Fathers and Sons
Ivan Turgenev1862Turgenev pinned down the generational split between Russian liberals and radicals so exactly that the word "nihilist" entered common use because of this book.
Read this if you…
- want the first novel to deal with the problem of Nihilism
- want one of the shortest Russian Classics
- look back at your younger years and feel you were a know-it-all fool
- are interested in generational conflict (it oddly holds up today)
Skip this if you…
- have an irrational hatred of Russia
Why It Matters
Turgenev pinned down the generational split between Russian liberals and radicals so exactly that the word "nihilist" entered common use because of this book. Bazarov, the young man who believes in nothing but science, became a stand-in for every generation sure it's smarter than the last. It's also the most concise, readable way into 19th-century Russian literature.
The 
Take
Super short and sweet. Great exploration of generational divide, I totally see my younger self in bazarov. Very simple plot to explore some simple competing philosophies
Where to go next
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Fathers and Sons built on it. - Bazarov is Turgenev's 'Hamlet type' made flesh — the figure he defined in his 1860 essay 'Hamlet and Don Quixote' - Like the prince, Bazarov is a skeptic of pure negation whose corrosive self-awareness dooms him to unhappiness and an inability to love - Read *Hamlet* first and the nihilist's tragedy snaps into focus as a very old shape in a new costume
- Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin. Fathers and Sons built on it. - Bazarov and Odintsova descend from the "superfluous man" Pushkin first drew in Onegin — gifted figures who can't quite fit the life around them - Pushkin was Turgenev's inescapable idol; read *Eugene Onegin* first and the archetype behind *Fathers and Sons* comes into focus
- Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Fathers and Sons built on it. - *Fathers and Sons* sits inside a framework Turgenev drew from Cervantes — his 1860 essay "Hamlet and Don Quixote" set the idealist against the doubter - The Quixote pole — conviction, self-sacrifice, idealism doomed to fail — is the archetype against which Bazarov is measured - Reading *Don Quixote* first surfaces the type Turgenev is testing: the believer who would rather act and be broken than hesitate
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Fathers and Sons shaped it. - This is where "nihilism" entered the bloodstream — Turgenev's Bazarov gave the idea a face - Four years later Dostoevsky took those floating nihilist "incomplete ideas" to their violent extreme in Raskolnikov - Even the disciples carry over: *Crime and Punishment*'s Lebezyatnikov echoes Bazarov's caricatured followers, Sitnikov and Kukshina
- The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. Fathers and Sons shaped it. - James read his Turgenev to pieces and talked with him in Paris — and credited Turgenev's method as the genesis of *The Portrait of a Lady* - Turgenev builds the novel around a single morally interesting figure; James borrowed that and made Isabel Archer the axis everything turns on - Reviewers in 1881 caught it immediately, comparing the two writers head to head
Depicted in Art
Half-length portrait of Turgenev in a dark coat, lit from the left, his face lined and grave, set against a plain dark ground.
Vasily Perov, 1872
An elderly couple, seen from behind, stand bowed at a small rural grave in a bare autumn cemetery; the mother in a dark patterned shawl, the father in a long coat holding his hat.
Vasily Perov, 1874
Art-deco book cover for the Catalan edition of Fathers and Sons, translated by Francesc Payarols.
1929
Recommended Editions
Peter Carson
Penguin Classics · 2009
Carson's posthumous Penguin (2009) with a Stoppard intro. Unobtrusive English that lets Turgenev's unhurried watching do the work. Bazarov reads as a plausible 1860s nihilist, not a contemporary edgelord.
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Deep Dive
What It's About
This summary gives away plot details.
Notable Quotes
“A nihilist is a person who does not bow down to any authority, who does not accept any principle on faith, however much that principle may be revered.”
“Nature is not a temple, but a workshop, and man's the workman in it.”