ABSTRACT
I AMONG Dostoevsky's five great novels, A Raw Youth stands somewhat apart. It is his only important work in which the external causation (including various detective and gangster tricks) prevails, even to the detriment of its excellent psychological pages. One is aware in it also of a certain' wavering between several theses and ideas, which either are not worked out or else are soon dropped by the author-like the idea of power at the beginning of the novel. The narrative centres round what Dostoevsky calls an 'accidental' Russian family, or at least round two of its members. One of them is the former serf-owner and now an impoverished aristocrat, Versilov; and the other, his illegitimate son Arkady whose mother had been a serf in Versilov's household.
