ABSTRACT
Kirilov is a Westerniser, who threatens the social order of Shatov's scheme and is one of the major 'Devils' of the novel. He seems to be based on a member of the Petrashevsky circle. Fyodor Mikhailovich's reading of the foreign newspapers had brought him to the conclusion that political disturbances would shortly break out in the Petrovskaya Agricultural Academy. Dostoevsky admitted that his Peter Verkhovensky was only a kind of 'type' who corresponded to the real Nechaev. In Dostoevsky's opinion the Nechaev type is almost a parody, pathetic, unworthy of real literature. Dostoevsky's political philosophy, made quite explicit in the conclusions of the novel, includes the assertion that 'Western' liberalism, most aptly personified by Granovsky and Turgenev, is a form of 'possession', and that the body politic of Russia will not be sane until purged, not only of its revolutionary nihilism, but also of its Western liberal 'infection'.
