Books: Slavs & Slaves

THE TURGENEV FAMILY (179 pp.)—V. Zhitova—Roy ($2.75).

TURGENEV: A LIFE (328 pp.)—David Magarshack—Grove ($6).

"[In Russia], the habits of slavery are too deeply implanted." says a Russian in Ivan Turgenev's novel Smoke. "We must have a master in everything . . . This master is mostly a living person, but sometimes a so-called movement gets the upper hand . . . Why and on the strength of what reasons we [Russians] become slaves is a mystery, but such, it seems, is our nature."

Such, too, was the nature of Novelist Turgenev (Fathers and Sons, On the Eve, Rudin), with the vital difference that he...