In late 1860s Russia there was an unusual level of political unrest caused by student groups influenced by liberal, socialist, and revolutionary ideas. In 1869, Dostoevsky conceived the idea of a 'pamphlet novel' directed against the radicals. He focused on the group organized by young agitator Sergey Nechayev, particularly their murder of a former comrade—Ivan Ivanov—at the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy in Moscow. Dostoevsky had first heard of Ivanov from his brother-in-law, who was a student at the academy, and had been much interested in his rejection of radicalism and exhortation of the Russian Orthodox Church and the House of Romanov as the true custodians of Russia's destiny. He was horrified to hear of Ivanov's murder by the Nechayevists, and vowed to write a political novel about what he called "the most important problem of our time."[10] Prior to this Dostoevsky had been working on a philosophical novel (entitled 'The Life of a Great Sinner') examining the psychological and moral implications of atheism. The political polemic and parts of the philosophical novel were merged into a single larger scale project, which became Demons.[11] As work progressed, the liberal and nihilistic characters began to take on a secondary role as Dostoevsky focused more on the amoralism of a charismatic aristocratic figure—Nikolai Stavrogin.[12]
Although a merciless satirical attack on various forms of radical thought and action, Demons does not bear much resemblance to the typical anti-nihilist novels of the era (as found in the work of Nikolai Leskov for example), which tended to present the nihilists as deceitful and utterly selfish villains in an essentially black and white moral world.[13] Dostoevsky's nihilists are portrayed in their ordinary human weakness, drawn into the world of destructive ideas through vanity, naïveté, idealism, and the susceptibility of youth. In re-imagining Nechayev's orchestration of the murder, Dostoevsky was attempting to "depict those diverse and multifarious motives by which even the purest of hearts and the most innocent of people can be drawn in to committing such a monstrous offence."[14] In A Writer's Diary, he discusses the relationship of the ideas of his own generation to those of the current generation, and suggests that in his youth he too could have become a follower of someone like Nechayev.[15] As a young man Dostoevsky himself was a member of a radical organisation (the Petrashevsky Circle), for which he was arrested and exiled to a Siberian prison camp. Dostoevsky was an active participant in a secret revolutionary society formed from among the members of the Petrashevsky Circle. The cell's founder and leader, the aristocrat Nikolay Speshnev, is thought by many commentators to be the principal inspiration for the character of Stavrogin.[16]
