Last night

Author: (Russian)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: The novel "The Eve" tells the story of the noblewoman Yelena, who is dissatisfied with the mediocre life of the aristocracy and longs for action, but she cannot find her ideal figure among Russian intellectuals. Later, she meets the Bulgarian patriotic revolutionary Yosif Ivanov. He is a young man who dedicates everything to the cause of national liberation. Yelena falls in love with him, abandons her noble family, and joins him in Bulgaria to participate in the uprising against Turkish oppression. On the way, Yosif Ivanov passes away, and Yelena resolves to become a volunteer nurse in the uprising army to carry forward her husband's. When writing this novel, Turgenev believed that Russia was on the verge of abolishing serfdom and was in a period of great transformation—the "eve" of change. He projected his ideal of the "new man" onto the characters of Yelena and Yosif Ivanov, a "new man" who would sacrifice himself for the interests of the entire nation. However, Russia at the time was facing revolutionary struggles against the autocratic serfdom system. Turgenev emphasized the interests of the entire nation and the unity of all classes, thereby obscuring the essence of class struggle in Russia at the time.