Fathers and Sons is an 1862 novel by Ivan Turgenev, one of his best-known works. The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov, a nihilist who rejects the old order. Turgenev wrote Fathers and Sons as a response to the growing cultural schism that he saw between liberals of the 1830s and 40s and the growing nihilist movement. Both the nihilists (the sons ) and the 1830s liberals sought Western-based social change in Russia. Additionally, these two modes of thought were contrasted with the Slavophiles, who believed that Russia’s path lay in its traditional spirituality.