Virgin Soil

The last novel Turgenev wrote in his later years and the closing work of his six novels, composed in the 1870s. Set against the Russian Narodnik "Going to the People" movement, it depicts a group of young Russians steeped in new ideas leaving the cities for the countryside, seeking to bring democratic and Enlightenment thought to the peasants along a tortuous path. The characters fall roughly into two camps: the gradualists around Solomin, who advocate slow reform through industry and education; and the radicals around Nezhdanov and Markelov, who throw themselves with passion into the Narodnik line of action. Nezhdanov, the illegitimate son of a noble family, is employed in the household of the liberal legislator Sipyagin and meets the plain, steadfast girl Marianna; together they move from closeness to separation amid shared ideals and fissures of character. Through the fate of these young people Turgenev asks why the Narodnik movement arose and why it faltered, and reveals his own reservations about revolutionary means—he sympathizes with the zeal of revolutionaries but places greater hope in gradual reform. The novel stirred controversy at home after publication; the author once said dejectedly that the work had "failed" and never wrote another novel. Three decades later, however, Kropotkin and others reaffirmed its keen grasp of the psychology of the age. This is Ba Jin's translation, part of the "Turgenev's Novels" series.