Vera; or, the Nihilists

'Vera' is a tragic melodrama which takes as its heroine a fictionalised account of Vera Zasulich, a Russian revolutionary in the pre-Bolshevik era; a 'Nihilist' as Dostoyevsky and Turgenev would have called her. In Wilde's play, Zasulich is exhorted by her imprisoned brother to join the Nihilist movement in Moscow. There she rises up the ranks to become one of the movement's top assassins. She falls in love with a fellow revolutionary, the brilliant Alexis, who in time will reveal a secret identity so unexpected that it will test to the last Vera's love and commitment to her ideals.