Ivan Turgenev

Turgenev was born into the Russian noble class, to a poor cavalry officer and an heiress of a massive estate with 5,000 serfs. Though he grew up in luxury, his mother was authoritarian and sometimes cruel. He nevertheless developed a love of nature and an affection for peasant stories and lifestyles. Having grown up with international governesses, Turgenev was an avid “Westernizer” who studied in Berlin after his time at Petersburg University; he became a particularly enthusiastic student of German idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. Turgenev believed that Russia would be best served by incorporating European Enlightenment ideals, and he strongly opposed the system of serfdom. He never married, but he had a lifelong affair with a French opera singer named Pauline Viardot, and he fathered an illegitimate daughter with one of his family’s serfs. He has been described as the “un-Russian Russian” by some critics, the first Russian novelist to become broadly popular in Europe. Fathers and Sons was his masterpiece. While some were shocked by the mere depiction of Nihilism in the novel, others found the character of the nihilist Bazarov to be a libelous caricature. Unprepared for the outbreak of criticism, Turgenev considered giving up writing altogether. However, he authored a variety of novels, short fiction, including the ambitious novel Virgin Soil, the short story collection Sportsman’s Sketches, and the play A Month in the Country.