I haven't read it, but the Wikipedia article points to the topic of the superfluous man,

The Russian critics such as Vissarion Belinsky viewed the superfluous man as a by-product of Nicholas I's reactionary reign when the best educated men would not enter the discredited government service and, lacking other options for self-realization, doomed themselves to live out their life in passivity. Scholar David Patterson describes the superfluous man as "not just...another literary type but...a paradigm of a person who has lost a point, a place, a presence in life" before concluding that "the superfluous man is a homeless man"

which makes me wonder, "Why don't you just emigrate? You are wealthy, aren't you, and you have valuable skills, so why not?"