Prince Myshkin Earth, which was created perhaps solely for the emergence of that Being." Myshkin remains silent in response to Ippolit's sarcastic barbs about Christian humility, and does not make any attempt to refute his convoluted atheistic arguments. When engaging only with each other, the Prince's quietism and sincere empathy occasionally elicit a corresponding consciousness in Ippolit, but he always later reverts back to his cynical bitterness. Prince Myshkin Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot". Dostoevsky wanted to create a character that was "entirely positive... with an absolutely beautiful nature",
Demons (Dostoevsky novel) epigraph, and Dostoevsky's thoughts on its relevance to Russia are given voice by Stepan Verkhovensky on his deathbed near the end of the novel. In late 1860s Russia there was an unusual level of political unrest caused by student groups influenced by liberal, socialist and revolutionary ideas imported from Europe. In 1869, Dostoevsky conceived the idea of a 'pamphlet novel' directed against the radicals. He focused on the group organized by young agitator Sergey Nechayev, particularly their murder of a former comrade—Ivan Ivanov—at the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in Moscow. Dostoevsky had first heard of Ivanov from his brother-in-law, who was