The first play in Tom Stoppard's trilogy is set in Russia in the 1830s and 1840s on the wealthy Bakunin family's estate and in Moscow. It concerns a group of young frien's that include the anarchist Michael Bakunin, the would-be author Ivan Turgenev, the brilliant young literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and self-proclaimed socialist.