Turgenev's longest novel, set in the 1870s, follows young Russian idealists who go out among the peasants hoping to stir them toward reform. Nezhdanov, a sensitive and doubtful young man, takes a post as tutor in a landowner's household and becomes entangled with the cause and with Marianna, a girl who shares its fervour. Turgenev looks at the movement with sympathy but also with unease about its naivety and the gulf between the young and the people they wish to help. It is a serious portrait of Russian radicalism.