Dostoevsky's demons as polemic -- "The worse, the better ...": Dostoevsky's demons and the politics of despair -- Demons and the "Bakuninist" context of the Bolshevik Revolution -- Leonid Grossman's art of scholarly provocation -- In defense of Bakunin: Aleksei Borovoi and the anarchist conception of demons -- Viacheslav Polonsky and the Marxist struggle over Bakunin's legacy -- Suppressing demons in Stalin's Russia