Works like Young Russia and A History of Russian Thought from Enlightenment to Marxism provide similar narratives on the radicalization of the Russian Intelligentsia and the emergence of nihilism. Exposure to French culture in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars created an inferiority complex in Russians towards Europe. Some young men who had fought in the Napoleonic Wars wanted to reform Russia. They would eventually lead the Decembrist revolt to overthrow the Czarist regime. The revolt failed....

Why Raskolnikov begins to view himself as a Napoleonic figure is clearly one of the central pivots of the story and it is around this axis which revolve a moral dilemna whose satisfactory resolution alone can only lead to that redemption that we find in the novel's final pages.

To recap on this idea's first appearance; it was first spelt out in his published article which the dogged detective Porfiry has uncovered as evidence during the investigation. In it, Raskolnikov claims there...