Virgin Soil (1877) was Turgenev’s last novel, depicting the idealistic young populists of the 1870s who went “to the people” — traveling into the countryside to raise revolutionary consciousness among the peasants — and the gap between their idealism and the reality they encountered. Turgenev’s characteristic scepticism toward ideological enthusiasm gives the novel a melancholy prescience.
Though it received a mixed reception in its time, Virgin Soil has grown in critical esteem as a nuanced portrait of a pivotal generation in Russian history. Download the free EPUB to complete your reading of Turgenev’s novels.