Anti-nihilistic novel


Anti-nihilistic novel was a genre in Russian literature in the second half of the 19th century, as a reaction to the disillusionment in the Russian revolutionary movement of the time. The term derives from the usage of the word "nihilist" in the general sense of " radical" in the Russian Empire of the time, derived from the radical Russian Nihilist movement.
An example of the genre is No Way Out by Nikolai Leskov.
A typical protagonist is a nihilist student. However unlike, e.g., a nihilist Rakhmetov from What Is to Be Done? by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, the hero is a weak person, easily seduced into subversive activities by a villain, often a Pole.
Many anti-nihilistic novels were published in the conservative literary magazine The Russian Messenger edited by Mikhail Katkov.

Novels in this genre