A RAW YOUTH chronicles the life of 19-year-old Russian intellectual, Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate child of the controversial and womanizing landowner. The recurring conflict between father and son is a recurring theme in A RAW YOUTH, since Arkady and his father are ideological opposites. This conflict represents the battles between the conservative way of thinking in the 1840s and the new, more anti-Russian and nihilistic point of view of the youth of 1860s.