A Profound Encounter
Victor Haldin shatters the reclusive, industrious lifestyle of Razumov—his fellow student at St. Petersburg University—with the disturbing words: "It was I who removed the P this morning." Razumov aims to overcome the lack of recognition of his noble lineage through a brilliant career within the tsarist bureaucracy established by Peter the Great. However, in pre-revolutionary Russia, Peter's legacy is autocracy, rife with assassination attempts. Razumov soon becomes entangled in a fateful web, partly due to the trust of Natalia, Haldin's gullible sister, in a spy-infested Geneva. Their fateful story is narrated by an older Englishman in love with Natalia, but who plays the role of a "sluggish Westerner" until the very end.