As a matter of fact, there is no comparison possible.
Turgenev came of noble birth and began by writing verse, but soon found his proper métier in prose.
For two years he was exiled to his country estate for his quite harmless defence of Gogol. After this term was over he left Russia for Baden and Paris, which accounts to some extent for his aloofness from the problems which perturbed his countrymen, and makes him more a Cosmopolitan than National, like Dostoievsky. His five great novels, Rúdin, The Nest of Gentlefolk, On the Eve, Fathers and Sons and Smoke, all appeared in the eleven years between 1856 and 1867 and he was at once appraised by all European critics, who discovered in him Russia for the first time, and the Russian woman in particular. His popularity at home was impaired on the publication of Fathers and Sons, because the revolutionaries saw in Bazarov, the hero, only calumny and a libel, whereas the reactionary party looked on the book as a glorification of Nihilism. Thus he fell between two stools. In Europe, however, he gained larger and larger audiences, until an admiration for his work became the hall-mark of good taste.
But to-day Turgenev holds his own even in his own country, for his exquisite style, the majesty of his poetry and the sureness of his characterisation. Baring finds a parallel to Turgenev in this country in Tennyson, in that they are both Mid-Victorian, both shut off from the world by the trees of old parks; but Major Baring, as it seems to me, is fair to neither genius.
For Turgenev has an amazing insight into men's motives and actions which we do not commonly associate with those who are shut off from the world.
Rúdin is a picture of a type that peculiarly appealed to Turgenev, the Hamlet type of man who can only unpack his heart with words, but breaks down when he is asked to translate his theories into action: he is passionately devoted to Liberty in his eloquent talk and makes Natasha, the daughter of the house in which he is staying, fall madly in love with him and persuade herself that she is ready to fly with him, but he, whose love is more that of the intellect than the heart, fails her and tells her to submit.
He is eventually killed in '48 on a barricade in Paris. In the epilogue we get his character beautifully unfolded to us.
"'I know him well,' continued Lézhneff, 'I am aware of his faults. They are the more conspicuous because he is not to be regarded on a small scale.'
"'His is a character of genius!' cried Bassístoff.
"'Genius very likely he has!' replied Lézhneff, 'but as for character ... That's just his misfortune: there's no force of character in him.... But I want to speak of what is good, of what is rare in him. He has enthusiasm; and, believe me, who am a phlegmatic person enough, that is the most precious quality in our times. We have all become insufferably reasonable, indifferent, and slothful; we are asleep and cold, and thanks to any one who will wake us up and warm us! It is high time! Do you remember, Sásha, once when I was talking to you about him, I blamed him for coldness? I was right, and wrong too, then. The coldness is in his blood—that is not his fault—and not in his head. He is not an actor, as I called him, nor a cheat, nor a scoundrel; he lives at other people's expense, not like a swindler, but like a child.... Yes; no doubt he will die somewhere in poverty and want; but are we to throw stones at him for that? He never does anything himself precisely, he has no vital force, no blood; but who has the right to say that he has not been of use, that his words have not scattered good seeds in young hearts, to whom Nature has not denied, as she has to him, powers for action, and the faculty of carrying out their own ideas? Indeed, I myself, to begin with, have gained all that I have from him. Sásha knows what Rúdin did for me in my youth. I also maintained, I recollect, that Rúdin's words could not produce an effect on men; but I was speaking then of men like myself, at my present age, of men who have already lived and been broken in by life. One false note in a man's eloquence, and the whole harmony is spoiled for us; but a young man's ear, happily, is not so over-fine, not so trained. If the substance of what he hears seems fine to him, what does he care about the intonation? The intonation he will supply for himself!'