The philosophical and ideological roots of Bazarov's nihilism can be found in the emerging concepts of political anarchy propounded by Bakunin, an early friend of Turgenev. They can also be found in the Byronic philosophy of negating social and political cant such as found in the narrator's critical position in Don Juan. Anarchy was a movement whose growth and spread could be found throughout Russian in the form of revolutionaries bent upon radically reforming Russian society. This underground revolution was felt during the reactionary period of 1848 and following years: in reaction to European revolutionary turmoil Nicholas I clamped down harshly on all freedom of expression, persecuting such emerging writers as Dostoevsky, Dahl, and Turgenev in a period known as the "gloomy seven years" from 1848 to 1855, the year that Nicholas I died and was succeeded by the more reform-minded moderate Alexander II (Moser 1989, 192-3). The reforms required of the young revolutionaries, more sweeping than those intended by the ruling czar, required drastic actions-actions inspired by Bakunin the anarchist and Byron the freedom-fighting revolutionary among others. These revolutionaries interpreted the actions and theories of such men as encouraging a complete overthrow of all social and political structures to allow regeneration from the ground up, ex nihilo. Turgenev belonged to an older generation which encouraged sweeping reforms in moderation; he abhorred revolutionary violence, believing Russia should adopt Western ways and democratize the Russian monarchy (Clive 216). Yet Turgenev himself called Bazarov a nihilist (Turgenev 1996, 17) because he wanted to create a type that accurately and objectively reflected the young revolutionaries of the day. But Bazarov cannot escape the Byronic influence under which his creator wrote; the following close textual reading of the emerging and evolving character of Bazarov provides a familiar contradiction of "nihilistic" Byronism and "idealistic" Byronism.

Bazarov is the "archetypal nihilist" in the sense that Turgenev created him as the first literary nihilist. Geoffrey Clive, in an article entitled "Romanticism and Anti-Romanticism in the Nihilism of Bazarov," provides a useful, albeit over-simplified, characterization of nihilism as a "specific intellectual-cultural movement." To discuss the Byronic character of Bazarov's specific brand of nihilism, Clive's characterization will provide a useful standard.

Clive provided the following explanation of nihilism.

• Nihilism is belief in Nothing on instinct.
• Belief in Nothing predicated on the impossibility to advance sufficient or necessary reasons for believing in anything.
• No sense of values presumably entailed by the proposition that God is dead.
• No sense of values arising from the feeling that God is dead.
• No sense of moral values if moral values can only be relative or contextual. If everything is permitted, then everything becomes permissible.
• No attempted consistency in moral behavior. If truth be the daughter of time, then unpredictability becomes normative.
• A sweeping contempt for public opinion and the sources of authority, usually though not necessarily accompanied by conduct intended to shock society. The value judgment that trouble-makers are preferable to organization men.
• The deliberate exploration and/or practice of evil.
• Indifference to what moves most people most of the time.
• Ennui leading to despair and spiritual apathy. As Professor Henry Aiken has formulated the matter: The question confronting us is not what he should do, but whether it is worth doing anything at all.
• Disloyal opposition to all 'causes' as representing frauds.
• The practice of destruction for its own sake.
• The advocacy of destruction for the sake of a totally transformed society in the remote performance.
• The conviction on the part of the nihilist that he is God (221-222).

The fact that Bazarov does not conform to the extremes of nihilistic philosophy is precisely the point; Turgenev created the character, though early in the novel prepared to tear down so that others may rebuild (Turgenev 1996, 38), more as a Romantic rebel than as a nihilistic revolutionary like those who burned St. Petersburg (Brumfield 496-7).

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