Fathers and Children, Ivan Turgenev, 1862

Fathers and Children was written by Ivan Turgenev and published in 1862. I heard about this novel when reading Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. I’ve been working my way through Dostoevsky over the past few years, but overall I am not that knowledgeable about the Russian literary tradition outside of Dostoevsky. I picked up this copy at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington DC, along with Beloved (the last book I read) as a kind of going away ritual there.

The plot of Fathers and Children is simple. Arkady Nikolayevich Kirsanov returns home from university in Saint Petersburg. Home is an aristocratic but comparatively modest country estate - about five thousand acres and two hundred serfs - owned by his father Nikolay Petrovich Kirsanov. The plot begins with Nikolay waiting for his son in town as he reminisces about raising Arkady and grieves the now long-ago loss of his wife, Arkady’s mother. Nikolay is a very thoughtful person with a love of poetry and the beauty of nature. Arkady arrives accompanied by a surprise guest, Evgeni Vasilyivich Bazarov, Arkady’s friend and mentor who will be the center of the story that will unfold. 

Bazarov studied to be a doctor and is interested in all manner of natural and social sciences. He is a self described “nihilist.” We hear about this ideology from Bazarov’s discussion with others. It is an ideology that rejects all manner of traditions, including social structures, religion, conventional morality, romanticism, faith, love, irrationality and so on. It prioritizes and values what is useful, especially for the individual nihilist. This includes things like natural sciences, industry, organization, etc. Although the nihilist refuses to adopt wide ranging ideals or principles as a principle, the nihilist values whatever increases the individual and general prosperity. Bazarov is a strong believer in the idea that the social and cultural environment are highly influential in shaping the people within it. He believes that physiologically all humans are more or less the same, so as a materialist, they should all act the same. The only difference is the education and experience. Some noteworthy examples from Bazarov’s statements were his displeasure at Nikolay Petrovich’s enjoyment of poetry, Arkady’s appreciation of the beauty of nature in the countryside, and Bazarov’s repeated distaste for love.

From the get go, Bazarov does not get along with Nikolay’s brother, Pavel Petrovich. While Nikolay is a liberal democrat, with emotional sympathy for serfs, Pavel is an aristocrat through-and-through. Pavel thus represents an antithesis to Bazarov. The two argue, with Pavel championing hard-won “civilization” against Bazatov’s voluntary “barbarism.” Pavel claims that the aristocracy represents the values of self respect and self esteem, and that the Russian civilization has great achievements against all manner of hostels - neighboring countries and the winter, for example. Pavel believes that the general public in Russia feels as he does, and Bazarov reveals that he may be right. Bazarov is willing to reject and criticize the general public for the benefit of whom his ideology strives to work. Arkady is portrayed as impressionable and somewhat naive. He seeks to please Bazarov, his mentor, and to do so sometimes has to go against his nature and instincts. 

Bazarov and Arkady leave Maryino after the fighting between Bazarov and Pavel. Bazarov’s parents live in the vicinity of the Kirsanovs estate, Maryino. Bazarov’s father was a country doctor, the son of a farmer serf. His mother was from a noble family. The elder Bazarovs live on her inherited estate, which is more modest than the Kirsanov’s. Bazarov accompanied Arkady in part to visit his parents. The young pair accept an invitation by a family friend to go to the local town for a party organized in honor of the provincial governor. 

There they meet a curious local landowner named Anna Sergeyevna Odintsova. She is described as aloof, graceful, beautiful, and kind but reserved. Odintsova’s biography is tragic but also perhaps nihilistic. Arkady and Bazarov are both highly interested in her and Arkady speaks with her at length at the party. She is much more interested in Bazarov and we learn a bit more about her. Odintsova was orphaned young along with her younger sister, Katya, after which they experienced poverty. Odintsova then married an older, wealthy man who died shortly thereafter, leaving her his estate and fortune. Odintsova is therefore an independently wealthy young woman at a time when this was fairly unusual. To make matters more scandalous, according to the sensibilities in the provinces, Odintsova strikes out independently, conforming to her own routine and schedule, and makes no effort to remarry. Her personality and manner are not opinionated, aside from a preference for control and routine, and she has no goals to speak of. Odintsova enjoys conversing with the two young men and invites them to stay at her estate, which they do.

The young Arkady is enthralled by Odintsova but so is Bazarov. His fascination bothers Bazarov to the point of crisis. Up to this point, Bazarov has either rudely ignored the women he’s come across in the story or has spoken misogynistically about their looks and politics. The reader gets the sense that Bazarov thinks about women nihilistically and only values them for how he can use them. He actively puts down the ideas of love and romance. But Bazarov begins to fall for Odintsova, cracking his ideological mask. Bazarov admits his love to Odintsova who internally considers this, but then rejects him. It seemed that Odintsova is the real nihilist, rejecting any external pressure and staying true to her preferences - Bazarov would disrupt her tranquil life, and so she rejects him. Nonetheless, she is still fascinated by Bazarov and his conversation. 

Arkady is meanwhile dejected due to Odintsova’s preference for his friend over him, but he meets her sister, Katya, and they spend time together. Katya has been sheltered by her older sister throughout her life. She is more expressive, creative, and naive, but so is Arkady behind his attempts to mimic Bazarov. Arkady has been feeling doubts about nihilism ever since he and Bazarov arrived at his estate. He loves poetry and nature and can’t fully reject them as does his mentor. When he feels romantically slighted, Arakady’s animosity grows for Bazarov. But finally, as affection and love sprout between Arkady and Katya, Arkady’s cynicism and nihilism are almost completely gone. In the end he reveals to Katya that he loves her and she accepts him, an interesting parallel to Bazarov’s story.

Bazarov also spends time at the estate of his parents before and after the revelation to Odintsova. The lives of his parents are antithetical to the ideas of their son who they love blindly. They think Bazarov will be prominent and great, and they are religious and traditional. Although initially Bazarov is rude and dismissive to his parents, viewing them as naive, after the incident with Odintsova he softens. He begins to assist his father with helping patients, but in doing so he is exposed to a fatal infection. He wastes away, bedridden. He requests that Odintsova come to visit, which she does, and shortly thereafter, he dies. Arkady meanwhile marries Katya and his father remarries at the same time. 

In the end, Turgenev presents us a lesson about love. Ideology melts in the face of genuine love. Arkady stops trying to impress Bazarov and others after falling in love, instead focusing on Katya and the love between them. Bazarov - older, more cynical, and committed to nihilism - has an identity crisis, acts more warmly to those who love him, but in the end when his single expression of genuine love is rejected by Anna, he more or less courts suicide while treating patients. Unconditional and suprarational love demonstrates its transcendence above all the other concerns that the characters have and becomes their central motivation. 

Turgenev did not seem to be overly partisan in favor of one particular viewpoint in the novel. Especially in the debates over nihilism between Bazarov and others, the sides are able to present their stances and try to refute the others’. All the characters, despite at times serving as mere symbols for their ideological background, are humanized with strengths, weaknesses, hubris, and suffering. We see several ideologies and “types'' in the story and all are portrayed with some positives and negatives. Turgenev’s characters also bring up the important question of the balance between tradition and principles. Personally I feel that the total rejection of the traditional and conventional will likely not lead to the optimal outcome. Certainly there is plenty of junk that can and should be rejected, but it appears to me that there are accumulated lessons as well. 

One interesting call out is Turgenev’s portrayal of women in the novel. Despite some investigation of the condition of women and some proto-feminism, women characters are primarily featured in romance and marriage plots. As mentioned before, Bazarov is misogynistic at several points, calling politically minded women ugly, talking about women sexually, but Arkady and others typically are somewhat scandalized or offended by the talk. I think this was partly done to show Bazarov’s rejection of the rhetorical norms of the day around sexuality, although he was certainly not alone at that time for his negative attitudes towards women. While women were badly treated in practice at the time, in “polite society” there was a rather thin layer of protocol and idealism around protecting women - this cover is somewhat blown off by Bazarov’s actions and discussions. There is a darkly humorous and revealing exchange between Bazarov and a peasant after Basarov left Odintsova’s house. Baazarov asks the serf if he beats his wife, to which the serf replies that he certainly does, but only with cause. Bazarov follows by asking if his wife beats him, to which the serf becomes very angry and feels insulted. Bazarov then claims to Arkady that their treatment at the hands of Odintsova amounts to them being beaten and claims this is the difference between aristocrats and peasants. This incident shows many aspects - Bazarov’s attitude towards women and displeasure when presented by their agency; the social problems that pervaded Russian society at that time, evidence to Bazarov’s nihilism. Odintsova symbolizes an independent woman with agency in a time where this is relatively unheard of, and the world around her and the characters in the story have a difficult time making sense of her and interacting with her. She is presented as a person of noble character with self respect but somewhat aloof and mysterious. Despite this, Odintsova is probably a more constructive representative of nihilism and political radicalism than Bazarov based on the facts of her life rather than rhetoric. Interestingly - and discussed more later - Fathers and Children inspired another influential book in response which focused on a woman of means asserting herself in the world.

It is important to know the historical and political context for the novel in order to better understand it. Many times I had to put the book down and read through relevant Wikipedia articles. The political atmosphere in Russia of the mid 19th century shared many features with the rest of Europe. 

Perhaps the most significant issue of the day in Russia was the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 by the Czar Alexander II. Prior to this proclamation, the majority of Russian people were legally classified as serfs and had few rights relative to the state and the noble landowners. While there were several types of serfs, the condition was comparable to slavery. A primary legal difference between Russian serfdom and American slavery, for example, was that most serfs were tied to an estate and couldn’t be commercially traded as commodities in and of themselves. Nonetheless, estates and land were said to be accompanied by “souls” (i.e. the serfs on the land) which conveyed with the estate upon sale. Alexander II emancipated the serfs, giving them freedoms to move and own land, in order to forestall potential armed rebellions among the serfs. Such rebellions had sporadically occurred where serfs allied with Cossacks, another class in Russian society. Cossacks were famed for their military organizations and were sometimes semi-nomadic. They were largely independent of the landowners and had protected status due to their military service for the czar.

The legacy and influence of Fathers and Children was significant in Russia itself and was widely read, acclaimed, and critiqued. The novel was one of the first Russian novels popular outside Russia itself. The symbol of Bazarov stuck as a representative of movements in the Russian left at the time. The novel inspired the writing of a well known novel in response by Nikolay Chernyshevsky called What Is To Be Done? that presented an alternative symbolic character, that of a woman who rejects her arranged marriage and life to strike out on her own. This title was later used by Lenin in a socialist political pamphlet published in 1902. We can therefore see that Fathers and Children sits as an initial entry in the lineage of Russian socialist writing.

At the beginning of the novel, I felt it was shaping up to be less a novel and more a political dialogue in disguise. However, the relationships were more than political despite the short length of the novel. The writing itself was very tight and concise. This extended beyond the prose itself to the character descriptions and more. I felt that Turgenev compressed types, images, and descriptions into packets and transmitted them to the reader who could then unpack and expand the material within the reader's mind’s eye. A less charitable way of putting it would be that Turgenev unabashedly operates in a tradition and relies on the reader’s familiarity with the same to understand the content. My own familiarity with the Russian literary tradition, with the history, and the culture, and the wider Western and Eurasian traditions may have been sufficient to appreciate Turgenev’s work. I imagine the book would be even better with more familiarity or for a contemporary reader.