was an openly hostile parody of Turgenev—his personality and mannerisms, his perceived complicity with nihilism, and, in the Gala reading scene, the style of some of his later literary works.
Even the most extreme and unlikely characters, such as Kirillov and Shigalev, were grounded in real people or ideas of the time. Kirillov was initially inspired by a Nechayev associate who spoke openly at the trial of his plan to commit suicide, but the apocalyptic philosophy the character builds around his obsession is grounded in an interpretation of the anthropotheistic ideas of Feuerbach. Shigalev was initially based on the radical critic V.A. Zaitsev who advocated a form of Social Darwinism that included, for example, an argument that without the protection of slavery the black race would become extinct due to its inherent inferiority. Shigalev’s notion of human equality, the «earthly paradise» in which nine tenths of humanity are to be deprived of their will and turned into a slave-herd by means of a program of inter-generational ‘re-education’, had a contemporary prototype in the ideas of Petr Tkachev. Tkachev argued that the only biologically possible ‘equality’ for human beings was «an organic, physiological equality conditioned by the same education and common living conditions» and he saw this as the supreme goal of all historical and social progress.
As prophecy
Kjetsaa claims that Dostoevsky did not regard Revelation as «merely a consolatory epistle to first century Christians during the persecution they suffered», but as a «prophecy being fulfilled in his own time». Dostoevsky wrote that «Communism will conquer one day, irrespective of whether the Communists are right or wrong. But this triumph will stand very far from the Kingdom of Heaven. All the same, we must accept that this triumph will come one day, even though none of those who at present steer the world’s fate have any idea about it at all.»
Since the Russian Revolution, many commentators have remarked on the prophetic nature of Demons. André Gide, writing in the early 1920s, suggested that «the whole of (the novel) prophesies the revolution of which Russia is presently in the throes». 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, with a grayish little beard, who…keeps raising his fist over his head and bringing it down as if crushing some adversary to dust.»
Dostoevsky biographer Ronald Hingley described the novel as «an awesome, prophetic warning which humanity, no less possessed of collective and individual devilry in the 1970s than in the 1870s, shows alarmingly few signs of heeding.» Robert L. Belknap notes its relevance to the twentieth century in general, «when a few Stavrogins empowered thousands of Pyotr Stepanovichs to drive herds of ‘capital’, to use Nechayev’s term, to slaughter about a hundred million people, the very number Shigalyev and 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.
