The Devils

In a small provincial town in 1870’s Ukraine, a group of friends hunger to join the national movement for Socialist revolution. Under the influence of their idealistic new leader, Peter Verkhovensky, they risk arrest by producing a poster advocating a national strike. However, when their charismatic founder, Nicholas Stavrogin, returns from abroad on the verge of nervous collapse, their loyalties waiver. Peter and Nicholas struggle for control of the group, and the members, engulfed by paranoia, wind up murdering one of their own. Paralleling the action is the plight of Nicholas Stavrogin, a rapist, haunted by the ghost of his young victim. Loosely based on the novel by Dostoyevsky, and steeped in the historic events that shocked 1870’s Russia, The Devils is a story of love and betrayal in a society on the edge of revolution; a society full of idealists destroyed by a new definition of humanity.