Varvara arranges a marriage between Dasha and Stepan to cover up Stavrogin's alleged indiscretions.

Marya Lebyadkina falls at Varvara's feet in church, and Varvara takes her home.

Peter and Stavrogin arrive unexpectedly at Varvara's home, disrupting the chaotic scene with Marya and Lebyadkin.

Peter reveals Stepan's letter about indiscretions in Switzerland, and Varvara banishes Stepan from her home.

Shatov punches Stavrogin in the face without explanation; Stavrogin visibly restrains himself and does not react.

Stavrogin admits to Shatov during a late-night visit that Marya Lebyadkina is his lawful wife.

The duel between Stavrogin and Gaganov takes place; Stavrogin fires into the air all three times.

The revolutionary society meets at Virginsky's house and Shigalyov presents his system in which ninety percent of humanity is enslaved.

Stavrogin publicly announces his marriage to Marya in front of Varvara and Liza at the governor's mansion.

Fire breaks out across the river during Yulia's ball and a falling beam strikes Von Lembke unconscious.

The stabbed bodies of Marya Lebyadkina and her brother Captain Lebyadkin are found in their burned-out house.

The townspeople attack and kill Liza in the street, blaming her for Marya's murder because of her association with Stavrogin.

Peter shoots Shatov in the head and the group ties stones to his body and throws it into a pond.

Stepan contracts a fever while wandering the road and dies three days later with Varvara at his bedside.

Varvara and Dasha search Stavrogin's home and find him hanging behind a door in the loft.

Devils begins with Varvara Petrovna's desperate attempt to manage her son Stavrogin's scandalous reputation by arranging a marriage between her protégé Dasha and the aging intellectual Stepan. The situation explodes when Stavrogin and his son Peter arrive in town simultaneously, triggering a chain of confrontations that expose secret relationships, hidden letters, and long-buried grievances. Stavrogin's presence draws everyone into his orbit — through duels, secret marriages, and revolutionary plotting — while Peter quietly assembles a radical cell and manipulates the town's governor and his wife. The literary festival intended to consolidate Yulia's social standing collapses into chaos, accompanied by arson, murder, and the unraveling of Von Lembke's authority. As the fires die down, the bodies mount: Marya, Liza, Shatov, Kirillov, and finally Stavrogin himself, each death exposing the hollow foundations on which the town's social order was built.

The headline events that drive Skvoreshniki to ruin.

Stavrogin causes a series of scandals in town, is imprisoned, and then suffers a violent episode diagnosed as brain fever.

Praskovya Drozdova returns from Switzerland and reports that Stavrogin offended her daughter Liza during their travels.

Stepan frets about his situation and sends Dasha a note mentioning his noble intentions, alarming the narrator.

The narrator visits Marya in her dark apartment and hears the drunken Captain Lebyadkin return and hammer on the door.

Peter visits his father twice after arriving in town, leaving Stepan distraught and emotionally undone.

Stavrogin visits Kirillov and asks him to serve as his second in the upcoming duel with Gaganov.

Stavrogin visits the Lebyadkin home at night and Marya wakes from nightmares, accuses him of being an imposter, and curses him.

Fedka the convict approaches Stavrogin in the street and subtly offers to commit a murder on his behalf.

Blum and another officer search Stepan's house and confiscate several books, leaving Stepan terrified.

Factory workers march to the governor's mansion in protest and Von Lembke, overwhelmed, orders the police to attack them.

Liputin reads an insulting poem mocking Yulia at the literary fete, and Karmazinov's reading is heckled and booed by the crowd.

Stepan delivers a passionate speech defending art and beauty against modern politics before breaking down in tears and fleeing the stage.

Shatov's estranged wife Marie returns unexpectedly to town and gives birth to a baby boy that same night.

Peter boards a train and flees to Saint Petersburg, leaving Erkel and the rest of the group to face arrest.

Lyamshin attempts suicide and then runs to the authorities, confessing every detail of Peter's revolutionary organization.

Before the main catastrophe takes hold, Devils carefully establishes the decaying world that Peter's radicalism will exploit. Stavrogin's early scandals — his violent behavior, his imprisonment, his episode of brain fever — show a town already conditioned to excuse the wealthy and powerful. Stepan's fretful letters, his gossipy circle, and his increasing uselessness as an intellectual illustrate the hollow older generation that the younger radicals hold in contempt. As Peter embeds himself deeper into the town's social fabric, the factory workers riot, police search houses, and the literary festival implodes across two disastrous events. By the time the dust settles, Shatov's wife and child die of exposure, Lyamshin breaks down and confesses everything, and Peter slips away to Saint Petersburg, leaving the rest of his group to face arrest alone.

The supporting moments that reveal how the town unravels.

Varvara visits a gloomy Stepan and shocks him by proposing that he marry her young protégé Dasha for a third time.

The narrator hears Kirillov explain that dying by suicide conquers fear and allows a person to become God.

Liza proposes that Shatov co-edit an almanac capturing the moral character of the Russian nation, but he refuses.

Captain Lebyadkin arrives at Varvara's drawing room, trips over, and fumbles through a nervous and incoherent conversation about money.

Stavrogin visits Shatov at night and warns him that the revolutionary society believes him to be an informer and wants him dead.

After the duel, Stavrogin confesses to Dasha that giving Fedka money may have served as an advance payment for his wife's murder.

Peter visits Kirillov to confirm the arrangement by which Kirillov will write a false confession before carrying out his planned suicide.

Peter presents Stavrogin to the full revolutionary group as a founding member from abroad who knows the most important secrets.

Peter pleads in near-delirium with Stavrogin to pose as a hidden Tsar and become the figurehead of the revolution; Stavrogin refuses.

Stavrogin visits the monk Tikhon and confesses to sexually abusing a young girl named Matryosha, who then hanged herself.

Liza overhears Stavrogin admit to Peter that he knew the murders were coming and chose to do nothing to stop them.

Peter shoots Fedka dead with his revolver after the convict attacks him and calls him the real murderer.

The revolutionary group votes to murder Shatov; Virginsky objects repeatedly but finally agrees to proceed.

Kirillov writes a false confession taking responsibility for the group's crimes, signs it, and then shoots himself.

Stavrogin sends Dasha a letter confessing his crimes and inviting her to escape with him, but she finds him already dead before she can respond.

Beneath the novel's social chaos lies a series of private revelations that expose the true depths of each character's moral condition. From Kirillov's chilling philosophy of suicide-as-transcendence to Stavrogin's confession of a crime he has never told anyone, these turning points reveal the hidden architecture of despair that supports the plot's violent surface. Peter's manipulation reaches its peak as he locks the revolutionary group into complicity by engineering a murder, while Stavrogin's encounters with the monk Tikhon and later with Dasha trace the arc of a man who cannot find redemption but cannot stop seeking it. Each decision — Stavrogin's refusal to warn Marya, the group's vote to kill Shatov, Kirillov's false confession — brings the story one step closer to its inevitable collapse, ending with Stavrogin's calculated and premeditated death, designed to force a judgment the world had always refused to deliver.