The actors in this tragic drama fall into several "sets." There are the revolutionaries who surround and, to varying degrees, follow Peter Verthovensky. The main ones are Shatov (who attempts to leave the movement), Kirilov (who thinks more for himself, but aids the movement for his own philosophical reasons), and Shigalov (who is a Nihilist fanatic and, philosophically, the most dangerous of the group). These characters, following Verkhovensky's lead, devise the murders and mayhem in the town: Using Fedka, the convict, they murder, or cause the murder of the Lebyadkins and several other citizens, start the fire that guts a large part of the town, and ruin the "literary" party of the von Lembkes (it would be difficult, in all the literary works in the world, to find a narration of the destruction of a large party to equal that in The Possessed). Yulia von Lembke's misguided notion...