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The very incarnation of unbelief is Bazaroff, the hero of Ivan Turgenev's master novel Fathers and Sons: a man “who does not accept a single principle on faith, with whatever respect that principle may be environed.”
Fathers and Sons was first published in 1861, and Turgenev orignated the term “nihilist,” from the Latin nihil, nothing, when he applied it to Bazaroff. The term quickly became a common one, and only in time became associated with the terms “anarchist” and “terrorist,” a number of years before the now famous and considerably different term “bolshevist” had ever been used.
When Fathers and Sons first appeared in Russia the “fathers” were angry at Turgenev's diagnosis of their weakness, and the “sons” went into a rage at what they regarded a ridiculous burlesque of their ideas. All the Russian critics spouted at length, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the uproar caused in Russia by Fathers and Sons ceased only with the revolution of March, 1917.
The artistic value of the novel stands unquestioned to-day. Nine critics out of ten, of all countries, recognize it as Turgenev's masterpiece (and nearly nine critics out of ten, of all countries, now recognize Turgenev as one of the world's greatest novelists, ranking him with Balzac, Fielding, and Cervantes). For Professor Phelps, of Yale, Fathers and Sons “rises above a picture of Russian politics in the sixties, and remains forever an immortal work of art.…. the greatness of this book lies not in the use of the word ‘nihilist,’ nor in the reproduction of ephemeral political movements; its greatness consists in the fact that it faithfully portrays not merely the Russian character, nor the nineteenth century, but the very depths of the human heart as it has manifested itself in all ages and among all nations.”
However, we are not concerned here with passing any critical judgment on Fathers and Sons or its author, but merely with the