Rudin

novel by Turgenev

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Article History

Rudin, novel by Ivan Turgenev, published as a serial in the journal Sovremennik and as a book in 1856.

The novel tells of an eloquent intellectual, Dmitry Rudin, a character modeled partly on the revolutionary agitator Mikhail Bakunin, whom Turgenev had known in Moscow in the 1830s. Rudin’s power of oratory and passionate belief in the need for progress so affect the younger members of a provincial salon that the heroine, Natalya, falls in love with him. But when she challenges him to live up to his words, he fails her.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.