Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (pre-ref. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky); Born October 30 (November 11), 1821, Moscow, date of death Russian Empire — January 28 (February 9), 1881, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) — Russian writer, thinker, philosopher and publicist. Corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences since 1877.

Dostoevsky is a classic of Russian literature and one of the best novelists of world significance.
According to the German Slavist Reinhard Lauer (Lauer, Reinhard), “Dostoevsky is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential novelists of the golden age of Russian literature.”

M. M. Bakhtin considered F. M. Dostoevsky “one of the greatest innovators in the field of artistic form,” whose significance “goes beyond just novelistic creativity and concerns some basic principles of European aesthetics. One could even say that Dostoevsky created, as it were, a new artistic model of the world, in which many of the main aspects of the old artistic form underwent a radical transformation.»

Origin
On his father’s side, Fyodor Mikhailovich came from the noble family of the Dostoevskys, which dates back to 1506. Biographer of the writer L.I. Saraskina notes that Dostoevsky did not know his such an ancient pedigree. The writer’s widow began studying the genealogy of the Dostoevsky family only after his death.
The grandfather of the writer F. M. Dostoevsky, Andrei Grigorievich Dostoevsky (1756 — around 1819), served as a Uniate, later — Orthodox priest in the village of Voitovtsy near Nemirov (now Vinnitsa region of Ukraine), according to his ancestry — the archpriest of the city of Bratslav, Podolsk province.
Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1787-1839), studied at the Moscow branch of the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy, served as a doctor in the Borodino Infantry Regiment, as a resident in the Moscow Military Hospital, as a doctor in the Mariinsky Hospital of the Moscow Orphanage (in a hospital for the poor, known as Bozhedomki ).
The writer’s mother, Maria Fedorovna Nechaeva (1800-1837), was the daughter of the Moscow merchant of the III guild Fyodor Timofeevich Nechaev (1769-1832), who came from the city of Borovsk, Kaluga province. M. F. Dostoevskaya died of consumption. According to researchers of the great writer’s work, certain features of Maria Feodorovna are reflected in the images of Sofia Andreevna Dolgorukaya (“Teenager”) and Sofia Ivanovna Karamazova (“The Brothers Karamazov”).

The writer’s mother is Maria Fedorovna
Father — Mikhail Andreevich
In 1827, M. A. Dostoevsky, for excellent service and length of service, was promoted to the rank of collegiate assessor, which gave the right to hereditary nobility. Later, in 1829, for his zealous service he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree, and in 1832 he was awarded the rank of court councilor and the Order of St. Anne, 2nd degree (“Anna on the neck”).

Despite the fact that in 1857 F. M. Dostoevsky was returned to the right of nobility, after the revolution of 1917 the writer’s class affiliation was determined by the concepts of bourgeois or commoner. In Lunacharsky’s article about Dostoevsky, the writer is presented in particular as a “half-crushed commoner” who sought “the moral extermination of the revolution.”

In 1831, Mikhail Andreevich acquired the small village of Darovoe in the Kashira district of the Tula province, and in 1833 the neighboring village of Cheremoshnya (Chermashnya), where in 1839 he died of his own death, or (according to rumors) was killed by his own serfs.

Childhood and adolescence

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30 (November 11), 1821 in Moscow, and was the second son of eight children in the family. The younger sister Lyubov died in 1829 shortly after birth, when the future writer was 7 years old.
F. M. Dostoevsky recalled that his “father and mother were poor and working people.” Despite his father’s poverty, Dostoevsky received an excellent upbringing and education, for which he was grateful to his parents all his life. His mother taught him to read from the book “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments.” In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, Elder Zosima says that he learned to read from this book as a child. The biblical Book of Job made a great impression on the child at that time. Subsequently, the writer’s thoughts about the Book of Job were used when working on the novel “The Teenager.”

From childhood, and then especially in hard labor, where Dostoevsky could read the New Testament of the 1823 edition, donated by the wives of the Decembrists, the Gospel became the main book in the writer’s life.
Since 1831, the family began to leave Moscow for the summer to their modest estate, where F. M. Dostoevsky met the peasants and got to know the Russian village. It was then, on the first trip, that the frightened boy Fyodor was calmed down by a graying plowman. Dostoevsky described his memory of this scene in the story “The Peasant Marey” in “The Diary of a Writer.”
According to the writer, childhood was the best time in his life. His father taught his older brothers Latin. After finishing home schooling, Fyodor Dostoevsky, together with his older brother Mikhail, studied French for a year at half board, teacher N.I. Drashusov of the Catherine and Alexander schools, whose son A.N. Drashusov gave the brothers mathematics lessons, and another son (V.N. Drashusov) taught them literature.
From 1834 to 1837, Mikhail and Fyodor Dostoevsky studied at the prestigious Moscow boarding school of L. I. Chermak.

The writer’s youth

When Dostoevsky was 16 years old, his mother died of consumption, and his father sent his eldest sons, Fyodor and Mikhail (who later also became a writer), to K. F. Kostomarov’s boarding school in St. Petersburg to prepare for entry into engineering school.
The year 1837 became an important date for Dostoevsky. This is the year of his mother’s death, the year of the death of Pushkin, whose work he (like his brother) had been reading since childhood, the year of moving to St. Petersburg and entering the Main Engineering School.
Mikhail and Fyodor Dostoevsky wanted to study literature, but their father believed that the work of a writer could not ensure the future of his eldest sons, and insisted on their admission to an engineering school, service upon completion of which guaranteed material well-being. In “The Diary of a Writer,” Dostoevsky recalled how, on the way to St. Petersburg with his brother, “we dreamed only of poetry and poets,” “and I was constantly composing a novel from Venetian life in my mind.”

Father’s death

The mysterious death of Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky in 1839 still causes debate among the writer’s biographers. There are two versions of his death. According to the official version, the writer’s father died in the field from apoplexy. Another version is based on rumors: M. A. Dostoevsky was killed by his own serfs. Both versions are described in detail by Dostoevsky’s biographer L.I. Saraskina.
Researchers who support the murder version refer to the memoirs of the writer’s younger brother Andrei Mikhailovich:

“His addiction to alcohol apparently increased, and he was almost constantly in an unhealthy state. Spring came, promising little good… At that time, in the village of Chermashnya, in the fields under the edge of the forest, an artel of men, a dozen or a dozen people, was working; it means it was far from housing. Infuriated by some unsuccessful action of the peasants, or perhaps what only seemed so to him, the father flared up and began to shout at the peasants. One of them, more daring, responded to this cry with strong rudeness and after that, being afraid of this rudeness, shouted: “Guys, karachun to him!..”. And with this exclamation, all the peasants, up to 15 people in number, rushed at their father and in an instant, of course, finished off him… — From the memoirs of A. M. Dostoevsky »
In addition, biographers quote from the memoirs of the writer’s daughter L. F. Dostoevskaya: “My grandfather Mikhail always treated his serfs very strictly. The more he drank, the more violent he became, until they finally killed him.»

Neither A. M. Dostoevsky nor L. F. Dostoevskaya witnessed what happened. At the same time, Dostoevist N.N. Nasedkin believes that “the book of Dostoevsky’s daughter contains many factual inaccuracies, errors and controversial statements, but, at the same time, it contains a lot of interesting and new things for researchers of the writer’s work.”
However, the version of the murder by serfs was supported by many researchers of the life and work of Dostoevsky and, in particular, is shared by the French publishing house of dictionaries Larousse: “One morning in 1839, Doctor Dostoevsky was discovered on the side of the road, his body was tortured, without any doubt he was killed by men who were greatly irritated by his cruelty.”

One way or another, the motive of parricide as public retribution emerges on the pages of the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”: “Who doesn’t want their father to die?..,” Ivan Karamazov contemptuously throws at the public who have come to the courtroom where Mitya is about to be sentenced. “Everyone wants the death of their father… If it weren’t for parricide, they would all get angry and go away angry…” L. I. Saraskina writes that “biographers who fell in love with the legend of a corrupt drunken father would, it seems to me, be very disappointed and would also “ the evil ones dispersed”, since in recent years materials have been collected that speak about the natural causes of the death of Mikhail Dostoevsky Sr.
The death of his father made a grave and indelible impression on the young man. L. F. Dostoevskaya wrote: “Family legend says that Dostoevsky, at the first news of his father’s death, suffered his first seizure of epilepsy.” The French dictionary Larousse, citing the memoirs of the writer D. V. Grigorovich, reports that an epileptic attack occurred 2 months after the death of his father. However, according to D. V. Grigorovich’s own memoirs, it follows that he witnessed a seizure (not epileptic) not in 1839, but much later — after a “secondary rapprochement with Dostoevsky,” i.e. in 1844 or 1845.

In his famous article, Freud wrote that “Dostoevsky’s hatred of his father, the desire for death for this evil father” was repressed into the Oedipus complex. Overcoming guilt at the news of the death (or murder) of his father, which coincided with his own most secret and unbearable desires, the son punished himself with his first epileptic seizure. In fact, there are no reliable sources confirming Dostoevsky’s epilepsy either in childhood or in his youth. According to the writer himself, he experienced his first epileptic fit at a later time — in hard labor. The author of a five-volume biography of Dostoevsky, Joseph Frank, opposes the Austrian psychoanalyst: “As evidence, Freud cites “facts” that are at best regarded as dubious, and at worst as mere fallacies. The history of Dostoevsky’s illness, constructed by Freud in an attempt to “explain” it in psychoanalytic terms, is a fiction.”

The exact date of death of Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky — June 6, 1839 — was first determined by G. A. Fedorov in 1975. After studying the archives, Fedorov released new facts confirming the natural death of the writer’s father, which was recorded by two doctors independently of each other. Rumors about the murder by peasants were spread by the landowner of the neighboring estate P. P. Khotyaintsev. Since this version was shared by Dostoevsky’s relatives, some of the writer’s biographers confirmed the fact of the violent death of Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky. Until now, Dostoevsky’s biographers are divided into two camps depending on their adherence to one or another version of the death of the writer’s father.

Fyodor Mikhailovich agreed with his older brother Mikhail to impose a taboo on any discussion of his father’s death, which they first mentioned only many years after the tragic event.

The Engineering School was one of the best educational institutions of its time, which provided not only highly specialized military education, but also a broad humanitarian education. While studying at the school, Dostoevsky read the works of Homer, Corneille, Racine, Balzac, Hugo, Goethe, Hoffmann, Schiller, Shakespeare, Byron, and Russian authors Derzhavin, Lermontov, Gogol, and knew by heart almost all of Pushkin’s works. According to the memoirs of the Russian geographer Semenov-Tyan-Shansky, Dostoevsky was “more educated than many Russian writers of his time, such as Nekrasov, Panaev, Grigorovich, Pleshcheev and even Gogol himself.”

Studying at school was a burden for the young man. He felt no call to future service. Dostoevsky devoted all his free time from classes to reading, and at night he composed. In the fall of 1838, fellow students at the Engineering School, under the influence of Dostoevsky, formed a literary circle, which included I. I. Berezhetsky, D. V. Grigorovich, A. N. Beketov and N. I. Vitkovsky. After graduating from college in 1843, Dostoevsky was enlisted as a field engineer-second lieutenant in the St. Petersburg engineering team, but already at the beginning of the summer of the next year, having decided to devote himself entirely to literature, he resigned and on October 19, 1844 received a discharge from military service with the rank of lieutenant.

First literary experiments, publications and Petrashevites
While still studying at the school, Dostoevsky worked on the dramas “Mary Stuart” and “Boris Godunov” from 1840 to 1842. In January 1844, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother that he had finished the drama “The Jew Yankel.” These first youthful works have not survived. At the end of 1843 and the beginning of 1844, Dostoevsky translated Eugene Sue’s novel Matilda, and, a little later, George Sand’s novel The Last of Aldini, while simultaneously starting work on his own novel, Poor People. Both translations were not completed. At the same time, Dostoevsky wrote stories that were not completed.

Less than a year before his dismissal from military service, Dostoevsky completed the first translation into Russian of Balzac’s novel Eugene Grande in January 1844. The translation can be considered a free adaptation, since it contains some errors, omissions, inaccuracies, but also some additions from Dostoevsky himself. The translation of Eugenie Grande has been carried out since the earliest edition, published in 1834, and is therefore somewhat distant from the final version of the original. Dostoevsky’s translation was first published in the magazine «Repertoire and Pantheon» in 1844 without indicating the name of the translator.
At the end of May 1845, the aspiring writer completed his first novel, Poor People. Through the mediation of D. V. Grigorovich, N. A. Nekrasov and V. G. Belinsky familiarized themselves with the manuscript. “Furious Vissarion” initially praised this work. Dostoevsky was warmly received into Belinsky’s circle and became famous before the publication of the novel by N. A. Nekrasov in January 1846. Everyone started talking about the “new Gogol”.

Many years later, Dostoevsky recalled Belinsky’s words in “A Writer’s Diary”:
““The truth was revealed and proclaimed to you as an artist, it was given to you as a gift, so appreciate your gift and remain faithful and you will be a great writer!..”
… It was the most delightful minute of my entire life. In hard labor, remembering it, I strengthened my spirit. — Dostoevsky F. M. “Diary of a Writer” 1877. January. Ch. 2. § 4″
However, the next work, “The Double,” was met with misunderstanding. According to D. V. Grigorovich, the enthusiastic recognition and elevation of Dostoevsky “almost to the degree of genius” gave way to disappointment and discontent. Belinsky changed his first favorable attitude towards the aspiring writer. Critics of the “natural school” wrote sarcastically about Dostoevsky as a newly-minted and unrecognized genius. Belinsky was unable to appreciate the innovation of “The Double,” which M. M. Bakhtin wrote about only many years later. In addition to the “furious Vissarion,” only the novice and promising critic V. N. Maikov gave a positive assessment of Dostoevsky’s first two works.

Dostoevsky’s close relationship with Belinsky’s circle ended in a break after a clash with I. S. Turgenev at the end of 1846. At the same time, Dostoevsky finally fell out with the editors of Sovremennik, represented by N. A. Nekrasov, and began to publish in A. A. Kraevsky’s “Notes of the Fatherland.”
Great fame allowed Dostoevsky to significantly expand his circle of acquaintances. Many acquaintances became the prototypes of the heroes of the writer’s future works; others were connected by many years of friendship, close ideological views, literature and journalism.

In January-February 1846, Dostoevsky, at the invitation of the critic V.N. Maikov, visited the literary salon of N.A. Maikov, where he met I.A. Goncharov. Alexey Nikolaevich Beketov, with whom Dostoevsky studied at the Engineering School, introduced the writer to his brothers. From the end of winter — beginning of spring 1846, Dostoevsky became a member of the literary and philosophical circle of the Beketov brothers (Alexey, Andrei and Nikolai), which included the poet A. N. Maikov, critic V. N. Maikov, A. N. Pleshcheev, friend and the writer’s doctor S.D. Yanovsky, D.V. Grigorovich and others. In the fall of the same year, members of this circle formed an “association” with the general economy, which lasted until February 1847. In the circle of new acquaintances, Dostoevsky found true friends who helped the writer find himself again after a disagreement with members of Belinsky’s circle. On November 26, 1846, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Mikhail that good friends the Beketovs and others “cured me with their company.”

In the spring of 1846, A. N. Pleshcheev introduced Dostoevsky to an admirer of Charles Fourier, M. V. Petrashevsky. But Dostoevsky began attending “Fridays” organized by Petrashevsky from the end of January 1847, where the main issues discussed were freedom of printing, changes in legal proceedings and the emancipation of peasants. There were several independent circles among the Petrashevites. Dostoevsky attended the literary and musical circle of S. F. Durov, which consisted of participants in the “Fridays” who differed from Petrashevsky in their political views.

Dostoevsky at the age of 26, drawing by K. Trutovsky, Italian pencil, paper, (1847), (GLM).
In the fall of 1848, Dostoevsky met N. A. Speshnev, who called himself a communist, around whom the seven most radical Petrashevites soon rallied, forming a special secret society. Dostoevsky became a member of this society, whose goal was to create an illegal printing house and carry out a revolution in Russia. In S. F. Durov’s circle, Dostoevsky read the forbidden “Letter from Belinsky to Gogol” several times. Shortly after the publication of White Nights, in the early morning of April 23, 1849, the writer, along with many Petrashevites, was arrested and spent 8 months in prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The investigation into the Petrashevites case remained in the dark about the existence of the Speshnev seven. This became known many years later from the memoirs of the poet A. N. Maikov. During interrogations, Dostoevsky provided the investigation with a minimum of incriminating information.

Although Dostoevsky denied the charges against him, the court recognized him as “one of the most important criminals.”

The military court finds the defendant Dostoevsky guilty of the fact that, having received in March of this year from Moscow from the nobleman Pleshcheev… a copy of the criminal letter of the writer Belinsky, he read this letter in meetings: first with the defendant Durov, then with the defendant Petrashevsky. Therefore, the military court sentenced him for failure to report the dissemination of a criminal letter about religion and government from the writer Belinsky… to deprive him, on the basis of the Code of Military Resolutions… of his ranks and all the rights of his state, and subject him to the death penalty by shooting.

The young Dostoevsky suffered more from an excess of ideas and plots than from a lack of material. The works of the first period of Dostoevsky’s work belonged to various genres: a humorous story («Novel in Nine Letters», 1845), a physiological essay (feuilletons of the «Petersburg Chronicle», 1847), a short story («Mr. Prokharchin» (1846), «Crawlers» (1847) , “The Honest Thief” (1848)), a Christmas story (“The Christmas Tree and the Wedding”, 1848), a story (“The Mistress” (1847), “A Weak Heart” (1848), “White Nights” (1848)), a novel — the epistolary novel “Poor People” (1845) and the unfinished novel of education “Netochka Nezvanova” (1848-1849).
In the Alekseevsky ravelin, Dostoevsky wrote the story “The Little Hero” (1849). Many creative endeavors and plans of the young writer found their wider embodiment in his subsequent work.

Hard labor and exile
The trial and harsh sentence to death on December 22, 1849 on the Semyonovsky parade ground was framed as a mock execution. At the last moment, the convicts were given a pardon and sentenced to hard labor. One of those sentenced to execution, Nikolai Grigoriev, went crazy. Dostoevsky conveyed the feelings that he might experience before his execution in the words of Prince Myshkin in one of the monologues in the novel “The Idiot.”

Execution ceremony at Semenovsky parade ground
Most likely, the writer’s political views began to change while still in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Thus, the Petrashevite F.N. Lvov remembered the words of Dostoevsky, spoken before the demonstration execution on the Semyonovsky parade ground to Speshnev: “Nous serons avec le Christ” (We will be with Christ), to which he replied: “Un peu poussiere” (A handful of ashes).

During a short stay in Tobolsk from January 10 to January 20, 1850, on the way to the place of hard labor, the wives of the exiled Decembrists Zh. A. Muravyova, P. E. Annenkova and N. D. Fonvizina arranged a meeting of the writer with other Petrashevites being transported and presented each with the Gospel money discreetly pasted into the binding. Dostoevsky kept his copy of the Gospel all his life as a relic.

Dostoevsky spent the next four years in hard labor in Omsk. Apart from Dostoevsky, none of the Russian writers of the 19th century went through the harsh school of hard labor. The prisoners were deprived of the right to correspond, but while in the infirmary, the writer was able to secretly keep notes in the so-called “Siberian notebook” (“my convict notebook”). The impressions from his stay in prison were later reflected in the story “Notes from the House of the Dead.” It took Dostoevsky years to break the hostile alienation towards himself as a nobleman, after which the prisoners began to accept him as one of their own. The writer’s first biographer, O. F. Miller, believed that hard labor became “a lesson in people’s truth for Dostoevsky.”

The first medical diagnosis of his illness as epilepsy dates back to the time the writer was in hard labor, which is clear from the attached certificate of doctor Ermakov to Dostoevsky’s 1858 petition for resignation addressed to Alexander II.
In 1850, the Polish magazine “Warsaw Library” (Biblioteka Warszawska) published excerpts from the novel “Poor People” and a positive review of it.
Memoirs of eyewitnesses to the hard labor life of the writer — participant in the Polish uprising Simon Tokarzhevsky and the writer P. K. Martyanov (1827-1899) have been preserved.
“Freedom, new life, Sunday from the dead” came at the end of January 1854.
After his release from prison, Dostoevsky spent about a month in Omsk, where he met and became friends with Chokan Valikhanov, the future famous Kazakh traveler and ethnographer.

At the end of February 1854, Dostoevsky was sent as a private to the 7th Siberian Line Battalion in Semipalatinsk. There, in the spring of the same year, he began an affair with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, who was married to a local official, Alexander Ivanovich Isaev, a bitter drunkard. After some time, Isaev was transferred to the position of tavern caretaker in Kuznetsk. On August 14, 1855, Fyodor Mikhailovich received a letter from Kuznetsk: M.D. Isaeva’s husband died after a long illness.

On February 18, 1855, Emperor Nicholas I died. Dostoevsky wrote a loyal poem dedicated to his widow, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and as a result became a non-commissioned officer.

This opinion is not entirely true and is based on rumors. For the writer, what was more important was not receiving a rank, but the highest permission to publish. The promotion to non-commissioned officer was based on the order of the Minister of War in connection with the manifesto of March 27, 1855, commemorating the beginning of the reign of Alexander II and the granting of benefits and favors to a number of convicted criminals. The commander of the separate Siberian Corps, Infantry General G. Kh. Gasfort, petitioned for Dostoevsky’s promotion to non-commissioned officer.

All three of Dostoevsky’s “loyal” poems (“On European events in 1854,” “On July 1, 1855,” “On the coronation and conclusion of peace”) were not published during the writer’s lifetime. Dostoevsky’s first published work after hard labor and exile was the story “The Little Hero” (“Otechestvennye zapiski”, 1857, No. 8), which took place after a complete amnesty.

Hoping for a pardon from the new Emperor Alexander II, Fyodor Mikhailovich writes a letter to his old acquaintance, hero of the Sevastopol defense, Adjutant General Eduard Ivanovich Totleben, asking him to intercede for him before the Emperor. This letter was delivered to St. Petersburg by the writer’s friend Baron A.E. Wrangel. E.I. Totleben achieved a certain pardon at a personal audience with the emperor. However, Alexander II ordered secret surveillance of the writer until he was completely convinced of his trustworthiness. On October 20, 1856, Dostoevsky was promoted to ensign.

On February 6, 1857, Dostoevsky married Maria Isaeva in the Russian Orthodox Church in Kuznetsk. A week after the wedding, the newlyweds went to Semipalatinsk and stayed for four days in Barnaul with P.P. Semenov, where Dostoevsky had an epileptic seizure. On February 20, 1857, Dostoevsky and his wife returned to Semipalatinsk.

Pardon for Dostoevsky (i.e., complete amnesty and permission to publish) was announced by the highest decree on April 17, 1857, according to which the rights of the nobility were returned to both the Decembrists and all Petrashevites.

The period of imprisonment and military service was a turning point in Dostoevsky’s life: from a “seeker of truth in man” who had not yet decided in life, he turned into a deeply religious person, whose only ideal for the rest of his life was Jesus Christ.

In 1859, Dostoevsky’s stories “Uncle’s Dream” were published in the magazine “Russian Word” and “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” in the magazine “Otechestvennye Zapiski”.

After the link
On June 30, 1859, Dostoevsky was given temporary ticket No. 2030, allowing him to travel to Tver, and on July 2, the writer left Semipalatinsk. At the end of December 1859, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg with his wife and adopted son Pavel, but secret surveillance of the writer did not stop until the mid-1870s.
In 1860, a two-volume collected works of Dostoevsky was published. However, since contemporaries were unable to give a worthy assessment to the stories “Uncle’s Dream” and “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants,” Dostoevsky needed a second high-profile literary debut, which was the publication of “Notes from the House of the Dead.” This innovative work, the exact definition of the genre of which literary scholars have still not been able to define, stunned Russian readers. For contemporaries, the Notes turned out to be a revelation. Before Dostoevsky, no one touched on the topic of depicting the life of convicts. This work alone was enough for the writer to take his rightful place in both Russian and world literature. In Notes from the House of the Dead, Dostoevsky appeared as a Russian Dante descending into hell. A. I. Herzen tried to translate this work into English, but due to the complexity of the translation, the publication was not carried out.
From the beginning of 1861, Fyodor Mikhailovich helped his brother Mikhail publish his own literary and political magazine “Time”, after the closure of which in 1863 the brothers began publishing the magazine “Epoch”. On the pages of these magazines appeared such works by Dostoevsky as “The Humiliated and Insulted,” “Notes from the House of the Dead,” “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions,” and “Notes from the Underground.” Collaboration in the magazines “Time” and “Epoch” marked the beginning of Dostoevsky’s journalistic activity, and joint work with N. N. Strakhov and A. A. Grigoriev contributed to the formation of the Dostoevsky brothers in the positions of pochvennichestvo.

Dostoevsky took a trip abroad with the young emancipated person Apollinaria Suslova, in Baden-Baden he became interested in the ruinous game of roulette, felt a constant need for money, and at the same time (1864) lost his wife and brother. During this period, the socialist illusions of youth are being destroyed (the basis of which were European socialist theories), and the writer’s critical perception of bourgeois-liberal values ​​is being formed. Dostoevsky’s thoughts on this matter will subsequently be reflected in “The Diary of a Writer.”

Creativity flourishes

“Crime and Punishment” in “Russian Bulletin” by M. N. Katkov
Literary scholars include the so-called “great pentateuch” among the most significant works of the writer, which includes the mature novels “Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, “Demons”, “Teenager” and “The Brothers Karamazov”.

In addition, the authorship of F. M. Dostoevsky belongs to the innovative idea in form and content of the publication of “The Diary of a Writer”, in which for the first time replies to letters from readers from all over Russia, works of art, literary criticism, memoirs, essays on topical political and social topics were published.

Six months after his brother’s death, publication of The Epoch ceased (February 1865). Having assumed responsibility for the debt obligations of the Epoch and experiencing financial difficulties, Dostoevsky was forced to agree to the enslaving terms of the contract for the publication of collected works with the publisher F. T. Stellovsky and began working on the novel Crime and Punishment. The first chapters were sent to M. N. Katkov directly to the typesetting of the conservative magazine “Russian Messenger”, where they were published in January and February 1866, and were published from issue to issue. Dostoevsky could finish the novel by the end of the year.

However, according to the strict terms of the “draconian contract”, under the threat of losing copyrights and royalties for his publications for 9 years in favor of the publisher F. T. Stellovsky, the writer had to provide a new unpublished novel by November 1, 1866. Dostoevsky was in a borderline situation when it was physically impossible to write a new novel in such a short time. Quite by chance, the writer’s friend A.P. Milyukov came to the rescue, who, to speed up the process of creating the novel “The Player,” found the best stenographer Anna Grigorievna Snitkina.

Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya (née Snitkina)
The rough work on the novel took 26 days from October 4 to October 29 and took place in St. Petersburg on the corner of Malaya Meshchanskaya and Stolyarny Lane, and not in Baden-Baden, as evidenced by the inscription under the bas-relief of Dostoevsky “The novel “The Player” was written here.” Perhaps it was not by chance that the writer chose this place where the events described in M. Yu. Lermontov’s story “Stoss” took place, and Raskolnikov “lived”.

Soon after handing over the manuscript of the novel “The Gambler” to the publisher, Dostoevsky proposed marriage to Anna Grigorievna. On February 15, 1867, the sacrament of wedding of Dostoevsky and A.G. Snitkina took place in the Trinity Cathedral.
The novel “Crime and Punishment” was paid for very well by Katkov, but so that the creditors would not take this money, the writer went abroad with his new wife. The trip is reflected in the diary that Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya began to keep in 1867. On the way to Germany, the couple stopped for several days in Vilna.
The second wife Anna Grigorievna arranged the writer’s life, taking charge of the family’s finances, and in 1871 Dostoevsky gave up roulette forever.
From 1872 to 1878, the writer lived in the city of Staraya Russa, Novgorod province. These years of my life were very fruitful. At that time, the following were created: 1872 — «Demons», 1873 — the beginning of the «Diary of a Writer» (a series of feuilletons, essays, polemical notes and passionate journalistic notes on the topic of the day), 1875 — «Teenager», 1876 — «The Meek».
In October 1878, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg, where he settled in an apartment in a house on Kuznechny Lane, 5/2, in which he lived until the day of his death on January 28 (February 9), 1881. Here in 1880 he finished writing his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Currently, the apartment houses the Literary and Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky.
In the last few years of his life, two events became particularly significant for Dostoevsky. In 1878, Emperor Alexander II invited the writer to his home to introduce him to his family. However, at the meeting Dostoevsky did not observe etiquette. In 1880, just a year before his death, in Moscow, at the Noble Assembly, Dostoevsky made a famous speech dedicated to the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow.
During these same years, the writer became close to conservative journalists, publicists and thinkers, and corresponded with the prominent statesman K. P. Pobedonostsev.

Death and funeral

On January 26 (February 7), 1881, Dostoevsky’s sister Vera Mikhailovna came to the Dostoevskys’ house to ask her brother to give up his share of the Ryazan estate, which he inherited from his aunt A.F. Kumanina, in favor of the sisters. According to the story of Lyubov Fedorovna Dostoevskaya, there was a stormy scene with explanations and tears, after which Dostoevsky’s throat began to bleed. Perhaps this unpleasant conversation became the impetus for the exacerbation of his illness (emphysema) — the writer died two days later.
After the news of Dostoevsky’s death, the apartment was filled with crowds of people who came to say goodbye to the great writer. There were many young people among those who said goodbye. The artist I. N. Kramskoy painted a posthumous portrait of the writer in pencil and ink. I. N. Kramskoy was able to convey the feeling imprinted in the memory of A. G. Dostoevskaya: “The face of the deceased was calm, and it seemed that he had not died, but was sleeping and smiling in his sleep at some “great truth” that he had now recognized.” These words of the writer’s widow are reminiscent of lines from Dostoevsky’s speech about Pushkin: “Pushkin died in the full development of his powers and undoubtedly took some great secret with him to the grave. And now we are solving this mystery without him.”

The number of deputations exceeded the stated number. The procession to the burial site stretched for a mile. The coffin was carried in their arms. A. I. Palm, the first biographer of the writer O. F. Miller, P. A. Gaideburov, K. N. Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Vl. Soloviev, student D.I. Kozyrev, student Pavlovsky, P.V. Bykov.
F. M. Dostoevsky was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.
Despite the fame that Dostoevsky gained at the end of his life, truly enduring, worldwide fame came to him after his death. In particular, Friedrich Nietzsche recognized that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom he could learn something (Twilight of the Idols).

Family and environment
Geneva, the house where Dostoevsky lived in 1868.
The house in which Dostoevsky’s apartment was located. Now there is a museum here. St. Petersburg, Kuznechny lane, 5/2.
Fyodor Mikhailovich was the second child in the Dostoevsky family, in which, besides him, seven children were born:

Mikhail (1820—1864)
Varvara (1822-1893), married to Karepin
Andrey (1825—1897)
Vera (1829-1896), married to Ivanov
Lyubov (1829-1829) — Vera’s twin, died shortly after birth
Nikolai (1831— 1883)
Alexandra (1835-1889) married Golenovskaya
Dostoevsky’s elder brother Mikhail also became a writer, his work was marked by the influence of Fyodor Mikhailovich, and their work on the magazine «Time» was carried out to a large extent jointly. The older Dostoevsky brothers experienced a close family and spiritual connection. Mikhail’s death was a huge and difficult loss for the writer. F. M. Dostoevsky wrote an obituary “A few words about Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky”, took upon himself the payment of debt obligations and caring for his brother’s family.

Younger brother Andrei became an architect. F. M. Dostoevsky saw in his family a worthy example of family life. The brothers lived in different cities and saw each other rarely, but they never broke off family relations. A. M. Dostoevsky left valuable memories about his brother, some of which were used by the writer’s first biographer O. F. Miller. The image of a loving father in these “Memoirs” contradicts the characterization of Mikhail Andreevich as a gloomy and cruel serf owner hated by the peasants, which was established among many biographers under the influence of O. F. Miller and L. F. Dostoevskaya. Andrei Mikhailovich publicly denied rumors that Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy since childhood.

The second wife, Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya, was born into the family of a petty St. Petersburg official. By her own admission, she loved Dostoevsky even before meeting him. Anna Grigorievna became the writer’s wife at the age of 20, shortly after the completion of the novel “The Player”. At that time (late 1866 — early 1867) Dostoevsky was experiencing serious financial difficulties, because in addition to paying debts to creditors, he supported his stepson from his first marriage, Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev, and helped the family of his older brother. In addition, Dostoevsky did not know how to handle money. Under such circumstances, Anna Grigorievna took control of the family’s financial affairs into her own hands, protecting the writer from pesky creditors. After the death of the writer, A.G. Dostoevskaya recalled: “…my husband was in a financial grip all his life.” Dostoevsky dedicated his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, to his wife. After the death of the writer, Anna Grigorievna collected documents related to the life and work of Dostoevsky, was engaged in the publication of his works, and prepared her diaries and memoirs for publication.

From his second marriage to Anna Grigorievna, F. M. Dostoevsky had four children:
Daughter Sophia (1868 — 1868) was born in Geneva, where she died a few months later
Daughter Lyubov (1869 — 1926)
Son Fedor (1871-1922)
Son Alexey (1875-1878)
The writer’s family was continued by his son Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky. In 1876, Dostoevsky wrote to his wife: “Fedya has my <character>, my simplicity. Perhaps this is the only thing I can boast about…” A.G. Dostoevskaya recalled the Gospel donated by the wives of the Decembrists: “Two hours before his death, when the children came to his call, Fyodor Mikhailovich ordered the Gospel to be given to his son Fedya.”

The descendants of Fyodor Mikhailovich continue to live in St. Petersburg. In an interview with Itogi magazine, the writer’s great-grandson Dmitry Andreevich Dostoevsky said that he considers himself an amateur scholar.

Poetics of Dostoevsky
As O. M. Nogovitsyn showed in his work, Dostoevsky is the most prominent representative of “ontological,” “reflective” poetics, which, unlike traditional, descriptive poetics, leaves the character in a sense free in his relationship with the text that describes him ( that is, for him the world), which is manifested in the fact that he is aware of his relationship with him and acts based on it. Hence all the paradoxicality, inconsistency and inconsistency of Dostoevsky’s characters. If in traditional poetics the character always remains in the power of the author, always captured by the events happening to him (captured by the text), that is, remains entirely descriptive, fully included in the text, fully understandable, subordinate to causes and effects, the movement of the narrative, then in ontological poetics we are for the first time We are faced with a character who is trying to resist the textual elements, his subordination to the text, trying to “rewrite” it. With this approach, writing is not a description of a character in diverse situations and his positions in the world, but empathy for his tragedy — his willful reluctance to accept the text (the world), which is inescapably redundant in relation to him, potentially endless. For the first time, M. M. Bakhtin drew attention to such a special attitude of Dostoevsky towards his characters.

Political Views

F. M. Dostoevsky, 1879

During Dostoevsky’s life, at least two political movements were in conflict in the cultural strata of society — Slavophilism and Westernism, the essence of which is approximately as follows: adherents of the first argued that the future of Russia lies in nationality, Orthodoxy and autocracy, adherents of the second believed that Russians should follow the example of Europeans. Both of them reflected on the historical fate of Russia. Dostoevsky had his own idea — “soilism”. He was and remained a Russian man, inextricably linked with the people, but at the same time he did not deny the achievements of Western culture and civilization. Over time, Dostoevsky’s views developed: a former member of the circle of Christian utopian socialists, he turned into a religious conservative, and during his third stay abroad he finally became a convinced monarchist.

Dostoevsky later called his political views during the time of the Petrashevites “theoretical socialism” in the spirit of the Fourier system.

After his first trip to European countries in 1862, “Dostoevsky became an opponent of the spread of universal, pan-European progressivism in Russia,” speaking in the article “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions” (1863) with sharp criticism of Western European bourgeois society, which replaced freedom with “a million.”
Dostoevsky filled Herzen’s concept of “Russian socialism” with Christian content. Dostoevsky denied the division of society into classes and class struggle, believing that atheistic socialism cannot replace bourgeoisism, since it is not fundamentally different from it.
Compared to Russian liberals, Dostoevsky’s position was more liberal not in words, but in deeds, since in the magazines “Vremya”, “Epoch” and in the “Diary of a Writer” the writer gave the opportunity to freely express opposing opinions.
Russian political scientist L. V. Polyakov ranks F. M. Dostoevsky among the outstanding representatives of Russian conservatism.
The political views of F. M. Dostoevsky should be considered within the framework of the theory of official nationality (Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality).
Russian historian A.V. Repnikov attributes F.M. Dostoevsky’s pochvenism to Slavophilism and Russian conservatism.

Pochvenism is discussed most thoroughly in the monographs of the Polish political scientist Andrzej de Lazari and the Canadian historian Wayne Dowler.
Despite his opposition to Slavophilism, the writer himself considered himself one of the Slavophiles who advocated the unification of all Slavs (Pan-Slavism):
“In many ways I have purely Slavophile convictions, although perhaps I am not entirely a Slavophile”; “And finally, for still others, Slavophilism, in addition to this unification of the Slavs under the leadership of Russia, means and contains the spiritual union of all believers in the fact that our great Russia, at the head of the united Slavs, will tell the whole world, all European humanity and its civilization its new , a healthy and still unheard word in the world. This word will be spoken for the good and truly to unite all mankind in a new, fraternal, worldwide union, the beginnings of which lie in the genius of the Slavs, and mainly in the spirit of the great Russian people, who suffered for so long, doomed to silence for so many centuries, but always concluded in great strength for the future clarification and resolution of many bitter and most fatal misunderstandings of Western European civilization. It is to this section of the convinced and believers that I belong” — F. M. Dostoevsky, “The Diary of a Writer.” 1877 July August. Ch. 2. Confessions of a Slavophile »
On the part of F. M. Dostoevsky’s opponents, his political views were interpreted at different times as retrograde, reactionary, nationalism, chauvinism, or as anachronisms, anti-Semitism, rabid Black Hundreds.
F. M. Dostoevsky became known as a retrograde and reactionary after the publication of the novel “Demons,” when part of the educated public supported the views of nihilists, populists and revolutionary democrats.
This opinion was supported by the work of N. K. Mikhailovsky “Cruel Talent”, the epigraphs of which included quotes from the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, indicating a misinterpretation of their ideological orientation.

Philosophy of Dostoevsky
Little is known to the modern public about Dostoevsky as a philosopher, since nowadays even some graduates of philosophy faculties are surprised: “we didn’t study this.” Only a few poorly accessible studies have been published on this topic: the Russian philosopher A. Z. Steinberg, “The System of Freedom of F. M. Dostoevsky” (1923) and the German researcher Reinhard Lauth, “The Philosophy of Dostoevsky in a Systematic Presentation” (1950, translated into Russian language 1996).
A. Z. Steinberg wrote: ““The feat of knowledge of good and evil” — this is what, in the words of Dostoevsky himself, the author imagines the entire life path of the national philosopher of Russia.” “In the person of Dostoevsky, national philosophy in Russia became a historical fact.”
R. Lauth considers Dostoevsky as a Russian religious philosopher.

A. V. Gulyga describes the three main erroneous approaches of critics and prejudices in the perception of the work of the Russian writer:
Dostoevsky is not a philosopher (Michael Hagemeister);
Dostoevsky’s philosophy glorifies evil (L. Shestov and Z. Freud);
Dostoevsky’s work is a platform for both the evil and the good principles in man, which is derived from M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of the “polyphonicity” of the writer’s novels. At the same time, critics who give negative assessments of Dostoevsky’s personality and creativity forget the words of M. M. Bakhtin that among the polyphony of characters on the pages of works, the main and decisive voice is the voice of God in the author’s soul.
According to A.V. Gulyga, the opinions of L. Shestov and Z. Freud are the sources of blasphemy against Dostoevsky. Russian philosopher?. ?. Maslin believes that “contrary to popular belief, which was shared by S. Freud, Dostoevsky was not a philosopher of pessimism and despair.”

By denying Dostoevsky a feeling of pity and compassion, forgetting about his call for humility, the writer’s detractors distort his true portrait.

Dostoevsky did not become the creator of his own complete philosophical system from the point of view of the formal approach of the Western (German) idea of ​​philosophy. For this, the writer had neither a highly specialized education nor the desire, since he chose literature as his main field of life. However, the writer’s works of art and journalism contain fundamental philosophical ideas that became the foundation of Russian classical philosophy, which took shape in the 2nd half of the 19th century.

The works of F. M. Dostoevsky contain the quintessence of Russian national identity. Philosophical ideas permeate “Notes from Underground” and the novels of the “Great Pentateuch”, where the writer outlined his religious philosophy, Christian anthropology and ethics.

Dostoevsky first formulated the concept of “Russian idea”, which became one of the foundations of Russian philosophizing.

In “The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor,” which V.V. Rozanov called a philosophical poem, Dostoevsky expressed the idea of ​​​​combining free will with absolute moral law. The Grand Inquisitor denies Christ and does not believe in man and his spiritual nature.

The main philosophical problem for Dostoevsky was the problem of man, the solution of which he struggled with all his life. This question occupied the writer already in his youth, about which he wrote to his brother Mikhail on August 16, 1839: “Man is a mystery. It needs to be solved, and if you spend your whole life solving it, don’t say you wasted your time; I am engaged in this mystery because I want to be a man.”

The speech about Pushkin became the philosophical testament of the Russian writer: the “worldwide responsiveness” of the Russian person was embodied in the national genius Pushkin. The Russian national ideal of “all-humanity” does not bear hostility to the West. Dostoevsky’s speech about Pushkin strengthened the authority of the writer as the ruler of the thoughts of Russian society and, unfortunately, for a short time reconciled the two opposing camps of Westerners and Slavophiles.
Dostoevsky had a great influence on the formation of the philosophy of existentialism, personalism and Freudianism.
“Dostoevsky took part in understanding the main philosophical and social aspirations of his time — from socialism to Solovyov’s philosophy of unity and the religious-philosophical project?. Fedorov (1829–1903)».
During Soviet times, Dostoevsky’s philosophy was ignored or subject to criticism.

Assessments of Dostoevsky’s creativity and personality
Dostoevsky’s work had a great influence on Russian and world culture. The writer’s literary heritage is assessed differently both at home and abroad.

In Russian criticism, the most positive assessment of Dostoevsky was given by religious philosophers.
And he loved, first of all, the living human soul in everything and everywhere, and he believed that we are all the race of God, he believed in the infinite power of the human soul, triumphing over all external violence and over all internal fall. Having accepted into his soul all the malice of life, all the hardship and darkness of life and overcoming all this with the infinite power of love, Dostoevsky proclaimed this victory in all his creations. Having experienced the divine power in the soul, breaking through all human weakness, Dostoevsky came to the knowledge of God and the God-man. The reality of God and Christ was revealed to him in the inner power of love and forgiveness, and he preached this same all-forgiving power of grace as the basis for the external realization on earth of that kingdom of truth, which he longed for and to which he strove all his life.
— V.S. Solovyov. Three speeches in memory of Dostoevsky. 1881-1883
Dostoevsky’s personality is ambiguously assessed by some liberal and democratic figures, in particular the leader of the liberal populists N.K. Mikhailovsky and Maxim Gorky.

It is indisputable and undeniable: Dostoevsky is a genius, but it is our evil genius. He amazingly deeply felt, understood and depicted with pleasure two diseases brought up in the Russian man by his ugly history, difficult and offensive life: the sadistic cruelty of a disappointed nihilist in everything and — its opposite — the masochism of a downtrodden, intimidated creature, capable of enjoying his suffering, not without gloating, however, showing off to everyone and to himself.
— M. Gorky. About “Karamazovism”. 1913
During the Soviet era
Dostoevsky did not fit into the framework of official Marxist literary criticism, since he opposed violent methods of revolutionary struggle, preached Christianity and opposed atheism. Lenin could not and did not want to waste precious time reading the writer’s novels, but after the well-known winged comparison with the “arch-nasty Dostoevsky,” revolutionary literary critics had to follow the leader’s precepts.

Marxist-Leninist literary criticism could not help but regard Dostoevsky as a class enemy, a counter-revolutionary. But by that time the writer’s work had become widely known and was highly appreciated in the West. In the conditions of the construction of proletarian culture, revolutionary literary criticism was forced to throw Dostoevsky off the ship of modernity, or adapt his work to the requirements of ideology, passing over acute inconvenient questions in silence.

Therefore, the words of the formal school theorist V. B. Shklovsky, “Dostoevsky’s work fell under the heavy waves of history, under the heavy pressure of the leaden letters of time,” can be perceived not so much as the time before the victory of the proletarian revolution, but rather as after it. The writer stumbled, became confused, and did not follow the path that Lenin indicated.

In 1921, A.V. Lunacharsky, in a speech at a celebration in honor of the centenary of the birth of F.M. Dostoevsky, ranked him among the great writers, among the great prophets of Russia. The First People’s Commissar of Education of the RSFSR announced the discovery of parts of the novel “Demons”, unpublished in Dostoevsky’s lifetime editions for censorship reasons, and assured: “Now these chapters will be published.” The chapter “At Tikhon’s,” which radically changes the perception of the image of Stavrogin and the idea of ​​the novel, was published as an appendix in the complete collection of works of art by F. M. Dostoevsky in 1926.

Perception abroad
At the same time, in the West, where Dostoevsky’s novels have been popular since the beginning of the twentieth century, his work had a significant influence on such generally liberal-minded movements as existentialism, expressionism and surrealism. In the preface to the anthology “Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre,” Walter Kaufmann wrote that Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground” already contained the prerequisites for the emergence of existentialism.
Dostoevsky’s reflections greatly influenced Camus, without whom neither The Stranger, nor The Myth of Sisyphus, nor The Rebel would have been unthinkable.

Many literary critics see it as the forerunner of existentialism.
However, abroad, Dostoevsky is usually assessed primarily as an outstanding writer and psychologist, while his ideology is ignored or almost completely rejected in the statement of Andrzej Wajda, who admired “Dostoevsky the artist, categorically distanced himself from Dostoevsky the ideologist: “I hate him for nationalism, for his unjustified conviction that Russia must tell the world some kind of “new Word”, that the Russian God must reign throughout the world, that Orthodoxy has some greater rights than other religions. All this, together with his contempt and hatred for the Poles, Germans, French — this nationalistic narrow-mindedness — all this, of course, repels me in Dostoevsky.”
Dostoevsky’s work had a great influence on the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.
Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientific thinker, more than Gauss.

Dostoevsky showed us life, that’s true; but its purpose was to draw our attention to the mystery of spiritual existence…
— Kuznetsov B. G.

Dostoevshchina in literature
The name of F. M. Dostoevsky is associated with the concept of Dostoevshchina, recorded in the dictionary of D. N. Ushakov in 1935 with the mark “journalism” and having two meanings:

1. Psychological analysis in the manner of Dostoevsky (with a touch of condemnation).
2. Mental imbalance, acute and contradictory emotional experiences characteristic of the heroes of Dostoevsky’s novels.
In young Soviet Russia, other derogatory labels were used for the works of both pre-revolutionary (nobles) and modern authors: “Oneginism”, “Oblomovism”, “Karazovism”, “Bulgakovism”.

This concept had a completely different connotation in the message of the director of the production of M. A. Bulgakov’s play “Run”, which was being prepared in 1928, I. Ya. Sudakov: “Now in the play, Khludov leaves only under the influence of conscience (Dostoevschina) ….”

Literary critic A. A. Dolinin examined the phenomenon of Dostoevshchina in the article “Nabokov, Dostoevsky and Dostoevshchina,” in particular, regarding V. V. Nabokov’s novel “Despair.”
The influence of Dostoevsky was clearly felt in Soviet prose of the 20s: in the novel by L. M. Leonov “The Thief”, in the books of I. G. Erenburg, in “The Naked Year” by B. A. Pilnyak, in “Memoirs of a Freckled Man” by A. Sobol, in “The Philistine Adameyko” by M. E. Kozakov, etc. In a 1926 report on “The Brothers Karamazov,” V. V. Nabokov discussed “the reasons for the insignificance of Soviet literature,” and found traces of “the vulgarized Dostoevsky” and the idea of ​​a broad “ Slavic soul» in his spirit by F.V. Gladkov, L.N. Seifullina, B.A. Pilnyak, L.M. Leonov and M.M. Zoshchenko. Both in this report and in the novel Despair, “the polemic is directed not so much against Dostoevsky as against the “modern attitude towards him” — against his interpreters and epigones, guilty of “gloomy Dostoevism.” A. A. Dolinin lists examples of “Dostoevschina” parodied by Nabokov: short stories by V. Ya. Bryusov, L. N. Andreev’s story “Thought”, “The Pale Horse” by B. V. Savinkov, tavern scenes in “Petersburg” by A. Bely and his “Notes of an Eccentric”, A. N. Tolstoy’s anti-emigrant story “The Manuscript Found Under the Bed”, a number of works by Soviet prose writers of the 1920s. According to Dolinin, the main model for Nabokov’s parodies of modern “Dostoevschina” was I. G. Ehrenburg’s story “Summer of 1925.”

It is worth paying attention to the fact that the tangible presence of Dostoevsky’s traditions is neither in Western European literature of the first half. XX century (F. Kafka, G. Meyrink, T. Mann, S. Zweig in German literature, P. Bourget, A. Gide, J. Bernanos, A. Camus in French literature), nor among the heirs of the philosophy of the existentialist writer A. Camus and J.P. Sartre were not called “Dostoevschina”.

Soviet literary scholars Yu. F. Karyakin and L. A. Shubin wrote about “Dostoevshchina”.

It is very significant that D.P. Mirsky was not an adherent of Dostoevsky’s work, but in his academic article about the writer in his “History of Russian Literature” (1926) he did not use the term “Dostoevshchina”. V.V. Nabokov considered the work of D.P. Mirsky “the best history of Russian literature in any language, including Russian,” but in 1981 he spoke of “Notes from the Underground” as the quintessence of Dostoevsky. Russian philosopher?. Maslin believes that in Notes from Underground Dostoevsky outlined his religious philosophy, Christian anthropology and ethics.

Dostoevsky and music
A short list presents the most significant works. The influence of Dostoevsky’s creativity on the creation of musical works is described in more detail in A. A. Gozenpud’s monograph “Dostoevsky and Music.”
Opera “Yolka” — the first musical opus based on the works of F. M. Dostoevsky was a one-act opera in 3 scenes “Yolka” (based on the fairy tale “The Little Match Girl” by Andersen and Dostoevsky’s story “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree”) by the Russian composer V. . I. Rebikova, op. 21, 1900. First performances: October 30, 1903, enterprise of M. E. Medvedev, Aquarium Theater, Moscow; 1905, Kharkov; 1906, Prague.
The opera “The Gambler” — Russian composer S. S. Prokofiev completed the first version of the work based on the novel of the same name by F. M. Dostoevsky in 1916. After revision, the first production of the 2nd version of the opera was presented in 1929 in Brussels in French (Le Joueur, op. 24, 1927). The opera premiered in Moscow in 1974.
The opera “From the House of the Dead” (Z mrtveho domu) is the last opera by Czech composer Leoš Janáček based on his own libretto based on the novel “Notes from the House of the Dead” by F. M. Dostoevsky. The first production took place posthumously in 1930 at the National Theater in Brno. This is one of the best musical embodiments of Dostoevsky’s work, as well as the opera “The Gambler” by S. S. Prokofiev.
Oratorio The Great Inquisitor (Der Gro?inquisitor) for baritone, choir and orchestra, composed in 1942 by the German composer Boris Blacher.
Opera Raskolnikoff — Swiss composer Heinrich Sutermeister wrote an opera in 2 acts to a libretto by Peter Sutermeister in German based on Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. The premiere took place on October 14, 1948 at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. The composer embodied Raskolnikov’s split personality on stage, giving the hero the tenor part. Raskolnikov’s second “I” is performed by a baritone.

Fyodor Dostoevsky bibliography

Novels and novellas

(1846) Poor Folk
(1846) The Double
(1847) The Landlady (novella)
(1849) Netochka Nezvanova (unfinished)
(1859) Uncle’s Dream (novella)
(1859) The Village of Stepanchikovo
(1861) Humiliated and Insulted
(1862) The House of the Dead
(1864) Notes from Underground (novella)
(1866) Crime and Punishment
(1867) The Gambler
(1869) The Idiot
(1870) The Eternal Husband
(1872) Demons (also titled: The Possessed, The Devils)
(1875) The Adolescent
(1880) The Brothers Karamazov

Short stories

(1846) «Mr. Prokharchin»
(1847) «Novel in Nine Letters»
(1848) «Another Man’s Wife and a Husband Under the Bed» (merger of «Another Man’s Wife» and «A Jealous Husband»)
(1848) «A Weak Heart»
(1848) «Polzunkov»
(1848) «An Honest Thief»
(1848) «A Christmas Tree and a Wedding»
(1848) «White Nights»
(1849) «A Little Hero»
(1862) «A Nasty Story»
(1865) «The Crocodile»
(1873) «Bobok»
(1876) «The Heavenly Christmas Tree» (also titled: «The Beggar Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree»)[220]
(1876) «A Gentle Creature» (also titled: «The Meek One»)
(1876) «The Peasant Marey»
(1877) «The Dream of a Ridiculous Man»

Essay collections

Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863)
A Writer’s Diary (1873–1881)

Translations

(1843) Eugénie Grandet (Honoré de Balzac)
(1843) La dernière Aldini (George Sand)
(1843) Mary Stuart (Friedrich Schiller)

Personal letters

(1912) Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Author), translator Ethel Colburn Mayne Kessinger Publishing, LLC (26 May 2006) ISBN 978-1-4286-1333-1

Posthumously published notebooks

(1922) Stavrogin’s Confession & the Plan of the Life of a Great Sinner – English translation by Virginia Woolf and S.S. Koteliansky