Virgin Soil

Virgin Soil, novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in Russian as Nov in 1877. Its focus is the young populists who hoped to sow the seeds of revolution in the virgin soil of the Russian peasantry.

Turgenev presents realistic and somewhat sympathetic portraits of the many different types of characters who were involved in the revolutionary movement, from the ardent young Nezhdanov, whose speeches to peasants only confuse them, to his lover Marianna, who wears peasant clothes and affects peasant mannerisms in order to be an effective revolutionary worker, to the crude Markeloff, whose speeches advocating total armed revolution cause the peasants to turn him over to the police. While Turgenev portrays some socialists as failures and would-be manipulators obsessed with resentments, his conservatives and moderates are worse, frivolous, vain, and heartless. The novel’s strongest character, and the one most representative of Turgenev’s own views, is Solomin, a calm, efficient factory manager who despises the aristocracy and advocates gradual liberalization.