Fathers and Sons

Fathers and Sons, novel by Ivan Turgenev, published in 1862 as Ottsy i deti. Quite controversial at the time of its publication, Fathers and Sons concerns the inevitable conflict between generations and between the values of traditionalists and intellectuals. The physician Bazarov, the novel’s protagonist, is the most powerful of Turgenev’s creations. He is a nihilist, denying the validity of all laws save those of the natural sciences. Uncouth and forthright in his opinions, he is nonetheless susceptible to love and by that fact doomed to unhappiness. In sociopolitical terms, he represents the victory of the revolutionary intelligentsia over the aristocracy, to which Turgenev belonged. At the novel’s first appearance, the radical younger generation attacked it bitterly as a slander, and conservatives condemned it as too lenient in its characterization of nihilism.