Nikolai Stavrogin is a central character in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Demons.
Published in book form in 1872, Demons is a political and philosophical novel about revolutionary conspiracies, ideological extremism, and moral disintegration in a provincial Russian town. Stavrogin is an enigmatic aristocrat whose influence affects many of the novel’s other characters.
The novel is also known in English as The Possessed or The Devils. Its original Russian title, Besy, can be translated in several ways, which explains the different English titles.
Stavrogin is not the novel’s only important figure: Pyotr Verkhovensky drives much of the revolutionary plot, while Stepan Verkhovensky represents an older generation of intellectual idealism. The character’s complexity has made Demons one of Dostoevsky’s most debated novels.