dialogue with Tikhon.

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