Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Economics, Management and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
2
PhD Graduate in Persian Language and Literature, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, Department of Persian Language and Literature, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
3
MA Student in Sociology, Faculty of Economics, Management and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran
10.22034/jss.2026.2093951.1961
Abstract
Background and aim: This article examines the representation of extremism in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Demons. Rather than treating ideological violence as the direct product of a single doctrine or personality type, it asks how crises of identity and meaning become connected to group organization, existential anxiety, and the moral treatment of others within the novel’s narrative structure.
Data and method: The study uses structured qualitative content analysis of Soroush Habibi’s Persian translation of Demons. Meaning units were selected from dialogue, narrative description, character action, and event sequences involving Stavrogin, Pyotr Verkhovensky, Kirillov, Shatov, Stepan Trofimovich, and several female and child figures. Identity crisis, gradual radicalization, and terror management served as sensitizing concepts; subcategories were refined through repeated reading and comparison of textual evidence.
Findings: Extremism is represented as the interaction of identity instability, group pressure, shame, fear, moral emptiness, and the instrumentalization of others. Pyotr converts individual vulnerabilities into organizational violence through secrecy, threat, the manipulation of moral language, and shared crime. Stavrogin and Kirillov reveal distinct existential and ethical trajectories, while Shatov represents the possibility—and cost—of leaving the radical group.
Conclusion: Demons portrays extremist violence as a multilevel process rather than an inevitable consequence of identity crisis or fear. Violence becomes stabilized when unstable commitments, coercive group mechanisms, and existential pressures reinforce one another and when other persons are reduced to instruments of power, cohesion, pleasure, or elimination.
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