With the publication of ‘A Sportsman’s Sketches’ in 1852 Ivan Turgenev established himself one of the leaders in the movement of Russian literary realism. Abandoning the idealized vision of Romantic literature, Realism seeks to present the true struggles of the human existence. In ‘Virgin Soil’, his final novel, we see a continuation of the themes present throughout his other works. At the heart of the novel is the story of a young man and woman who are torn between love and politics. The novel is set against the populist underground revolutionary movement in the second half of the 19th century in Russia, a movement that seeks to awake the sleeping masses and take back the country from the ruling classes. With its beautiful descriptions of the provincial Russian countryside and a humorously depicted cast of characters, ‘Virgin Soil’ stands as one of Turgenev’s most ambitious efforts to do justice to the problems of contemporary Russian society.
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