Volume 24, Number 4 · March 17, 1977
Turgenev and 'Virgin Soil'
By V.S. Pritchett
By the 1870s Turgenev's pre-eminence in Europe as the leading Russian novelist was unquestioned, but he was far from being known to the great public in Europe or America. In 1877 with the publication of Virgin Soil, his longest and most ambitious novel, he became world famous: a month after it was published fifty-two young men and women were arrested in Russia on charges of revolutionary conspiracy, and a shocked public in France, Britain, and America turned to the novel for enlightenment. Its effect on American readers was enormous: as powerful, in its way, as the effect of Uncle Tom's Cabin had been. For Turgenev the novel was one more attempt to present the Russian situation with detachment, and above all he sought to show to his critics that he had not lost touch with the younger generation.
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