_Fathers and Children_ was published in the spring of 1862 in Katkoff's paper, _The Russian Messenger_, the organ of the Younger Generation, and the stormy controversy that the novel immediately provoked was so bitter, deep and lasting that the episode forms one of the most interesting chapters in literary history. Rarely has so great an artist so thoroughly drawn public attention to a scrutiny of new ideas rising in its midst; rarely has so great an artist come into such violent collision with his own party thereby; never, perhaps, has there been so striking an illustration of the incapacity of the public, swayed by party passion, to understand a pure work of art. The effect of the publication was widespread excitement in both political camps. Everybody was, at the time, on the alert to see what would be the next move on the political board. The recent Emancipation of the Serfs was looked upon by Young Russia as only the prelude to many democratic measures, while the Reactionists professed to see in that measure the ruin of the country and the beginning of the end. The fast-increasing antipathy between the Old Order and the New, like a fire, required only a puff of wind to set it ablaze. And Bazarov's character and aims came as a godsend to the Reactionists, who hailed in it the portrait of the insidious revolutionary ideas current in Young Russia; and they hastened to crowd round Turgenev, ironically congratulating the former champion of Liberalism on his penetration and honesty in unmasking the Nihilist. But we will quote Turgenev's own words: