Demons

>>9960292
This is my favourite Dostoyevski book. Bros Kos may be a masterpiece but this one just stuck to me.

It predicts the rise of revolutionary, socialist, and atheist groups who will use extreme violence and disregard for other humans as a means to an end
Dosto wasn't totally predicting this as the basis of the story (the political half at least) was a murder in a revolutionary circle in 1869 or so
The real heart of the story imo is the relationship between Shatov, Kirillov and Stavrogin, and iirc Dosto said Stavrogin was the character he was most obsessed with in all his works

It's definitely worth a read as it is also the book in which Dosto shows the extent of his storytelling capabilities with a clear narrator's voice and a lot of really funny moments

>>9960292


>>9960301
And yes, I do believe Dosto predicted many things. I highly respect him, he's my favourite author even tho Im an atheist and I don't relate to various things he usually proposes.

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It's his best work if you like politics and secular ideology as opposed to religion. If you like religious debates, they're in here too. Big criticism of Dosto is that many of his characters are more like character studies but this is a thing that a lot of people subconsciously like. And yeah, the village they're in can even be viewed as some sort of wild dystopia. Pretty funny too, and my opinion the most difficult to understand if you're not Russian. I can imagine how confusing the book must have been to contemporary readers who don't have historical/political hindsight

>Whoever conquers pain and fear, he himself will be God
Damn...

>>9960322
>>9960320
Is the book nihilistic? It seems everyone regards it as that but even the Brothers K seems to have moments where dost. admits that religion doesn't make a lot of sense to believe.

>>9960455
Of course it's not, Dostoyevski always denies nihilism. In this book nihilism is presented in different forms (political, existencial, logical) but Dostoyevski always ends the books with the classic "not all is lost"

I loved Brothers, C&P, Notes, The Gambler....

but I HATED the idiot. It completely falls apart after the first third.

Will I like Demons?

>>9960822
What was wrong with the idiot? Seems like people either love or hate it.

>>9960292
>did Dostoevsky really predict the rise of Lenin in Demons
No, it's just a bunch of liberals talking out of their asses about how Stalinism is literally what Shigalyov describes in Demons.

Predicting this, predicting that. Can't you be a little less obsessed with politics? Dostoyevski reacted to a general shift of Western ideas in a 19th century, the outcome of which (after a half century lag needed to transfer cutting-edge talks to general population level) gave us 20th century. He fought the demons that were already there, not “warned about the future”.

>>9960907
>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.

>>9961474
>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.

>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.
-Robert L. Belknap