The Confession of Stavrogin is a chapter from The Possessed, which was censored in its time and published in 1922. The publisher of The Possessed refused to publish the chapter "At Typhon".
The chapter concerns Stavrogin's visit to the monk Typhon at the local monastery. During this visit, Stavrogin confesses, in the form of a lengthy and detailed text that he reads to Typhon, that in the past he had corrupted an abused and vulnerable 11-year-old girl - Matryosha - and then did not prevent her from committing suicide, even though he could have.
In the text, he describes his marriage to Maria Lebyatkina as a voluntary decision to destroy himself, mainly due to his guilt over the affair with Matryosha, which haunted him.
Dostoevsky considered the chapter essential for understanding Stavrogin's psychology and desperately but unsuccessfully tried to keep it in the novel, making revisions and concessions to the publisher. He eventually had to remove it and revise other related chapters. Although he never included the chapter in later editions of the novel, in modern editions it is usually presented as an appendix.
