This is a Russian story for Western ears, says the narrator, an Englishman who teaches languages in Geneva at the beginning of the 20th century.
A Russian student in St.Petersburg is faced with a dilemma that must have been experienced in similar form by many others in many times and countries, and by many more in their imagination. What would I do, if...
Say, you were a German student with vaguely leftwing orientation in the early 70s, and Ulrike Meinhof had just gone underground, and by some strange combination of coincidences she turns up in your flat and asks for temporary shelter and some minor help in an escape plan.
This is the situation that Conrad puts his hero Razumov in. Not with Meinhof, silly, but with a freshly successful assassin of a high Russian politician; the 2 students knew each other barely.
From here, Conrad develops a compelling story of betrayal and espionage and political revolution, starting in St.Petersburg, then moving to Geneva. Like in real life, one might say. Switzerland becomes the playground for the Russian revolutionaries in exile and for their hunters. The title of the story means exactly that: Russian fights fought in the West for `them' to watch and wonder over.
(This book is another case of oddly misinforming book descriptions, here on an otherwise blameless Penguin: the back cover says that the book explores the conflict between East and West. What nonsense. The book explores no such thing.)
Conrad was far from sympathizing with `the Russians', but he seems to have known them quite well. His Razumov (the word means `reason' or `mind', says the writer of the notes) is a variation on Razkolnikov. Conrad disliked Dostoyevsky, who was `too Russian' for him, but he was rather obviously writing `against' him here. Razumov's guilt is his betrayal of the assassin, and his atonement/punishment comes in hard struggles between reason/self preservation and emotion.
The novel has a rather simple structure, for a major Conrad novel.
The narrator came into possession of Razumov's diaries; he paraphrases and summarizes them for us. (Why not stick to the fiction and let us read the `original' diary, as Nabokov might have done? - I thought of Nabokov here because VN, like JC, disliked Dostoyevsky; it may be an interesting subject to compare the differences of the dislikes of JC and VN.)
Part 1 is the story in St.Pete, by the diaries. Then we follow the narrator's personal experience in Geneva. Protagonists in the story have not read part 1, of course... This gives the narration a Hitchcockian flavor. We know more than the people in the story, and that drives suspense.
JC did not have the benefit of the Bolshevik revolution hindsight, that's why some of the politics are oddly off target. It could hardly be otherwise in 1910.
The novel has more women than most other Conrad books. This about the main female character: at the educational institutions, she was looked upon unfavorably. She was suspected of holding independent opinions.
Quite possibly, JC wrote women into this book as a defense mechanism. He had been attacked from that angle.
In the life work of Conrad, this novel is in a surprising position. He wrote it before he reached his prominent and profitable phase. It is not necessarily a shocking departure in terms of methods, but it is for sure a pure thriller: a precursor of Graham Greene and John Le Carre, and their next generation. There is nothing of the complexity and complication of Nostromo in this novel. Even the Secret Agent is much more complex.
I do not hesitate to include this in my short list of best Conrads.
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Top reviews from other countries
Harlequin Enterprises
Superior intrigue
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2020
Dr. Tamas Pataki
It's not the novel, it's the production.
Reviewed in Australia on July 2, 2021