During a time of revolution, Nikolay Stavrogin, a brilliant but alienated young aristocrat, becomes a criminal, a degenerate, and an exploiter of women because of his inability to feel genuine emotion. Dostoyevsky hoped, in this novel, to rally the Russian upper classes to turn away from their own nihilistic self-absorption and identify with the masses, to avert the real revolution he saw coming. The title, translated variously as THE POSSESSED or DEMONS refers to the tide of new political ideas that spread through Russia in the late 19th century--ideas Dostoyevsky saw as dangerous and destructive.