Back on the Rusnet looking for more perspectives on The Possessed

Himself a former socialist… Dostoevsky knew well all the weaknesses and sins of the emerging socialist movement and therefore could no longer be on its side – but at the same time he hated everything… of autocratic Russia.

I’m interested in discovering psychological mechanisms that are nearly invisible.

It would be strange if “Demons” would be liked by left-liberals. It has been written about them. And it is written sharply and correctly

“We know we’re turds, we know it, we KNOW IT, you don’t have to tell us!” I’m not going to tell you anything, we’re going to see what Dostoevsky says.

Seems accurate

Socialism, communism and atheism are the easiest three sciences. Having hammered them into his head, the boy already considers himself a sage.

He thinks these first two “sciences” are primarily ABOUT atheism, that they derive from atheism.

This is just so “everywhere” that you don’t recognize it anymore

even the leader of the terrorist SRs Gershuni complained that nine-tenths of all revolutionary expropriations were cases of ordinary banditry … 

Just common criminals with nice-sounding banners. What else would you expect from atheists?

Dostoevsky was writing The Possessed when Lenin was just learning to walk.

I mean, we’re talking about people here who by and large relate to third-worlders in one way or another, so again, what do you expect?

Banditry, institutionalized- some truth to that.

If you relate to third-worlders isn’t that an obvious sign that you’re a third-rate person? Not trying to be mean, just trying to be objective.

This is funny

robbers who called themselves as professional revolutionaries, because they did not know how to do anything else

“We’re the Good Ones.”

Too bad only the opposite seems to happen in the US

Some of the characters change throughout the novel. First of all, this concerns Ivan Pavlovich Shatov, who begins to see clearly and no longer wants to cooperate with the “demons”.

Joining the ranks of the nigger hordes makes you “the Good One” all right.

The character above is thought to be Dostoevsky’s own self-portrait. The author himself was a member of the Petrashevsky Circle early in life, if you want to look more into the nonfictional background. It was after he was put in a gulag that he changed his mind about things.

Here’s one of the characters, Verkhovensky, on the secret goals of the revolutionaries

First of all, the level of education, sciences and talents goes down. Higher abilities are not needed – they will be expelled or executed … we will let in unheard-of debauchery; we will put out every genius in infancy. All to the same denominator, complete equality…

How is the purple hair antifa “right” of today any different? Just niggers everywhere. America is a “wash” as they say.

This Verkhovensky is the main “demon” of the novel

I am a swindler, not a socialist. Ha-ha-ha!.. Fraudster, fraudster. Do you care who I am?

Do you think it’s possible for “bad natures” to exist? I think it’s very possible.

Dostoevsky portrays Verkhovensky as seeking destruction for destruction’s sake more than “paradise on earth”.

If the telos of socialism is turning the first-world into the third-world, how would that be paradise on earth?

The Russkies recurrently call Dostoevsky “prophetic” in describing this book.

At the time it was published though, the Russian intelligentsia was hostile to it.

Hating one of the most perceptive psychologists in history isn’t a good look

This is in the epigraph of the novel- what a beautiful thought

all these demons will move into a herd of pigs. That pigs will throw themselves into the sea from a cliff.