Demons (Dostoevsky novel) Pyotr hit upon." In his book "Dostoyevsky in Manhattan" French philosopher André Glucksmann argued that 'nihilism', as depicted in "Demons", is the underlying idea or 'characteristic form' of modern terrorism. This is a list of the unabridged English translations of the novel: Demons (Dostoevsky novel) Demons (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ; sometimes also called The Possessed or The Devils) is a novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky, first published in the journal "The Russian Messenger" in 1871–2. It is considered one of the four masterworks written by Dostoevsky after his return from Siberian exile, along with "Crime and Punishment" (1866), "The Idiot"
Demons (Dostoevsky novel) In Soviet Russia, a number of dissident authors found a prototype for the Soviet police state in the system expounded by Shigalev at the meeting of Pyotr Verkhovensky's revolutionary society. Boris Pasternak, Igor Shafarevich, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, have called Dostoevsky's description of Shigalevism prophetic, anticipating the systematic politicide which followed the October Revolution. Pasternak often used the term "Shigalevism" ("shigalevshchina") to refer to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge. According to Richard Pevear, Dostoevsky even presaged the appearance of Lenin himself with his description of the final reader at the ill-fated literary gala: "a man of about forty, bald front and back,