Turgenev's Fathers and Children and Smoke

I've read two more of Turgenev's novels, both of which mention in some detail nihilism. I thought at the start of Smoke that I was reading a political novel, in the same sense that Magic Mountain is a philosophical novel. Both of these are tales of love misplaced, of passion forbidden. Both novels were also received as allegories of political occurrences in a Russia without freedom of expression. Well, those allegories went right by me: I suppose I don't know the context well enough to appreciate all of this. I confess, though, that I don't see this on a level with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Two novels to go in this Turgenev week-end.