Trifonov Yuri. The Impatient Ones

Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1978. - 487 c.
Translation from Russian: Robert Daglish
Russian original title: Impatience
Scan 600 dpiThe novel is dedicated to the People's Will. The author tried to analyze the emergence of such personalities as the terrorist Zhelyabov and his comrades.
The gifted Soviet writer Yuri Trifonov, a State Prize winner, is well known for two novels The Quenching of the Thirst and Students, a trilogy of novellas The Exchange, A Preliminary Summing Up and The Long Goodbye, and numerous short stories.
He has long been interested in historical subjects. His Reflection from a Fire (1966) looked back at the revolutionary past and his most recent historical novel The Impatient Ones (1972) tells the story of the legendary Andrei Zhelyabov (1850-1881), one of the leaders of the People’s Will movement, and his comrades. They displayed the greatest self-sacrifice, Lenin said of the members of the People’s Will,
and . astonished the world. Undoubtedly these sacrifices were not in vain; undoubtedly they promoted, directly or indirectly, the subsequent revolutionary education of the Russian people.
In a preface to the novel the well-known Soviet literary critic Alexander Svobodin describes the author’s life and work.