What did Dostoevsky write? The works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky - a brief overview. Biography of Dostoevsky

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Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821 in Moscow. His father, Mikhail Andreevich, came from the family of the Dostoevsky gentry of the Radvan coat of arms. He received a medical education and worked in the Borodino Infantry Regiment, the Moscow Military Hospital, and the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. The mother of the future famous writer, Maria Fedorovna Nechaeva, was the daughter of a metropolitan merchant.

Fedor's parents were not rich people, but they worked tirelessly to provide for their families and give their children a good education. Subsequently, Dostoevsky more than once admitted that he was immensely grateful to his father and mother for the excellent upbringing and education that cost them hard work.

The boy was taught to read by his mother, she used the book "104 Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testament" for this. This is partly why in Dostoevsky's famous book "The Brothers Karamazov" the character Zosima in one of the dialogues says that in childhood he learned to read precisely from this book.

Young Fyodor also mastered reading skills on the biblical Book of Job, which was also reflected in his subsequent works: the writer used his thoughts on this book when creating the famous novel "Teenager". The father also contributed to the education of his son, teaching him Latin.

In total, seven children were born in the Dostoevsky family. So, Fedor had an older brother, Mikhail, with whom he was especially close, and an older sister. In addition, he had younger brothers Andrei and Nikolai, as well as younger sisters Vera and Alexandra.

In his youth, Mikhail and Fedor were taught at home by N.I. Drashusov, teacher at the Alexander and Catherine's schools. With his help, the eldest sons of the Dostoevskys studied French, and the sons of the teacher, A.N. Drashusov and V.N. Drashusov, taught boys mathematics and literature, respectively. In the period from 1834 to 1837, Fedor and Mikhail continued their studies at the L.I. Chermak, which was then a very prestigious educational institution.

In 1837, a terrible thing happened: Maria Fedorovna Dostoevskaya died of consumption. Fedor at the time of his mother's death was only 16 years old. Left without a wife, Dostoevsky Sr. decided to send Fyodor and Mikhail to St. Petersburg, to the boarding house K.F. Kostomarov. The father wanted the boys to subsequently enter the Main Engineering School. Interestingly, both of Dostoevsky's eldest sons at that time were fond of literature and wanted to devote their lives to it, but their father did not take their passion seriously.

The boys did not dare to contradict the will of their father. Fedor Mikhailovich successfully completed his studies at the boarding school, entered the school and graduated from it, but he devoted all his free time to reading. , Hoffmann, Byron, Goethe, Schiller, Racine - he devoured the works of all these famous authors, instead of enthusiastically comprehending the basics of engineering science.

In 1838, Dostoevsky, together with friends, even organized their own literary circle at the Main Engineering School, which, in addition to Fyodor Mikhailovich, included Grigorovich, Beketov, Vitkovsky, Berezhetsky. Even then, the writer began to create his first works, but still did not dare to finally take the path of a writer. Having completed his studies in 1843, he even received the position of an engineer-lieutenant in the St. Petersburg engineering team, but did not last long in the service. In 1844, he decided to devote himself exclusively to literature and resigned.

The beginning of the creative path

Although the family did not approve of the decisions of the young Fedor, he diligently began to pore over the works he had begun earlier and develop new ideas. The year 1944 was marked for the beginning writer by the release of his first book, Poor People. The success of the work exceeded all expectations of the author. Critics and writers highly appreciated Dostoevsky's novel, the topics raised in the book resonated in the hearts of many readers. Fyodor Mikhailovich was accepted into the so-called "Belinsky circle", he began to be called the "new Gogol".

The book "Double": the first and modern edition

The success did not last long. About a year later, Dostoevsky presented the book The Double to the public, but it turned out to be incomprehensible to most admirers of the talent of the young genius. The enthusiasm and praise of the writer were replaced by criticism, dissatisfaction, disappointment and sarcasm. Subsequently, writers appreciated the innovation of this work, its dissimilarity to the novels of those years, but at the time the book was published, almost no one felt this.

Soon Dostoevsky quarreled with and was expelled from the “Belinsky circle”, and also quarreled with N.A. Nekrasov, editor of Sovremennik. However, the publication Otechestvennye Zapiski, edited by Andrei Kraevsky, immediately agreed to publish his works.

Nevertheless, the phenomenal popularity that his first publication brought to Fyodor Mikhailovich allowed him to make a number of interesting and useful contacts in the literary circles of St. Petersburg. Many of his new acquaintances partly became the prototypes for various characters in the author's subsequent works.

Arrest and hard labor

Fateful for the writer was the acquaintance with M.V. Petrashevsky in 1846. Petrashevsky arranged the so-called "Fridays", during which the abolition of serfdom, freedom of printing, progressive changes in the judicial system and other issues of a similar nature were discussed.

During the meetings, one way or another connected with the Petrashevites, Dostoevsky also met the communist Speshnev. In 1848, he organized a secret society of 8 people (including himself and Fyodor Mikhailovich), which advocated a coup in the country and the creation of an illegal printing house. At meetings of the Society, Dostoevsky repeatedly read Belinsky's Letter to Gogol, which was then banned.

In the same 1848, Fyodor Mikhailovich's novel "White Nights" was published, but, alas, he did not manage to enjoy the well-deserved fame. Those very connections with the radical youth played against the writer, and on April 23, 1849, he was arrested, like many other Petrashevites. Dostoevsky denied his guilt, but Belinsky's "criminal" letter was also remembered to him, on November 13, 1849, the writer was sentenced to death. Prior to that, he languished in prison for eight months in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Fortunately for Russian literature, the cruel sentence for Fyodor Mikhailovich was not carried out. On November 19, the audience general considered him to be inconsistent with Dostoevsky's guilt, in connection with which the death penalty was replaced with an eight-year hard labor. And at the end of the same month, the emperor softened the punishment even more: the writer was exiled to hard labor in Siberia for four years instead of eight. At the same time, he was deprived of his noble rank and fortune, and at the end of hard labor he was promoted to ordinary soldiers.

Despite all the hardships and hardships that such a sentence entailed, joining the soldiers meant the full return of Dostoevsky's civil rights. This was the first such case in Russia, since usually those people who were sentenced to hard labor lost their civil rights for the rest of their lives, even if they survived after many years of imprisonment and returned to a free life. Emperor Nicholas I took pity on the young writer and did not want to ruin his talent.

The years that Fyodor Mikhailovich spent in hard labor made an indelible impression on him. The writer had a hard time enduring suffering and loneliness. In addition, it took him a long time to establish normal communication with other prisoners: they did not accept him for a long time because of his noble title.

In 1856, the new emperor granted forgiveness to all Petrashevites, and in 1857 Dostoevsky was pardoned, that is, he received a full amnesty and was restored to the rights to publish his works. And if in his youth Fyodor Mikhailovich was a man undecided in his fate, trying to find the truth and build a system of life principles, then already at the end of the 1850s he became a mature, formed personality. The hard years in hard labor made him a deeply religious person, whom he remained until his death.

The heyday of creativity

In 1860, the writer published a two-volume collection of his works, which included the stories "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" and "Uncle's Dream". Approximately the same story happened to them as with the "Double" - although later the works were given a very high rating, their contemporaries did not like them. However, the publication of Notes from the House of the Dead, dedicated to the life of convicts and written mostly during his imprisonment, helped to return the attention of readers to the matured Dostoevsky.

Novel "Notes from the Dead House"

For many residents of the country who did not encounter this horror on their own, the work was almost a shock. Many people were stunned by what the author was talking about, especially considering that the topic of hard labor for Russian writers used to be something of a taboo. After that, Herzen began to call Dostoevsky "Russian Dante".

The year 1861 was also noteworthy for the writer. This year, in collaboration with his older brother Mikhail, he started publishing his own literary and political magazine called Vremya. In 1863, the publication was closed, and instead of it, the Dostoevsky brothers began to print another magazine - called Epoch.

These magazines, firstly, strengthened the positions of the brothers in the literary environment. And secondly, it was on their pages that “Humiliated and Insulted”, “Notes from the Underground”, “Notes from the House of the Dead”, “Bad Anecdote” and many other works of Fyodor Mikhailovich were published. Mikhail Dostoevsky soon died: he passed away in 1864.

In the 1860s, the writer began to travel abroad, finding inspiration in new and familiar places for his new novels. In particular, it was during that period that Dostoevsky conceived and began to realize the idea of the work "The Gambler".

In 1865, the Epoch magazine, which was steadily declining in subscriber numbers, had to be shut down. Moreover: even after the closure of the publication, the writer had an impressive amount of debt. In order to somehow get out of a difficult financial situation, he entered into an extremely unfavorable contract for the publication of a collection of his works with the publisher Stelovsky, and soon after that he began writing his most famous novel, Crime and Punishment. The philosophical approach to social motives was widely recognized among readers, and the novel glorified Dostoevsky during his lifetime.

Prince Myshkin performed

The next great book by Fyodor Mikhailovich was The Idiot, published in 1868. The idea of portraying a beautiful person who tries to make other characters happy, but cannot overcome the hostile forces and, as a result, suffers himself, turned out to be easy to translate into words only. In fact, Dostoevsky called The Idiot one of the most difficult books to write, although Prince Myshkin became his favorite character.

Having finished work on this novel, the author decided to write an epic called "Atheism" or "The Life of a Great Sinner." He failed to realize his idea, but some of the ideas collected for the epic formed the basis of the next three great books of Dostoevsky: the novel "Demons", written in 1871-1872, the work "Teenager", completed in 1875, and the novel "Brothers Karamazov”, which Dostoevsky completed in 1879-1880.

It is interesting that "Demons", in which the writer initially intended to express his disapproving attitude towards representatives of revolutionary movements in Russia, gradually changed in the course of writing. Initially, the author did not intend to make Stavrogin, who later became one of his most famous characters, the key character of the novel. But his image turned out to be so powerful that Fyodor Mikhailovich decided to change the idea and add real drama and tragedy to the political work.

If in "Demons", among other things, the theme of fathers and children was widely disclosed, then in the next novel - "Teenager" - the writer brought to the fore the issue of raising a grown-up child.

A peculiar result of the creative path of Fyodor Mikhailovich, a literary analogue of summing up, was The Brothers Karmazov. Many episodes, storylines, characters of this work were partly based on the writer's previously written novels, starting with his first published novel, Poor People.

Death

Dostoevsky died on January 28, 1881, the cause of death was chronic bronchitis, pulmonary tuberculosis and emphysema. Death overtook the writer in the sixtieth year of his life.

Grave of Fyodor Dostoevsky

Crowds of admirers of his talent came to say goodbye to the writer, but Fyodor Mikhailovich, his timeless novels and wise quotes, received the greatest fame after the death of the author.

Personal life

Dostoevsky's first wife was Maria Isaeva, whom he met shortly after returning from hard labor. In total, the marriage of Fedor and Maria lasted about seven years, until the sudden death of the writer's wife in 1864.

During one of his first trips abroad in the early 1860s, Dostoevsky was charmed by the emancipated Apollinaria Suslova. It was from her that Polina was written in The Gambler, Nastastya Filippovna in The Idiot, and a number of other female characters.

Although on the eve of his fortieth birthday, the writer had at least a long relationship with Isaeva and Suslova, at that time his women had not yet given him such happiness as children. This shortcoming was filled by the second wife of the writer - Anna Snitkina. She became not only a faithful wife, but also an excellent assistant to the writer: she took on the chores of publishing Dostoevsky's novels, rationally solved all financial issues, and prepared her memoirs of a brilliant husband for publication. The novel "The Brothers Karamazov" Fyodor Mikhailovich dedicated to her.

Anna Grigoryevna gave birth to her wife of four children: daughters Sofya and Lyubov, sons Fedor and Alexei. Alas, Sophia, who was supposed to be the first child of the couple, died a few months after giving birth. Of all the children of Fyodor Mikhailovich, only his son Fyodor became the successor of his literary family.

Dostoevsky's quotes

No one makes the first move because everyone thinks it's not mutual.
It takes very little to destroy a person: one has only to convince him that the business he is engaged in is of no use to anyone.
Freedom is not in not restraining oneself, but in being in control of oneself.
A writer whose works have not been successful easily becomes a bilious critic: so a weak and tasteless wine can become an excellent vinegar.
It's amazing what one ray of sunshine can do to a person's soul!
Beauty will save the world.
A person who can hug is a good person.
Do not litter your memory with insults, otherwise there may simply not be room for wonderful moments.
If you go to the goal and stop along the way to throw stones at every dog that barks at you, you will never reach the goal.
He is a smart man, but in order to act smartly, one mind is not enough.
Whoever wants to be useful, even with his hands tied, can do a lot of good.
Life goes breathless without an aim.
One must love life more than the meaning of life.
The Russian people, as it were, enjoy their suffering.
Happiness is not in happiness, but only in achieving it.

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich

Name at birth:	Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Aliases:	D.; Friend of Kuzma Prutkov; Scoffer; -y, M.; Chronicler; M-th; N. N.; Pruzhinin, Zuboskalov, Belopyatkin and Co. [collective]; Ed.; F. D.; N.N.
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:	Moscow, Russian Empire
Date of death:
A place of death:	Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
	Russian empire
Occupation:	Grozaik, translator, philosopher
Years of creativity:
Direction:
Art language:

Biography

Origin

The heyday of creativity

Family and environment

Poetics of Dostoevsky

Political views

Bibliography

Artworks

Novels and stories

Writer's Diary

Poems

Domestic research

Foreign research

English language

German

monuments

memorial plaques

In philately

Dostoevsky in culture

Films about Dostoevsky

The current events

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky(doref. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; October 30, 1821, Moscow, Russian Empire - January 28, 1881, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire) - one of the most significant and famous Russian writers and thinkers in the world.

Biography

Origin

On the father's side, the Dostoevskys are one of the branches of the Rtishchev family, which originates from Aslan-Chelebi-Murza, baptized by Moscow Prince Dmitry Donskoy. The Rtishchevs were part of the inner circle of Prince Ivan Vasilyevich of Serpukhov and Borovsky, who in 1456, having quarreled with Vasily the Dark, left for Pinsk, which at that time was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There Ivan Vasilyevich became Prince of Pinsky. He granted Stepan Rtishchev the villages of Kalechino and Lepovitsa. In 1506, the son of Ivan Vasilyevich, Fyodor, granted Danila Rtishchev a part of the village of Dostoeva in the Pinsk region. Hence the "Dostoevsky". Since 1577, the writer's paternal ancestors received the right to use the Radvan - the Polish noble coat of arms, the main element of which was the Golden Horde tamga (brand, seal). Dostoevsky's father drank heavily and was extremely cruel. “My grandfather Mikhail,” says Lyubov Dostoevskaya, “always treated his serfs very strictly. The more he drank, the more ferocious he became, until they eventually killed him."

Mother, Maria Fedorovna Nechaeva (1800-1837), daughter of the merchant of the III guild Fyodor Timofeevich Nechaev (1769-1832), who came from the old townspeople of the city of Borovsk, Kaluga province, was born in a Moscow raznochin family, where there were merchants, inmates in shops, doctors, university students , professors, artists, spiritual persons. Her maternal grandfather, Mikhail Fedorovich Kotelnitsky (1721-1798), was born into the family of the priest Fyodor Andreev, graduated from the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy and took his place after the death of his father, becoming a priest of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Kotelniki.

Writer's youth

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30 (November 11), 1821 in Moscow. He was the second of 7 children left alive.

When Dostoevsky was 16 years old, his mother died of consumption, and his father sent his eldest sons, Fyodor and Mikhail (later also a writer), to K. F. Kostomarov's boarding house in St. Petersburg.

1837 was 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) read from childhood, the year of moving to St. Petersburg and entering the Main Engineering School. In 1839 his father was killed, possibly by his serfs. Dostoevsky participated in the work of Belinsky's circle. A year before his dismissal from military service, Dostoevsky first translated and published Balzac's Eugene Grande (1843). A year later, his first work, Poor People, was published, and he immediately became famous: V. G. Belinsky highly appreciated this work. But the next book, The Double, ran into misunderstandings.

Hard labor and exile

The trial and the harsh sentence of death (December 22, 1849) on the Semyonovsky parade ground was staged as a mock execution. At the last moment, the convicts were pardoned, having been sentenced to hard labor. One of those sentenced to death, Nikolai Grigoriev, went mad. The feelings that he could experience before the execution, Dostoevsky conveyed the words of Prince Myshkin in one of the monologues in the novel The Idiot.

During a short stay in Tobolsk on the way to the place of hard labor (January 11-20, 1850), the writer met with the wives of the exiled Decembrists: Zh. A. Muravyova, P. E. Annenkova and N. D. Fonvizina. Women gave him the Gospel, which the writer kept all his life.

Dostoevsky spent the next four years in hard labor in Omsk. The memoirs of one of the eyewitnesses of the hard labor life of the writer have been preserved. Impressions from the stay in prison were later reflected in the story "Notes from the House of the Dead". In 1854, Dostoevsky was released and sent as a private to the seventh line Siberian battalion. While serving in Semipalatinsk, he became friends with Chokan Valikhanov, a future famous Kazakh traveler and ethnographer. Here he began an affair with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, who was married to a gymnasium teacher Alexander Isaev, a bitter drunkard. After some time, Isaev was transferred to the place of an assessor in Kuznetsk. On August 14, 1855, Fyodor Mikhailovich received a letter from Kuznetsk: the husband of M. D. Isaeva 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. October 20, 1856 Dostoevsky was promoted to ensign.

On February 6, 1857, Dostoevsky married Maria Isaeva in the Russian Orthodox Church in Kuznetsk. Immediately after the wedding, they went to Semipalatinsk, but on the way Dostoevsky had an epileptic seizure, and they stayed in Barnaul for four days. On February 20, 1857, Dostoevsky and his wife returned to Semipalatinsk.

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 Christ.

In 1859 Dostoevsky published his novels The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants and Uncle's Dream in Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1859.

After the link

On June 30, 1859, Dostoevsky was given a temporary ticket number 2030, allowing him to travel to Tver, and on July 2, the writer left Semipalatinsk. In 1860, Dostoevsky, with his wife and adopted son Pavel, returned to St. Petersburg, but secret surveillance of him did not stop until the mid-1870s. From the beginning of 1861, Fyodor Mikhailovich helped his brother Mikhail publish his own magazine, Vremya, after which the brothers began publishing the Epoch magazine in 1863. On the pages of these magazines appeared such works by Dostoevsky as "Humiliated and Insulted", "Notes from the Dead House", "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" and "Notes from the Underground".

Dostoevsky undertook a trip abroad with the young emancipated special Apollinaria Suslova, in Baden-Baden he became interested in a ruinous game of roulette, he was in constant need of money, and at the same time (1864) he lost his wife and brother. The unusual way of European life completed the destruction of the socialist illusions of youth, formed a critical perception of bourgeois values and rejection of the West.

Six months after the death of his brother, the publication of The Epoch ceased (February 1865). In a desperate financial situation, Dostoevsky wrote the chapters of Crime and Punishment, sending them to M. N. Katkov directly into the magazine set of the conservative Russkiy Vestnik, where they were printed from issue to issue. At the same time, under the threat of losing the rights to his publications for 9 years in favor of the publisher F. T. Stellovsky, he undertook to write him a novel, for which he would not have had the physical strength. On the advice of friends, Dostoevsky hired a young stenographer, Anna Snitkina, who helped him with this task. In October 1866, the novel The Gambler was written in twenty-six days and completed on the 25th.

The novel "Crime and Punishment" was paid by Katkov very well, but in order to prevent creditors from taking this money, the writer went abroad with his new wife Anna Snitkina. The trip is reflected in the diary, which Snitkina-Dostoevskaya began to keep in 1867. On the way to Germany, the couple stopped for a few days in Vilna.

The heyday of creativity

Snitkina arranged the life of the writer, took over all the economic issues of his activities, and since 1871 Dostoevsky gave up roulette forever.

From 1872 to 1878 the writer lived in the city of Staraya Russa, Novgorod province. These years of life were very fruitful: 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 - "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. At present, the Literary and Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky is located in the apartment.

In the last few years of his life, 2 events became especially significant for Dostoevsky. In 1878, Emperor Alexander II invited the writer to his place to introduce him to his family, and in 1880, just a year before his death, Dostoevsky delivered his famous speech at the opening of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. In the same years, the writer became close to conservative journalists, publicists and thinkers, corresponded with the prominent statesman K. P. Pobedonostsev.

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 admitted that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom he could learn something (Twilight of the Idols).

On January 26 (February 7), 1881, Dostoevsky's sister Vera Mikhailovna came to the Dostoevsky's house to ask her brother to give up his share of the Ryazan estate, inherited from his aunt A. F. Kumanina, in favor of the sisters. According to the story of Lyubov Fyodorovna Dostoevsky, there was a stormy scene with explanations and tears, after which Dostoevsky bled in his throat. Perhaps this unpleasant conversation was the impetus for the exacerbation of his illness (emphysema) - two days later the writer died.

He was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

Family and environment

The writer's grandfather Andrei Grigoryevich Dostoevsky (1756 - around 1819) served as a Greek Catholic, later - an Orthodox priest in the village of Voytovtsy near Nemirov (now the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine) (according to his family tree - archpriest of the city of Bratslav, Podolsk province).

Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1787-1839), from October 14, 1809 he studied at the Moscow Department of the Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy, on August 15, 1812 he was sent to the Moscow Golovinsky Hospital for the use of the sick and wounded, on August 5, 1813 he was transferred to the headquarters of the healers of the Borodino Infantry Regiment, On April 29, 1819, he was transferred as an intern to the Moscow military hospital; on May 7, he was transferred to the salary of a senior physician. In 1828, he received the noble title of Nobleman of the Russian Empire, was included in the 3rd part of the Genealogical Book of the Moscow Nobility with the right to use the old Polish coat of arms "Radvan", which belonged to Dostoevsky since 1577. He was a doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital of the Moscow Orphanage (that is, in a hospital for the poor, also known as Bozhedomki). In 1831 he acquired the small village of Darovoe in the Kashirsky district of the Tula province, and in 1833 he also acquired the neighboring village of Cheremoshnya (Chermashnya), where in 1839 he was killed by his own serfs:

His addiction to alcoholic beverages apparently increased, and he was almost constantly not in a normal position. Spring came, promising little good ... At that time in the village of Chermashna, in the fields under the edge of the forest, an artel of peasants was working, a dozen or a dozen people; The case, therefore, was far from home. Infuriated by some unsuccessful action of the peasants, or perhaps only seemed to him so, the father flared up and began to shout at the peasants very much. One of them, more impudent, responded to this cry with strong rudeness and after that, fearing this rudeness, he shouted: “Guys, karachun him! ..”. And with this exclamation, all the peasants, up to 15 people, rushed at their father and in an instant, of course, finished with him ...

- From memoriesA. M. Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky's mother, Maria Fedorovna (1800-1837), was the daughter of a wealthy Moscow merchant of the 3rd guild, Fyodor Timofeevich Nechaev (born c. 1769) and Varvara Mikhailovna Kotelnitskaya (c. 1779 - died between 1811 and 1815), 7 th revision (1811), the Nechaev family lived in Moscow, on Syromyatnaya Sloboda, in the Basmannaya part, the parish of Peter and Paul, in their house; after the war of 1812, the family lost most of its wealth. At 19, she married Mikhail Dostoyevsky. She was, according to the recollections of the children, a kind mother and gave birth to four sons and four daughters in marriage (son Fedor was the second child). 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 Sophia Andreevna Dolgoruky ("The Teenager") and Sophia Ivanovna Karamazov ("The Brothers Karamazov")

Of the Dostoevsky sisters, the writer had the closest relationship with Varvara Mikhailovna (1822-1893), about whom he wrote to his brother Andrei: "I love her; she is a nice sister and a wonderful person…”(November 28, 1880).

Of the numerous nephews and nieces, Dostoevsky loved and singled out Maria Mikhailovna (1844-1888), who, according to the memoirs of L. F. Dostoevsky, “loved her like his own daughter, caressed and entertained her when she was still small, later was proud of her musical talent and her success with young people” However, after the death of Mikhail Dostoevsky, this closeness came to naught.

The second wife, Anna Snitkina, from a wealthy family, became the wife of the writer at the age of 20. At this time (the end of 1866) Dostoevsky experienced serious financial difficulties and signed a contract with a publisher on onerous terms. The novel "The Gambler" was composed by Dostoevsky and dictated by Snitkina, who worked as a stenographer, in 26 days and was submitted on time. Anna Dostoevskaya took all the financial affairs of the family into her own hands.

The descendants of Fyodor Mikhailovich continue to live in St. Petersburg.

Poetics of Dostoevsky

As O. M. Nogovitsyn showed in his work, Dostoevsky is the most prominent representative of “ontological”, “reflexive” poetics, which, unlike traditional, descriptive poetics, leaves the character in a sense free in its relationship with the text that describes him ( that is, the world for him), which is manifested in the fact that he is aware of his relationship with him and acts on the basis of it. Hence all the paradox, 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, he remains wholly descriptive, wholly included in the text, wholly understandable, subordinate to causes and effects, the movement of the narrative, then in ontological poetics we are for the first time we come across a character who tries 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 positions in the world, but empathy with his tragedy - his willful unwillingness to accept a text (world) that is inescapably redundant in relation to him, potentially infinite. For the first time, M. M. Bakhtin drew attention to such a special attitude of Dostoevsky towards his characters.

Political views

During the life of Dostoevsky, at least two political currents fought 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 in nationality, Orthodoxy and autocracy, adherents of the second believed that Russians should take an example from Europeans. Both those and others reflected on the historical fate of Russia. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, 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 the culture and civilization of the West. 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 and the "Jewish Question"

Dostoevsky's views on the role of Jews in the life of Russia are reflected in the writer's journalism. For example, discussing the further fate of the peasants liberated from serfdom, he writes in the Writer's Diary for 1873:

The Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia claims that anti-Semitism was an integral part of Dostoevsky's worldview and found expression both in novels and short stories, and in the writer's journalism. A clear confirmation of this, according to the compilers of the encyclopedia, is Dostoevsky's work "The Jewish Question". However, Dostoevsky himself in the "Jewish Question" stated: "... this hatred has never been in my heart ...".

On February 26, 1878, in a letter to Nikolai Epifanovich Grishchenko, a teacher at the Kozeletsky parish school in the Chernigov province, who complained to the writer “that the Russian peasants are completely enslaved by the Jews, robbed by them, and the Russian press stands up for the Jews; Jews ... for the Chernigov province ... more terrible than the Turks for the Bulgarians ... ”, Dostoevsky answered:

Dostoevsky's attitude to the "Jewish question" is analyzed by literary critic Leonid Grossman in the book "Confession of a Jew", dedicated to the correspondence between the writer and the Jewish journalist Arkady Kovner. The message sent by Kovner from the Butyrka prison made an impression on Dostoevsky. He ends his letter in response with the words: “Believe with complete sincerity with which I shake your hand extended to me,” and in the chapter on the Jewish question of the Writer’s Diary, he quotes Kovner extensively.

According to critic Maya Turovskaya, the mutual interest of Dostoevsky and Jews is caused by the embodiment in Jews (and in Kovner, in particular) of the search for Dostoevsky's characters. According to Nikolai Nasedkin, a contradictory attitude towards Jews is generally characteristic of Dostoevsky: he very clearly distinguished between the concepts of "Jew" and "Jew". In addition, Nasedkin notes that the word "Jew" and its derivatives were for Dostoevsky and his contemporaries an ordinary tool word among others, was used widely and everywhere, was natural for all Russian literature of the 19th century, unlike our time.

Evaluations of creativity and personality of Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky's work had a great influence on Russian and world culture. The literary heritage of the writer is differently evaluated 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, triumphant over any external violence and over any internal fall. Having taken into his soul all the malice of life, all the hardships and blackness 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 every 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 all-forgiveness, and he preached the same all-forgiving, grace-filled power as the basis for the external realization on earth of that kingdom of truth, which he longed for and to which he aspired all his life.

V. S. SOLOVIEV 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, Maxim Gorky.

At the same time, in the West, where Dostoevsky's novels have been popular since the beginning of the 20th century, his work has had a significant impact on such generally liberal movements as existentialism, expressionism and surrealism. Many literary critics see him as the forerunner of existentialism. However, abroad, Dostoevsky is usually regarded, first of all, as an outstanding writer and psychologist, while his ideology is ignored or almost completely rejected.

Bibliography

Artworks

Novels

1846 - Poor people
1861 - Humiliated and insulted
1866 - Crime and Punishment
1866 - Gambler
1868-1869 - Idiot
1871-1872 - Demons
1875 - Teenager
1879-1880 - Brothers Karamazov

Novels and stories

Publicism and criticism, essays

1847 - Petersburg chronicle
1861 - Stories by N.V. Uspensky
1862 - Winter notes on summer impressions
1880 - Judgment
1880 - Pushkin

Writer's Diary

1873 - Writer's diary. 1873
1876 - Writer's diary. 1876
1877 - Writer's diary. January-August 1877.
1877 - Writer's diary. September-December 1877.
1880 - Writer's diary. 1880
1881 - Writer's diary. 1881.

Poems

1854 - On European events in 1854
1855 - On the first of July 1855
1856 - For the coronation and conclusion of peace
1864 - Epigram for a Bavarian colonel
1864-1873 - Struggle of nihilism with honesty (officer and nihilist)
1873-1874 - Describe everything entirely of some priests
1876-1877 - The collapse of Baimakov's office
1876 - Children are expensive
1879 - Do not rob, Fedul

The collection of folklore material “My hard labor notebook”, also known as the “Siberian notebook”, written by Dostoevsky during his penal servitude, stands apart.

The main literature on Dostoevsky

Domestic research

Barsht K.A. Drawings in the manuscripts of F.M. Dostoevsky. SPb., 1996. 319 p.
Bogdanov N., Rogovoy A. Genealogy of Dostoevsky: in search of lost links. M., 2010.
Belinsky V. G.

Introductory article // Petersburg collection published by N. Nekrasov. SPb., 1846.

Dobrolyubov N. A. Downtrodden people // Sovremennik. 1861. No. 9. otdel. II.
Pisarev D.I. Struggle for existence // Delo. 1868. No. 8.
Leontiev K. N. About universal love: Regarding the speech of F. M. Dostoevsky at the Pushkin holiday // Warsaw diary. 1880. July 29 (No. 162). pp. 3-4; August 7 (No. 169). pp. 3-4; August 12 (No. 173). pp. 3-4.
Mikhailovsky N. K. Cruel talent // Otechestvennye zapiski. 1882. No. 9, 10.
Solovyov V. S. Three speeches in memory of Dostoevsky: (1881-1883). M., 1884. 55 p.
Rozanov V.V. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky: An Experience of Critical Commentary // Russian Bulletin. 1891. Vol. 212, January. pp. 233-274; February. pp. 226-274; T. 213, March. pp. 215-253; April. pp. 251-274. ed.: St. Petersburg: Nikolaev, 1894. 244 p.
Merezhkovsky D.S. L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Christ and Antichrist in Russian Literature. T. 1. Life and work. St. Petersburg: World of Art, 1901. 366 p. T. 2. Religion of L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. St. Petersburg: World of Art, 1902. LV, 530 p.
Shestov L. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. SPb., 1906.
Ivanov Vyach. AND. Dostoevsky and the tragedy novel // Russian Thought. 1911. Book. 5. S. 46-61; Book. 6. S. 1-17.
Pereverzev VF Creativity of Dostoevsky. M., 1912. (Reprinted in the book: Gogol, Dostoevsky. Research. M., 1982)
Tynyanov Yu. N. Dostoevsky and Gogol: (On the theory of parody). Pg.: OPOYAZ, 1921.
Berdyaev N. A. Dostoevsky's world outlook. Prague, 1923. 238 p.
Volotskoy M. V. Chronicle of the Dostoevsky family 1506-1933. M., 1933.
Engelhardt B. M. The ideological novel of Dostoevsky // F. M. Dostoevsky: Articles and materials / Ed. A. S. Dolinina. L.; M.: Thought, 1924. Sat. 2. S. 71-109.
Dostoevskaya A. G. Memories . M.: Fiction, 1981.
Freud Z. Dostoevsky and parricide // Classical psychoanalysis and fiction / Comp. and general ed. V. M. Leybin. St. Petersburg: Piter, 2002. S. 70-88.
Mochulsky K.V. Dostoevsky: Life and work. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1947. 564 p.
Lossky N. O. Dostoevsky and his Christian worldview. New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1953. 406 p.
Dostoevsky in Russian criticism. Collection of articles. M., 1956. (introductory article and note by A. A. Belkin)
Leskov N. S. About the kufelny peasant, etc. - Collected. soch., vol. 11, Moscow, 1958, pp. 146-156;
Grossman L.P. Dostoevsky. M.: Young Guard, 1962. 543 p. (The life of remarkable people. A series of biographies; Issue 24 (357)).
Bakhtin M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky's creativity. Leningrad: Surf, 1929. 244 p. 2nd ed., revised. and additional: Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. M.: Soviet writer, 1963. 363 p.
Dostoevsky in the memoirs of his contemporaries: In 2 vols. M., 1964. T. 1. T. 2.
Fridlender G. M. Dostoevsky realism. M.; L.: Nauka, 1964. 404 p.
Meyer G. A. Light in the night: (About "Crime and Punishment"): The experience of slow reading. Frankfurt/Main: Posev, 1967. 515 p.
F. M. Dostoevsky: Bibliography of the works of F. M. Dostoevsky and literature about him: 1917-1965. Moscow: Book, 1968. 407 p.
Kirpotin V. Ya. Disappointment and collapse of Rodion Raskolnikov: (A book about Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment"). M.: Soviet writer, 1970. 448 p.
Zakharov VN Problems of studying Dostoevsky: Textbook. - Petrozavodsk. 1978.
Zakharov VN Dostoevsky's System of Genres: Typology and Poetics. - L., 1985.
Toporov V. N. On the Structure of Dostoevsky's Novel in Connection with Archaic Schemes of Mythological Thinking ("Crime and Punishment") // Toporov V. N. Myth. Ritual. Symbol. Image: Studies in the field of mythopoetic. M., 1995. S. 193-258.
Dostoevsky: Materials and Research / USSR Academy of Sciences. IRLI. L.: Nauka, 1974-2007. Issue. 1-18 (ongoing edition).
Odinokov V. G. Typology of images in the artistic system of F. M. Dostoevsky. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1981. 144 p.
Seleznev Yu. I. Dostoevsky. M .: Young Guard, 1981. 543 p., ill. (Life of remarkable people. A series of biographies; Issue 16 (621)).
Volgin I. L. Dostoevsky's Last Year: Historical Notes. Moscow: Soviet writer, 1986.
Saraskina L. I."Demons": a novel-warning. M.: Soviet writer, 1990. 488 p.
Allen L. Dostoevsky and God / Per. from fr. E. Vorobieva. St. Petersburg: Branch of the magazine "Youth"; Dusseldorf: Blue Rider, 1993. 160 p.
Guardini R. Man and faith / Per. with him. Brussels: Life with God, 1994. 332 p.
Kasatkina T. A. Characterology of Dostoevsky: Typology of emotional and value orientations. M.: Nasledie, 1996. 335 p.
Laut R. Philosophy of Dostoevsky in a systematic presentation / Per. with him. I. S. Andreeva; Ed. A. V. Gulygi. M.: Respublika, 1996. 448 p.
Belnep R. L. The Structure of The Brothers Karamazov / Per. from English. St. Petersburg: Academic project, 1997.
Dunaev M. M. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) // Dunaev M. M. Orthodoxy and Russian literature: [at 6 hours]. M.: Christian literature, 1997. S. 284-560.
Nakamura K. Dostoevsky's sense of life and death / Authoriz. per. from Japanese. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1997. 332 p.
Meletinsky E. M. Notes on the work of Dostoevsky. M.: RGGU, 2001. 190 p.
The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot": The current state of the study. M.: Nasledie, 2001. 560 p.
Kasatkina T. A. On the creative nature of the word: The ontology of the word in the work of F. M. Dostoevsky as the basis of "realism in the highest sense." M.: IMLI RAN, 2004. 480 p.
Tikhomirov B. N."Lazarus! come out": F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" in a modern reading: Book-commentary. St. Petersburg: Silver Age, 2005. 472 p.
Yakovlev L. Dostoevsky: ghosts, phobias, chimeras (reader's notes). - Kharkov: Karavella, 2006. - 244 p. ISBN 966-586-142-5
Vetlovskaya V. E. The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov". St. Petersburg: Pushkinsky Dom Publishing House, 2007. 640 p.
The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov": the current state of the study. M.: Nauka, 2007. 835 p.
Bogdanov N., Rogovoy A. Genealogy of Dostoevsky. In search of lost links., M., 2008.
John Maxwell Coetzee. “Autumn in Petersburg” (this is the name of this work in Russian translation, in the original the novel is entitled “The Master from Petersburg”). Moscow: Eksmo, 2010.
Openness to the abyss. Meetings with DostoevskyLiterary, philosophical and historiographic work of the culturologist Grigory Pomerants.
Shulyatikov V. M. F. M. Dostoevsky (On the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his death) "Courier", 1901, No No 22, 36.
Shulyatikov V. M. Back to Dostoevsky "Courier", 1903, No 287.

Foreign research

English language

Jones M.V. Dostoevsky. The novel of discord. L., 1976.
Holquist M. Dostoievvsky and the novel. Princeton (N. Jersey), 1977.
Hingley R. Dostoyevsky. His life and work. L., 1978.
Kabat G.C. Ideology and imagination. The image of society in Dostoevsky. N.Y., 1978.
Jackson R.L. The art of Dostoevsky. Princeton (N. Jersey), 1981.
Dostoevsky Studies. Journal of the International Dostoievsky Society. v. 1-, Klagenfurt-kuoxville, 1980-.

German

Zweig S. Drei Meister: Balzac, Dickens, Dostojewskij. Lpz., 1921.
Natorp P.G: F. Dosktojewskis Bedeutung fur die gegenwärtige Kulturkrisis. Jena, 1923.
Kaus O. Dostojewski und sein Schicksal. B., 1923.
Notzel K. Das Leben Dostojewskis, Lpz., 1925
Meier-Cräfe J. Dostojewski als Dichter. B., 1926.
Schultze B. Der Dialog in F.M. Dostoevskijs "Idiot". Munich, 1974.

Memory

monuments

There is a memorial plaque to the writer on the house and in Florence (Italy), where he finished the novel The Idiot in 1868.

"Dostoevsky's zone" - this is the informal name of the area near Sennaya Square in St. Petersburg, which is closely associated with the work of F. M. Dostoevsky. He lived here: Kaznacheyskaya Street, houses No. 1 and No. 7 (a memorial plaque was installed), No. 9. Here, on the streets, lanes, avenues, on the square itself, on the Catherine Canal, the action of a number of the writer’s works (“Idiot”, “Crime and punishment" and others). In the houses of these streets, Dostoevsky settled his literary characters - Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, Sonya Marmeladova, Svidrigailov, General Yepanchin, Rogozhin and others. On Grazhdanskaya Street (formerly Meshchanskaya) in house No. 19/5 (corner of Stolyarny Lane), according to the searches of local historians, Rodion Raskolnikov “lived”. The building is listed in many guidebooks around St. Petersburg as "Raskolnikov's House" and is marked with a memorial sign to the literary hero. The "Dostoevsky Zone" was created in the 1980-1990s at the request of the public, which forced the city authorities to put in order the memorable places located here, which are associated with the name of the writer.

In philately

Dostoevsky in culture

The name of F. M. Dostoevsky is associated with the concept dostoevism, which has two meanings: a) psychological analysis in the manner of Dostoevsky, b) "mental imbalance, acute and contradictory emotional experiences" inherent in the heroes of the writer's works.
One of the 16 personality types in socionics is named after Dostoevsky - an original psychological and social typology that has been developing in the USSR and Russia since the 1980s. The name of the classic of literature was given to the sociotype "ethical-intuitive introvert" (abbreviated as EII; another name is "Humanist"). Socionics expert E. S. Filatova proposed a generalized graphic portrait of the EII, in which, among others, the features of Fyodor Dostoevsky are guessed.

Films about Dostoevsky

Dead House (1932) Nikolai Khmelev as Dostoevsky
"Dostoevsky". Documentary. TSSDF (RTSSDF). 27 minutes. - a documentary film by Samuil Bubrik and Ilya Kopalin (Russia, 1956) about the life and work of Dostoevsky on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his death.
The Writer and His City: Dostoevsky and Petersburg - a film by Heinrich Böll (Germany, 1969)
Twenty-six Days in the Life of Dostoevsky is a feature film by Alexander Zarkhi (USSR, 1980). Starring Anatoly Solonitsyn
Dostoevsky and Peter Ustinov - from the documentary "Russia" (Canada, 1986)
Return of the Prophet - documentary by V. E. Ryzhko (Russia, 1994)
The Life and Death of Dostoevsky - a documentary (12 episodes) by Alexander Klyushkin (Russia, 2004).
Demons of St. Petersburg - a feature film by Giuliano Montaldo (Italy, 2008). In the role - Miki Manoilovich.
Three Women of Dostoevsky - a film by Evgeny Tashkov (Russia, 2010). In the role of Andrey Tashkov
Dostoevsky - series by Vladimir Khotinenko (Russia, 2011). Starring Yevgeny Mironov.

The image of Dostoevsky was also used in the biographical films Sofia Kovalevskaya (Alexander Filippenko), Chokan Valikhanov (Yuri Orlov), 1985, and the TV series Gentlemen of the Jury (Oleg Vlasov), 2005.

Other

In Omsk, a street, a library, the Omsk State Literary Museum, Omsk State University were named after Dostoevsky, 2 monuments were erected, etc.
A street in Tomsk is named after Dostoevsky.
Street and metro station in St. Petersburg.
Street, lane and metro station in Moscow.
In Staraya Russa, Novgorod region - Dostoevsky embankment on the river Porusya
Novgorod Academic Drama Theater named after F. M. Dostoevsky (Veliky Novgorod).
Aeroflot's Boeing 767 VP-BAX is named after Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
An impact crater on Mercury is named after Dostoevsky.
In honor of F. M. Dostoevsky, an employee of the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory L. G. Karachkina named the minor planet 3453 Dostoevsky, discovered on September 27, 1981.

The current events

On October 10, 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel unveiled a monument to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky in Dresden by People's Artist of Russia Alexander Rukavishnikov.
A crater on Mercury is named after Dostoevsky.
November 12, 2001 in Omsk, on the day of the 180th anniversary of the birth of the writer, a monument to F. M. Dostoevsky was opened.
Since 1997, music critic and radio host Artemy Troitsky has been conducting his own radio program called FM Dostoevsky.
The writer Boris Akunin wrote the work “F. M., dedicated to Dostoevsky.
Nobel Prize winner in literature John Maxwell Coetzee wrote a novel about Dostoevsky, Autumn in Petersburg, in 1994. The Master of Petersburg; 1994, Russian translation 1999)
In 2010, director Vladimir Khotinenko began filming a serial film about Dostoevsky, which was released in 2011 on the occasion of the 190th anniversary of Dostoevsky's birth.
On June 19, 2010, the 181st station of the Moscow metro "Dostoevskaya" was opened. Access to the city is carried out on Suvorovskaya Square, Seleznevskaya Street and Durova Street. The design of the station: on the walls of the station there are scenes illustrating four novels by F. M. Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, “Demons”, “The Brothers Karamazov”).
On October 29, 2010, a monument to Dostoevsky was unveiled in Tobolsk.
In October 2011, the days dedicated to the 190th anniversary of the birth of F. M. Dostoevsky were held at the University of Malaya (Kuala Lumpur).

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is a great Russian writer. Dostoevsky's books are famous all over the world. The literature of this author is included in the golden fund of world art and is a real treasure of mankind. The most famous works of Fyodor Mikhailovich were: Poor People, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man and many, many others.

There are a lot of admirers of Dostoevsky's work in Russia and abroad. Many of those who love the works of this author would like to visit the last refuge of the writer. The grave of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky is located in St. Petersburg on the famous Tikhvin cemetery. Many famous writers, artists, sculptors, architects, musicians, actors and so on are buried at the Tikhvin cemetery. The grave of Dostoevsky here occupies one of the most honorable and most visited places. Monument on the grave designed by architect H.K. Vasiliev and sculptor N.A. Laveretsky (workshop of Andrei Barinov) was installed two years after the burial. His wife Anna Grigoryevna is also buried next to Dostoevsky.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821 in Moscow. He died on February 7, 1881 in St. Petersburg. The presumed cause of death is exacerbation of emphysema. Buried at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Currently, memorial plaques to Dostoevsky are located in the city of Baden-Baden, Vilnius, Geneva, Florence. Monuments to Dostoevsky are located in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Dresden, the Darovoye estate, Tobolsk. Museums of Dostoevsky are located in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Omsk, Novokuznetsk, Semipalatinsk, Staraya Russa, the village of Darovoe.

Monument at the grave of Dostoevsky photo

Dostoevsky, one of the most famous Russian writers and philosophers, was born on November 11, 1821. In this article we will talk about his biography and literary work.

Dostoevsky's family

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow into the family of a nobleman Mikhail Andreevich, a staff doctor serving in the Mariinsky Hospital, and Maria Fedorovna. In the family, he was one of eight children and only the second son. His father was from whose estate was located in the Belarusian part of Polesye, and his mother came from an old Moscow merchant family, originating in the Kaluga province. It is worth saying that Fedor Mikhailovich had little interest in the rich history of his family. He spoke of his parents as poor, but hardworking people, who allowed him to receive an excellent upbringing and quality education, for which he was grateful to his family. Maria Fedorovna taught her son how to read Christian literature, which left a strong impression on him and largely determined his future life.

In 1831, the father of the family acquired the small estate Darovoye in the Tula province. The Dostoevsky family began to visit this country house every summer. There, the future writer got the opportunity to get acquainted with the real life of the peasants. In general, according to him, childhood was the best time in his life.

Writer's education

Initially, their father was involved in the education of Fedor and his older brother Mikhail, teaching them Latin. Then their home education was continued by the teacher Drashusov and his sons, who taught the boys French, mathematics and literature. This continued until 1834, when the brothers were assigned to the elite Chermak boarding school in Moscow, where they studied until 1837.

When Fedor was 16 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. Further years F.M. Dostoevsky spent time with his brother preparing to enter an engineering school. They spent some time at the Kostomarov boarding house, where they continued to study literature. Despite the fact that both brothers wanted to write, the father considered this activity completely unprofitable.

The beginning of literary activity

Fedor did not feel any desire to be in the school and was burdened by being there, in his free hours he studied world and domestic literature. Under inspiration from her, at night he was engaged in his literary experiments, reading passages to his brother. Over time, a literary circle was formed at the Main Engineering School under the influence of Dostoevsky. In 1843, he completed his studies and was appointed to the position of engineer in St. Petersburg, which he soon abandoned, deciding to devote himself entirely to literary creativity. His father died of apoplexy (although, according to the recollections of relatives, he was killed by his own peasants, which is questioned by researchers of Dostoevsky's biography) in 1839 and was no longer able to oppose his son's decision.

The very first works of Dostoevsky, whose birthday is celebrated on November 11, have not reached us - they were dramas on historical themes. Since 1844, he has been translating while working on his work "Poor People". In 1845, he was welcomed with pleasure in Belinsky's circle, and soon he became a well-known writer, the "new Gogol", but his next novel, The Double, was not appreciated, and soon Dostoevsky's relationship (birthday according to the new style - November 11) with spoiled around. He also quarreled with the editors of the Sovremennik magazine and began to publish mainly in Otechestvennye Zapiski. However, the acquired fame allowed him to get acquainted with a much wider circle of people, and soon he became a member of the philosophical and literary circle of the Beketov brothers, with one of whom he studied at an engineering school. Through one of the members of this society, he got to the Petrashevites and began to regularly attend their meetings from the winter of 1847.

Circle of Petrashevists

The main topics that the members of the Petrashevsky Society discussed at their meetings were the emancipation of the peasants, the printing of books, and the change in legal proceedings. Soon Dostoevsky became one of several who organized a separate radical community among the Petrashevites. In 1849, many of them, including the writer, were arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

mock execution

The court recognized Dostoevsky as one of the main criminals, despite the fact that he strongly denied the accusations, and sentenced him to death by shooting, having previously deprived him of his entire fortune. However, a few days later the execution order was replaced by an eight-year penal servitude, and that, in turn, was replaced by a four-year one, followed by a long service in the army, by special decree of Nicholas 1. In December 1849, the execution of the Petrashevites was staged, and only at the last moment it was announced pardon and sent to hard labor. One of the near-executed went mad after such an ordeal. There is no doubt that this event had a strong influence on the views of the writer.

Years of hard labor

During the transfer to Tobolsk, there was a meeting with the wives of the Decembrists, who secretly handed over the Gospel to the future convicts (Dostoevsky kept his until the end of his life). He spent the next years in Omsk in hard labor, trying to change the attitude towards himself among the prisoners, he was perceived negatively due to the fact that he was a nobleman. Dostoevsky could write books only in the infirmary in secret, since the prisoners were deprived of the right to correspond.

Soon after the end of hard labor, Dostoevsky was appointed to serve in the Semipalatinsk regiment, where he met his future wife Maria Isaeva, whose marriage was unhappy and ended unsuccessfully. The writer rose to the rank of ensign in 1857, when both the Petrashevskys and the Decembrists were pardoned.

Pardon and return to the capital

Upon his return, he had to make a literary debut again - these were Notes from the House of the Dead, which received universal recognition, since the genre in which the writer talked about the life of convicts was completely new. The writer published several works in the Vremya magazine, which he published jointly with his brother Mikhail. After some time, the magazine was closed, and the brothers began to print another publication - Epoch, which also closed a few years later. At that time, he took an active part in the public life of the country, having undergone the destruction of socialist ideals, recognized himself as an open Slavophile, and asserted the social significance of art. Dostoevsky's books reflect his views on reality, which contemporaries did not always understand, sometimes they seemed to them too harsh and innovative, and sometimes too conservative.

Travel Europe

In 1862, Dostoevsky, whose birthday is on November 11, traveled abroad for the first time to receive medical treatment at resorts, but he ended up touring most of Europe, becoming addicted to playing roulette in Baden-Baden and squandering almost all his money. In principle, Dostoevsky had problems with money and creditors throughout almost his entire life. He spent part of the trip in the company of A. Suslova, a young uninhibited young lady. He described many of his adventures in Europe in the novel The Gambler. In addition, the writer was shocked by the negative consequences of the French Revolution, and he established himself in the opinion that the only possible development path for Russia is unique and original, not repeating the European one.

Second wife

In 1867 the writer married his stenographer Anna Snitkina. They had four children, of which only two survived, and as a result, only the only surviving son Fedor became the successor of the family. The next few years they lived together abroad, where Dostoevsky, whose birthday is celebrated on November 11, began work on some of the last novels included in the famous "Great Pentateuch" - this is "Crime and Punishment", the most famous philosophical novel, "The Idiot", where the author reveals the theme of a person trying to make others happy, but in the end suffering, "Demons", which tells about revolutionary currents, and "Teenager".

The Brothers Karamazov, also belonging to the Pentateuch, Dostoevsky's last novel, was in a sense a summing up of the entire creative path, since it contained features and images of all the writer's previous works.

The writer spent the last 8 years of his life in the Novgorod province, in the town of Staraya Russa, where he lived with his wife and children and continued to engage in writing, completing his novels.

In June 1880, Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich, whose work significantly influenced literature in general, came to the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow, where many famous writers were present. In the evening he gave a well-known speech about Pushkin at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

Death of Dostoevsky

The years of the life of F. M. Dostoevsky - 1821-1881. Fyodor Mikhailovich died on January 28, 1881 from tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, aggravated by emphysema of the lungs, shortly after a scandal with his sister Vera, who asked him to give up his inherited estate in favor of his sisters. The writer was buried in one of the cemeteries of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, a huge number of people gathered to say goodbye to him.

Although Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, whose biography and interesting facts about whose life we examined in this article, became famous during his lifetime, real, grandiose fame came to him only after his death.

(October 30 (November 11) 1821, Moscow, Russian Empire - January 28 (February 9), 1881, St. Petersburg, Russian Empire)

en.wikipedia.org

Biography

life and creation

Writer's youth

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30 (November 11), 1821 in Moscow. Father, Mikhail Andreevich, from the clergy, received the title of nobility in 1828, worked as a doctor in the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor on Novaya Bozhedomka (now Dostoevsky Street). Having acquired a small estate in the Tula province in 1831-1832, he treated the peasants cruelly. Mother, Maria Feodorovna (nee Nechaeva), came from a merchant family. Fedor was the second of 7 children. According to one of the assumptions, Dostoevsky comes on the paternal line from the Pinsk gentry, whose family estate Dostoevo in the 16th-17th centuries was located in the Belarusian Polesie (now the Ivanovo district of the Brest region, Belarus). On October 6, 1506, Danila Ivanovich Rtishchev received this estate from Prince Fyodor Ivanovich Yaroslavich for his services. Since that time, Rtishchev and his heirs began to be called Dostoevsky.

When Dostoevsky was 15 years old, his mother died of consumption, and his father sent his eldest sons, Fyodor and Mikhail (later also a writer), to K. F. Kostomarov's boarding house in St. Petersburg.

1837 was an important date for Dostoevsky. This is the year of the death of his mother, the year of the death of Pushkin, whose work he (like his brother) has been reading since childhood, the year of moving to St. Petersburg and entering the military engineering school, now the Military Engineering and Technical University. In 1839, he receives news of the murder of his father by serfs. Dostoevsky participates in the work of Belinsky's circle A year before his dismissal from military service, Dostoevsky first translated and published Balzac's Eugene Grande (1843). A year later, his first work, Poor People, was published, and he immediately became famous: V. G. Belinsky highly appreciated this work. But the next book, The Double, runs into misunderstandings.

Shortly after the publication of White Nights, the writer was arrested (1849) in connection with the Petrashevsky case. 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. And therefore, the military court sentenced him for failure to report on the distribution of a criminal letter about religion and the government of the letter of the writer Belinsky ... to deprive him, on the basis of the Code of Military Decrees ... of ranks and all the rights of the state and to subject him to death by shooting ..

The trial and the harsh sentence of death (December 22, 1849) on the Semyonovsky parade ground was staged as a mock execution. At the last moment, the convicts were pardoned, having been sentenced to hard labor. One of those sentenced to death, Grigoriev, went mad. The feelings that he could experience before the execution, Dostoevsky conveyed the words of Prince Myshkin in one of the monologues in the novel The Idiot.

Dostoevsky spent the next four years in hard labor in Omsk. In 1854, when the four years to which Dostoevsky was sentenced expired, he was released from hard labor and sent as a private to the seventh line Siberian battalion. While serving in Semipalatinsk, he became friends with Chokan Valikhanov, a future famous Kazakh traveler and ethnographer. There, a common monument was erected to a young writer and a young scientist. Here he began an affair with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, who was married to a gymnasium teacher Alexander Isaev, a bitter drunkard. After some time, Isaev was transferred to the place of an assessor in Kuznetsk. On August 14, 1855, Fyodor Mikhailovich received a letter from Kuznetsk: the husband of M. D. Isaeva died after a long illness.

On February 18, 1855, Emperor Nicholas I dies. Dostoevsky writes a loyal poem dedicated to his widow, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, and as a result becomes a non-commissioned officer: on October 20, 1856, Fyodor Mikhailovich was promoted to ensign. On February 6, 1857, Dostoevsky married Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva in the Russian Orthodox Church in Kuznetsk.

Immediately after the wedding, they go to Semipalatinsk, but on the way Dostoevsky has an epileptic seizure, and they stop in Barnaul for four days.

February 20, 1857 Dostoevsky and his wife return to Semipalatinsk. The period of imprisonment and military service was a turning point in Dostoevsky's life: from a "seeker of truth in man" who was still undecided in life, he turned into a deeply religious person, whose only ideal for the rest of his life was Christ.

In 1859 Dostoevsky published his novels The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants and Uncle's Dream in Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1859.

On June 30, 1859, Dostoevsky was given a temporary ticket number 2030, allowing him to travel to Tver, and on July 2 the writer left Semipalatinsk. In 1860, Dostoevsky, with his wife and adopted son Pavel, returned to St. Petersburg, but secret surveillance of him did not stop until the mid-1870s. From the beginning of 1861, Fyodor Mikhailovich helped his brother Mikhail publish his own magazine, Vremya, after which the brothers began to publish the Epoch magazine in 1863. On the pages of these magazines, such works by Dostoevsky as "Humiliated and Insulted", "Notes from the Dead House", "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" and "Notes from the Underground" appear.

Dostoevsky undertakes a trip abroad with a young emancipated special Apollinaria Suslova, in Baden-Baden he is fond of a ruinous game of roulette, he is in constant need of money and at the same time (1864) he loses his wife and brother. The unusual way of European life completes the destruction of the socialist illusions of youth, forms a critical perception of bourgeois values and rejection of the West.

Six months after the death of his brother, the publication of the Epoch ceases (February 1865). In a desperate financial situation, Dostoevsky writes the chapters of Crime and Punishment, sending them to M. N. Katkov directly into the magazine set of the conservative Russkiy Vestnik, where they are printed from issue to issue. At the same time, under the threat of losing the rights to his publications for 9 years in favor of the publisher F. T. Stellovsky, he undertook to write a novel for him, for which he did not have enough physical strength. On the advice of friends, Dostoevsky hires a young stenographer, Anna Snitkina, to help him cope with this task.

The novel "Crime and Punishment" was completed and paid very well, but in order to prevent creditors from taking this money from him, the writer goes abroad with his new wife, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. The trip is reflected in the diary, which in 1867 began to be kept by A. G. Snitkina-Dostoevskaya. On the way to Germany, the couple stopped for a few days in Vilna.

The heyday of creativity

Snitkina arranged the life of the writer, took over all the economic issues of his activities, and since 1871 Dostoevsky gave up roulette forever.

In October 1866, in twenty-one days, he wrote and on the 25th completed the novel The Gambler for F. T. Stellovsky.

For the last 8 years, the writer has lived in the city of Staraya Russa, Novgorod province. These years of life were very fruitful: 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 - "Meek", 1879 -1880 - "The Brothers Karamazov". At the same time, two events became significant for Dostoevsky. In 1878, Emperor Alexander II invited the writer to his place to introduce him to his family, and in 1880, just a year before his death, Dostoevsky delivered his famous speech at the opening of the Pushkin monument in Moscow. During these years, the writer became close to conservative journalists, publicists and thinkers, corresponded with the prominent statesman K. P. Pobedonostsev.

Despite the fame that Dostoevsky gained at the end of his life, truly enduring, worldwide fame came to him after death. In particular, Friedrich Nietzsche admitted that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom he could learn something (Twilight of the Idols).

On January 26 (February 9), 1881, Dostoevsky's sister Vera Mikhailovna came to the Dostoevsky's house to ask her brother to give up his share of the Ryazan estate, inherited from his aunt A. F. Kumanina, in favor of the sisters. According to the story of Lyubov Fyodorovna Dostoevsky, there was a stormy scene with explanations and tears, after which Dostoevsky bled in his throat. Perhaps this unpleasant conversation was the first impetus for the aggravation of his illness (emphysema) - two days later the great writer died.

He was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

Family and environment

The writer's grandfather Andrei Grigoryevich Dostoevsky (1756 - around 1819) served as a Uniate, later - an Orthodox priest in the village of Voytovtsy near Nemirov (now the Vinnitsa region of Ukraine).

Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1787-1839), studied at the Moscow Department of the Imperial Medical and Surgical Academy, served as a doctor in the Borodino Infantry Regiment, an intern in the Moscow Military Hospital, a doctor in the Mariinsky Hospital of the Moscow Orphanage (that is, in the hospital for the poor, still known called Bozhedomki). In 1831 he acquired the small village of Darovoye in the Kashirsky district of the Tula province, and in 1833 the neighboring village of Cheremoshnya (Chermashnya), where in 1839 he was killed by his own serfs:
His addiction to alcoholic beverages apparently increased, and he was almost constantly not in a normal position. Spring came, promising little good ... At that time in the village of Chermashna, in the fields under the edge of the forest, an artel of peasants was working, a dozen or a dozen people; The case, therefore, was far from home. Infuriated by some unsuccessful action of the peasants, or perhaps only seemed to him so, the father flared up and began to shout at the peasants very much. One of them, more impudent, responded to this cry with strong rudeness and after that, fearing this rudeness, he shouted: “Guys, karachun 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 with him ... - From the memoirs of A. M. Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky's mother, Maria Feodorovna (1800-1837), came from a wealthy Moscow Nechaev merchant family, which, after the Patriotic War of 1812, lost most of its fortune. At 19, she married Mikhail Dostoyevsky. She was, according to the recollections of the children, a kind mother and gave birth to four sons and four daughters in marriage (son Fedor was the second child). M. F. Dostoevskaya died of consumption. According to researchers of the great writer's work, certain features of Maria Feodorovna were reflected in the images of Sofya Andreevna Dolgoruky ("The Teenager") and Sophia Ivanovna Karamazov ("The Brothers Karamazov") [source not specified 604 days].

Dostoevsky's elder brother Mikhail also became a writer, his work was marked by the influence of his brother, and the work on the Vremya magazine was carried out by the brothers to a large extent jointly. The younger brother Andrei became an architect; Dostoevsky saw in his family a worthy example of family life. A. M. Dostoevsky left valuable memories of his brother. Of Dostoevsky's sisters, the writer had the closest relationship with Varvara Mikhailovna (1822-1893), about whom he wrote to his brother Andrei: “I love her; she is a glorious sister and a wonderful person…” (November 28, 1880). Of the numerous nephews and nieces, Dostoevsky loved and singled out Maria Mikhailovna (1844-1888), whom, according to the memoirs of L. F. Dostoevskaya, “he loved like his own daughter, caressed and entertained her when she was still small, later was proud of her musical talent and her success with young people”, however, after the death of Mikhail Dostoevsky, this closeness came to naught.

The descendants of Fyodor Mikhailovich continue to live in St. Petersburg.

Philosophy

As O. M. Nogovitsyn showed in his work, Dostoevsky is the most prominent representative of “ontological”, “reflexive” poetics, which, unlike traditional, descriptive poetics, leaves the character in a sense free in its 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 on the basis of it. Hence all the paradox, inconsistency and inconsistency of Dostoevsky's characters. If in traditional poetics the character always remains in the power of the author, is always captured by the events happening to him (captured by the text), that is, he remains wholly descriptive, wholly included in the text, wholly understandable, subordinate to causes and effects, the movement of the narrative, then in ontological poetics we are for the first time we come across a character who tries 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 with his tragedy - his willful unwillingness to accept the text (the world), in his inescapable redundancy in relation to him, potential infinity. For the first time, M. M. Bakhtin drew attention to such a special attitude of Dostoevsky to his characters.

Political views

During the life of Dostoevsky, at least two political currents fought 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 in nationality, Orthodoxy and autocracy, adherents of the second believed that Russians should take an example from Europeans. Both those and others reflected on the historical fate of Russia. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, 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 the culture and civilization of the West. Over time, Dostoevsky's views developed, and during his third stay abroad, he finally became a convinced monarchist.

Dostoevsky and the "Jewish Question"

Dostoevsky's views on the role of Jews in the life of Russia are reflected in the writer's journalism. For example, discussing the further fate of the peasants freed from serfdom, he writes in the Writer's Diary for 1873:
“So it will be if things continue, if the people themselves do not come to their senses; and the intelligentsia will not help him. If he doesn’t come to his senses, then the whole, entirely, in the shortest possible time, will find himself in the hands of all kinds of Jews, and then no community will save him ... The Jews will drink the blood of the people and feed on the depravity and humiliation of the people, but since they will pay the budget, then , therefore, they will need to be supported.

The writer Andrei Dikiy attributes the following quote to Dostoevsky:
“The Jews will destroy Russia and become the head of anarchy. The Jew and his kagal are a conspiracy against the Russians.”

Dostoevsky's attitude to the "Jewish question" is analyzed by literary critic Leonid Grossman in the article "Dostoevsky and Judaism" and the book "Confession of a Jew", dedicated to the correspondence between the writer and the Jewish journalist Arkady Kovner. The message to the great writer sent by Kovner from the Butyrka prison made an impression on Dostoevsky. He ends his letter in response with the words “Believe with complete sincerity with which I shake your hand extended to me,” and in the chapter of the Writer’s Diary devoted to the Jewish question, he quotes Kovner extensively.

According to critic Maya Turovskaya, the mutual interest of Dostoevsky and Jews is caused by the embodiment in Jews (and in Kovner, in particular) of the search for Dostoevsky's characters.

According to Nikolai Nasedkin, a contradictory attitude towards Jews is generally characteristic of Dostoevsky: he very clearly distinguished between the concepts of a Jew and a Jew. In addition, Nasedkin also notes that the word "Jew" and its derivatives were for Dostoevsky and his contemporaries an ordinary word-tool among others, was used widely and everywhere, was natural for all Russian literature of the 19th century, in contrast to modern times ..

It should be noted that Dostoevsky's attitude to the "Jewish question", which was not subject to the so-called "public opinion", may have been connected with his religious beliefs (see Christianity and anti-Semitism) [source?].

According to Sokolov B.V., Dostoevsky's quotes were used by the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War for propaganda in the occupied territories of the USSR, for example, this one from the article "The Jewish Question":
What if there were not three million Jews in Russia, but Russians and Jews would be 160 million (in the original, Dostoevsky had 80 million, but the country's population was doubled - to make the quote more relevant. - B.S.) - well what would the Russians turn into and how would they treat them? Would they let them equal their rights? Would they be allowed to pray among them freely? Wouldn't they be turned directly into slaves? Worse than that: wouldn’t they tear off the skin completely, wouldn’t they beat it to the ground, until the final extermination, as they did with foreign peoples in the old days?

Bibliography

Novels

* 1845 - Poor people
* 1861 - Humiliated and insulted
* 1866 - Crime and Punishment
* 1866 - Player
* 1868 - Idiot
* 1871-1872 - Demons
* 1875 - Teenager
* 1879-1880 - Brothers Karamazov

Novels and stories

* 1846 - Double
* 1846 - How dangerous it is to indulge in ambitious dreams
* 1846 - Mr. Prokharchin
* 1847 - A novel in nine letters
* 1847 - Mistress
* 1848 - Sliders
* 1848 - Weak heart
* 1848 - Netochka Nezvanova
* 1848 - White Nights
* 1849 - Little Hero
* 1859 - Uncle's dream
* 1859 - The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants
* 1860 - Someone else's wife and husband under the bed
* 1860 - Notes from the House of the Dead
* 1862 - Winter notes about summer impressions
* 1864 - Notes from the Underground
* 1864 - Bad joke
* 1865 - Crocodile
* 1869 - Eternal husband
* 1876 - Meek
* 1877 - Dream of a funny man
* 1848 - Honest thief
* 1848 - Christmas tree and wedding
* 1876 - The boy at Christ on the Christmas tree

Publicism and criticism, essays

* 1847 - Petersburg chronicle
* 1861 - Stories of N.V. Uspensky
* 1880 - Judgment
* 1880 - Pushkin

Writer's Diary

* 1873 - Writer's diary. 1873
* 1876 - Writer's diary. 1876
* 1877 - Writer's diary. January-August 1877.
* 1877 - Writer's diary. September-December 1877.
* 1880 - Writer's diary. 1880
* 1881 - Writer's diary. 1881.

Poems

* 1854 - On European events in 1854
* 1855 - On the first of July 1855
* 1856 - At the coronation and conclusion of peace
* 1864 - Epigram for a Bavarian colonel
* 1864-1873 - The struggle of nihilism with honesty (officer and nihilist)
* 1873-1874 - Describe everything entirely by some priests
* 1876-1877 - The collapse of Baimakov's office
* 1876 - Children are expensive
* 1879 - Do not rob, Fedul

The collection of folklore material “My hard labor notebook”, also known as the “Siberian notebook”, written by Dostoevsky during his penal servitude, stands apart.

The main literature on Dostoevsky

Domestic research

* Belinsky V. G. [Introductory article] // Petersburg collection published by N. Nekrasov. SPb., 1846.
* Dobrolyubov N. A. Downtrodden people // Sovremennik. 1861. No. 9. otdel. II.
* Pisarev D. I. Struggle for existence // Delo. 1868. No. 8.
* Leontiev K. N. About universal love: Regarding the speech of F. M. Dostoevsky at the Pushkin holiday // Warsaw Diary. 1880. July 29 (No. 162). pp. 3-4; August 7 (No. 169). pp. 3-4; August 12 (No. 173). pp. 3-4.
* Mikhailovsky N. K. Cruel talent // Otechestvennye zapiski. 1882. No. 9, 10.
* Solovyov V. S. Three speeches in memory of Dostoevsky: (1881-1883). M., 1884. 55 p.
* Rozanov V. V. The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor F. M. Dostoevsky: An Experience of Critical Commentary // Russian Bulletin. 1891. Vol. 212, January. pp. 233-274; February. pp. 226-274; T. 213, March. pp. 215-253; April. pp. 251-274. Publisher: St. Petersburg: Nikolaev, 1894. 244 p.
* Merezhkovsky D. S. L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Christ and the Antichrist in Russian Literature. T. 1. Life and work. St. Petersburg: World of Art, 1901. 366 p. T. 2. Religion of L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. St. Petersburg: World of Art, 1902. LV, 530 p.
* Shestov L. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. SPb., 1906.
* Ivanov Vyach. I. Dostoevsky and the tragedy novel // Russian Thought. 1911. Book. 5. S. 46-61; Book. 6. S. 1-17.
* Pereverzev V. F. Creativity of Dostoevsky. M., 1912. (Reprinted in the book: Gogol, Dostoevsky. Research. M., 1982)
* Tynyanov Yu. N. Dostoevsky and Gogol: (On the theory of parody). Pg.: OPOYAZ, 1921.
* Berdyaev N. A. Dostoevsky's worldview. Prague, 1923. 238 p.
* Volotskoy M.V. Chronicle of the Dostoevsky family 1506-1933. M., 1933.
* Engelhardt B. M. Dostoevsky's ideological novel // F. M. Dostoevsky: Articles and materials / Ed. A. S. Dolinina. L.; M.: Thought, 1924. Sat. 2. S. 71-109.
* Dostoevskaya A.G. Memoirs. M.: Fiction, 1981.
* Freud Z. Dostoevsky and parricide // Classical psychoanalysis and fiction / Comp. and general ed. V. M. Leybin. St. Petersburg: Piter, 2002. S. 70-88.
* Mochulsky KV Dostoevsky: Life and work. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1947. 564 p.
* Lossky N. O. Dostoevsky and his Christian worldview. New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1953. 406 p.
* Dostoevsky in Russian criticism. Collection of articles. M., 1956. (introductory article and note by A. A. Belkin)
* Leskov N.S. About the Kufel peasant, etc. - Collected. soch., vol. 11, Moscow, 1958, pp. 146-156;
* Grossman L. P. Dostoevsky. M.: Young Guard, 1962. 543 p. (The life of remarkable people. A series of biographies; Issue 24 (357)).
* Bakhtin M. M. Problems of Dostoevsky's creativity. Leningrad: Surf, 1929. 244 p. 2nd ed., revised. and additional: Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. M.: Soviet writer, 1963. 363 p.
* Dostoevsky in the memoirs of contemporaries: In 2 vols. M., 1964. T. 1. T. 2.
* Fridlender G. M. Dostoevsky's Realism. M.; L.: Nauka, 1964. 404 p.
* Meyer G. A. Light in the night: (On "Crime and Punishment"): The experience of slow reading. Frankfurt/Main: Posev, 1967. 515 p.
* F. M. Dostoevsky: Bibliography of the works of F. M. Dostoevsky and literature about him: 1917-1965. Moscow: Book, 1968. 407 p.
* Kirpotin V. Ya. Disappointment and downfall of Rodion Raskolnikov: (A book about Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment"). M.: Soviet writer, 1970. 448 p.
* Zakharov VN Problems of studying Dostoevsky: Textbook. - Petrozavodsk. 1978.
* Zakharov VN Dostoevsky's System of Genres: Typology and Poetics. - L., 1985.
* Toporov V.N. On the structure of Dostoevsky's novel in connection with archaic schemes of mythological thinking ("Crime and Punishment") // Toporov V.N. Mif. Ritual. Symbol. Image: Studies in the field of mythopoetic. M., 1995. S. 193-258.
* Dostoevsky: Materials and research / USSR Academy of Sciences. IRLI. L.: Nauka, 1974-2007. Issue. 1-18 (ongoing edition).
* Odinokov V. G. Typology of images in the artistic system of F. M. Dostoevsky. Novosibirsk: Nauka, 1981. 144 p.
* Seleznev Yu. I. Dostoevsky. M .: Young Guard, 1981. 543 p., ill. (Life of remarkable people. A series of biographies; Issue 16 (621)).
* Volgin I. L. The Last Year of Dostoevsky: Historical Notes. Moscow: Soviet writer, 1986.
* Saraskina L.I. "Demons": a warning novel. M.: Soviet writer, 1990. 488 p.
* Allen L. Dostoevsky and God / Per. from fr. E. Vorobieva. St. Petersburg: Branch of the magazine "Youth"; Dusseldorf: Blue Rider, 1993. 160 p.
* Guardini R. Man and Faith / Per. with him. Brussels: Life with God, 1994. 332 p.
* Kasatkina T. A. Dostoevsky's characterology: Typology of emotional and value orientations. M.: Nasledie, 1996. 335 p.
* Laut R. Dostoevsky's philosophy in a systematic presentation / Per. with him. I. S. Andreeva; Ed. A. V. Gulygi. M.: Respublika, 1996. 448 p.
* Balnep R. L. The structure of the "Brothers Karamazov" / Per. from English. St. Petersburg: Academic project, 1997.
* Dunaev M. M. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) // Dunaev M. M. Orthodoxy and Russian literature: [At 6 hours]. M.: Christian literature, 1997. S. 284-560.
* Nakamura K. Dostoevsky's sense of life and death / Authoriz. per. from Japanese. St. Petersburg: Dmitry Bulanin, 1997. 332 p.
* Meletinsky E. M. Notes on the work of Dostoevsky. M.: RGGU, 2001. 190 p.
* The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Idiot": The current state of the study. M.: Nasledie, 2001. 560 p.
* Kasatkina T. A. On the creative nature of the word: The ontology of the word in the work of F. M. Dostoevsky as the basis of "realism in the highest sense." M.: IMLI RAN, 2004. 480 p.
* Tikhomirov B. N. “Lazar! come out": F. M. Dostoevsky's novel "Crime and Punishment" in a modern reading: Book-commentary. St. Petersburg: Silver Age, 2005. 472 p.
* Yakovlev L. Dostoevsky: ghosts, phobias, chimeras (reader's notes). - Kharkov: Karavella, 2006. - 244 p. ISBN 966-586-142-5
* Vetlovskaya V. E. The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov". St. Petersburg: Pushkinsky Dom Publishing House, 2007. 640 p.
* The novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov": the current state of the study. M.: Nauka, 2007. 835 p.
* Bogdanov N., Rogovoi A. Genealogy of the Dostoevskys. In search of lost links., M., 2008.
* John Maxwell Coetzee. “Autumn in Petersburg” (this is the name of this work in Russian translation, in the original the novel is entitled “The Master from Petersburg”). Moscow: Eksmo, 2010.
* Openness to the abyss. Meetings with Dostoevsky Literary, philosophical and historiographical work of the culturologist Grigory Pomerants.

Foreign research:

English language:

*Jones M.V. Dostoevsky. The novel of discord. L., 1976.
* Holquist M. Dostoievvsky and the novel. Princeton (N. Jersey), 1977.
* Hingley R. Dostoyevsky. His life and work. L., 1978.
*Kabat G.C. Ideology and imagination. The image of society in Dostoevsky. N.Y., 1978.
*Jackson R.L. The art of Dostoevsky. Princeton (N. Jersey), 1981.
* Dostoevsky Studies. Journal of the International Dostoievsky Society. v. 1-, Klagenfurt-kuoxville, 1980-.

German:

* Zweig S. Drei Meister: Balzac, Dickens, Dostojewskij. Lpz., 1921.
* Natorp P.G: F. Dosktojewskis Bedeutung fur die gegenwartige Kulurkrisis. Jena, 1923.
* Kaus O. Dostojewski und sein Schicksal. B., 1923.
* Notzel K. Das Leben Dostojewskis, Lpz., 1925
* Meier-Crafe J. Dostojewski als Dichter. B., 1926.
* Schultze B. Der Dialog in F.M. Dostoevskijs "Idiot". Munchen, 1974.

Screen adaptations

* Fyodor Dostoevsky (English) on the Internet Movie Database
* Petersburg Night - a film by Grigory Roshal and Vera Stroeva based on Dostoevsky's stories "Netochka Nezvanova" and "White Nights" (USSR, 1934)
* White Nights - film by Luchino Visconti (Italy, 1957)
* White Nights - a film by Ivan Pyryev (USSR, 1959)
* White Nights - a film by Leonid Kvinikhidze (Russia, 1992)
* Beloved - a film by Sanjay Leela Bhansalia based on Dostoevsky's story "White Nights" (India, 2007)
* Nikolai Stavrogin - a film by Yakov Protazanov based on Dostoevsky's novel "Demons" (Russia, 1915)
* Demons - a film by Andrzej Wajda (France, 1988)
* Demons - a film by Igor and Dmitry Talankin (Russia, 1992)
* Demons - a film by Felix Schultess (Russia, 2007)
* The Brothers Karamazov - a film by Viktor Turyansky (Russia, 1915)
* The Brothers Karamazov - a film by Dmitry Bukhovetsky (Germany, 1920)
* Killer Dmitry Karamazov - a film by Fyodor Otsep (Germany, 1931)
* The Brothers Karamazov - film by Richard Brooks (USA, 1958)
* The Brothers Karamazov - a film by Ivan Pyryev (USSR, 1969)
* Boys - a film-free fantasy based on the novel by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov" by Renita Grigorieva (USSR, 1990)
* Brothers Karamazov - a film by Yuri Moroz (Russia, 2008)
* The Karamazovs - a film by Petr Zelenka (Czech Republic - Poland, 2008)
* Eternal Husband - a film by Evgeny Markovsky (Russia, 1990)
* The Eternal Husband - a film by Denis Granier-Defer (France, 1991)
* Uncle's dream - a film by Konstantin Voinov (USSR, 1966)
* 1938, France: "The Gambler" (fr. Le Joueur) - director: Louis Daquin (French)
* 1938, Germany: The Players (German: Roman eines Spielers, Der Spieler) - director: Gerhard Lampert (German)
* 1947, Argentina: "The Gambler" (Spanish: El Jugador) - directed by Leon Klimovsky (Spanish)
* 1948, USA: The Great Sinner - director: Robert Siodmak
* 1958, France: "The Gambler" (fr. Le Joueur) - director: Claude Autun-Lara (fr.)
* 1966, - USSR: "Player" - director Yuri Bogatyrenko
* 1972: "The Gambler" - director: Michail Olschewski
* 1972, - USSR: "Player" - director Alexei Batalov
* 1974, USA: "The Gambler" (eng. The Gambler) - director Karel Rice (eng.)
* 1997, Hungary: Player (Hungarian) (eng. The Gambler) - directed by Mac Carola (Hungarian)
* 2007, Germany: "Gamblers" (German: Die Spieler, English: The Gamblers) - director: Sebastian Bignek (German)
* "The Idiot" - a film by Pyotr Chardynin (Russia, 1910)
* "The Idiot" - a film by Georges Lampin (France, 1946)
* "Idiot" - a film by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1951)
* "Idiot" - a film by Ivan Pyryev (USSR, 1958)
* "The Idiot" - television series by Alan Bridges (UK, 1966)
* "Crazy Love" - a film by Andrzej Zulawski (France, 1985)
* "Idiot" - television series Mani Kaula (India, 1991)
* "Down House" - a film-interpretation of Roman Kachanov (Russia, 2001)
* "Idiot" - TV series by Vladimir Bortko (Russia, 2003)
* Meek - a film by Alexander Borisov (USSR, 1960)
* Meek - a film-interpretation by Robert Bresson (France, 1969)
* Meek - animated cartoon film by Piotr Dumal (Poland, 1985)
* Meek - a film by Avtandil Varsimashvili (Russia, 1992)
* Meek - a film by Evgeny Rostovsky (Russia, 2000)
* Dead House (prison of peoples) - a film by Vasily Fedorov (USSR, 1931)
* Partner - a film by Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy, 1968)
* A teenager - a film by Evgeny Tashkov (USSR, 1983)
* Raskolnikov - a film by Robert Wiene (Germany, 1923)
* Crime and Punishment - a film by Pierre Chenal (France, 1935)
* Crime and Punishment - a film by Georges Lampin (France, 1956)
* Crime and Punishment - a film by Lev Kulidzhanov (USSR, 1969)
* Crime and Punishment - a film by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland, 1983)
* Crime and Punishment - animated cartoon by Piotr Dumal (Poland, 2002)
* Crime and Punishment - a film by Julian Jarold (UK, 2003)
* Crime and Punishment - TV series by Dmitry Svetozarov (Russia, 2007)
* Dream of a funny man - cartoon by Alexander Petrov (Russia, 1992)
* The village of Stepanchikovo and its inhabitants - TV movie by Lev Tsutsulkovsky (USSR, 1989)
* A bad joke - a comedy film by Alexander Alov and Vladimir Naumov (USSR, 1966)
* Humiliated and Insulted - TV movie by Vittorio Cottafavi (Italy, 1958)
* Humiliated and Insulted - TV series Raul Araisa (Mexico, 1977)
* Humiliated and Insulted - a film by Andrey Eshpay (USSR - Switzerland, 1990)
* Someone else's wife and husband under the bed - a film by Vitaly Melnikov (USSR, 1984)

Films about Dostoevsky

* "Dostoevsky". Documentary. TSSDF (RTSSDF). 1956. 27 minutes. - a documentary film by Bubrik Samuil and Ilya Kopalin (Russia, 1956) about the life and work of Dostoevsky on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his death.
* The writer and his city: Dostoevsky and Petersburg - a film by Heinrich Böll (Germany, 1969)
* Twenty-six days in the life of Dostoevsky - a feature film by Alexander Zarkhi (USSR, 1980; starring Anatoly Solonitsyn)
* Dostoevsky and Peter Ustinov - from the documentary "Russia" (Canada, 1986)
* The return of the prophet - a documentary by V. E. Ryzhko (Russia, 1994)
* The life and death of Dostoevsky - a documentary (12 episodes) by Alexander Klyushkin (Russia, 2004)
* Demons of St. Petersburg - a feature film by Giuliano Montaldo (Italy, 2008)
* Three women of Dostoevsky - a film by Evgeny Tashkov (Russia, 2010)
* Dostoevsky - series by Vladimir Khotinenko (Russia, 2011) (starring Yevgeny Mironov).

The image of Dostoevsky was also used in the biographical films Sofia Kovalevskaya (Alexander Filippenko) and Chokan Valikhanov (1985).

The current events

* On October 10, 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel unveiled a monument to Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky in Dresden by People's Artist of Russia Alexander Rukavishnikov.
* A crater on Mercury is named after Dostoevsky (Latitude: ?44.5, Longitude: 177, Diameter (km): 390).
* The writer Boris Akunin wrote the work “F. M., dedicated to Dostoevsky.
* In 2010, director Vladimir Khotinenko began filming a serial film about Dostoevsky, which will be released in 2011 on the 190th anniversary of Dostoevsky's birth.
* On June 19, 2010, the 181st station of the Moscow metro "Dostoevskaya" was opened. Access to the city is carried out on Suvorovskaya Square, Seleznevskaya Street and Durova Street. The design of the station: on the walls of the station there are scenes illustrating four novels by F. M. Dostoevsky (“Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, “Demons”, “The Brothers Karamazov”).

Notes

1 I. F. Masanov, Dictionary of Pseudonyms of Russian Writers, Scientists and Public Figures. In 4 volumes. - M., All-Union Book Chamber, 1956-1960.
2 1 2 3 4 5 November 11 // RIA Novosti, November 11, 2008
3 Mirror of the week. - No. 3. - January 27 - February 2, 2007
4 Panaev I.I. Memories of Belinsky: (Excerpts) // I.I. Panaev. From "literary memories" / Managing editor N. K. Piksanov. - A series of literary memoirs. - L .: Fiction, Leningrad branch, 1969. - 282 p.
5 Igor Zolotussky. String in the fog
6 Semipalatinsk. Memorial house-museum of F. M. Dostoevsky
7 [Troyat Henri. Fedor Dostoevsky. - M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2005. - 480 p. (Series "Russian biographies"). ISBN 5-699-03260-6
8 1 2 3 4 [Troyes Henri. Fedor Dostoevsky. - M.: Eksmo Publishing House, 2005. - 480 p. (Series "Russian biographies"). ISBN 5-699-03260-6
9 In December 2006, a memorial tablet was unveiled on the building located in the place where the Dostoevskys stayed at the hotel (the author is the sculptor Romualdas Kvintas) A memorial plaque to Fyodor Dostoevsky
10 History of the Zaraisk district // Official website of the Zaraisk municipal district
11 Nogovitsyn O. M. “Poetics of Russian prose. Metaphysical research”, VRFSH, St. Petersburg, 1994
12 Ilya Brazhnikov. Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821-1881).
13 F. M. Dostoevsky, "A Writer's Diary". 1873 Chapter XI. "Dreams and Dreams"
14 Dostoevsky Fyodor. Electronic Jewish Encyclopedia
15 F. M. Dostoevsky. "The Jewish Question" at Wikisource
16 Dikiy (Zankevich), Andrey Russian-Jewish dialogue, section "F.M. Dostoevsky about the Jews". Retrieved June 6, 2008.
17 1 2 Nasedkin N., Minus Dostoevsky (F. M. Dostoevsky and the "Jewish question")
18 L. Grossman "Confession of a Jew" and "Dostoevsky and Judaism" in the Imwerden Library
19 Maya Turovskaya. Jew and Dostoevsky, "Foreign Notes" 2006, No. 7
20 B. Sokolov. An occupation. Truth and myths
21 "Holy Fools". Alexey Osipov - doctor of theology, professor at the Moscow Theological Academy.
22 http://www.gumer.info/bogoslov_Buks/Philos/bened/intro.php (see box 17)

Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
11.11.1821 - 27.01.1881

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, Russian writer, was born in 1821 in Moscow. His father was a nobleman, a landowner and a doctor of medicine.

He was brought up until the age of 16 in Moscow. In the seventeenth year he passed the exam in St. Petersburg at the Main Engineering School. In 1842 he graduated from the military engineering course and left the school as an engineer-lieutenant. He was left in the service in St. Petersburg, but other goals and aspirations attracted him irresistibly. He especially became interested in literature, philosophy and history.

In 1844, he retired and at the same time wrote his first rather long story, Poor People. This story immediately created a position for him in literature, was met with criticism and the best Russian society extremely favorably. It was a rare success in the full sense of the word. But the constant ill-health that followed for several years in a row harmed his literary pursuits.

In the spring of 1849, he was arrested along with many others for participating in a political conspiracy against the government, which had a socialist connotation. He was brought to the investigation and the highest appointed military court. After an eight-month detention in the Peter and Paul Fortress, he was sentenced to death by firing squad. But the verdict was not executed: a mitigation of the sentence was read and Dostoevsky, after being deprived of the rights of his estate, ranks and nobility, was exiled to Siberia to hard labor for four years, with enlistment at the end of the term of hard labor in ordinary soldiers. This verdict against Dostoevsky was, in its form, the first case in Russia, for anyone sentenced to penal servitude in Russia loses his civil rights forever, even if he has completed his term of penal servitude. Dostoevsky was appointed, after serving the term of hard labor, to enter the soldiers - that is, the rights of a citizen were returned again. Subsequently, such pardons happened more than once, but then it was the first case and occurred at the behest of the late Emperor Nicholas I, who took pity on Dostoevsky for his youth and talent.

In Siberia, Dostoevsky served his four-year term of hard labor, in the fortress of Omsk; and then in 1854 he was sent from hard labor as an ordinary soldier to the Siberian Line Battalion _ 7 in the city of Semipalatinsk, where a year later he was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and in 1856, with the accession to the throne of the current reigning Emperor Alexander II, to officers. In 1859, being in an epileptic illness, acquired while still in hard labor, he was dismissed and returned to Russia, first to the city of Tver, and then to St. Petersburg. Here Dostoevsky began again to engage in literature.

In 1861, his elder brother, Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, began publishing a large monthly literary magazine ("Revue") - "Time". F. M. Dostoevsky also took part in the publication of the journal, publishing his novel “The Humiliated and Insulted” in it, which was sympathetically accepted by the public. But in the next two years he began and finished Notes from the House of the Dead, in which, under false names, he recounted his life in penal servitude and described his former fellow convicts. This book was read by all of Russia and is still highly valued, although the practices and customs described in Notes from the House of the Dead have long since changed in Russia.

In 1866, after the death of his brother and the termination of the Epoch magazine published by him, Dostoevsky wrote the novel Crime and Punishment, then in 1868 the novel The Idiot, and in 1870 the novel Demons. These three novels were highly acclaimed by the public, although Dostoevsky may have been too cruel in them to contemporary Russian society.

In 1876, Dostoevsky began to publish a monthly journal in the original form of his "Diary", written by him alone without collaborators. This edition appeared in 1876 and 1877. in the amount of 8000 copies. It was a success. In general, Dostoevsky is loved by the Russian public. He deserved even from his literary opponents the opinion of a highly honest and sincere writer. According to his convictions, he is an open Slavophile; his former socialist convictions have changed quite a lot.

Brief biographical information dictated by the writer A. G. Dostoevskaya (Published in the January 1881 issue of the Writer's Diary).

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich - famous writer. He was born on October 30, 1821 in Moscow in the building of the Mariinsky Hospital, where his father served as a staff physician. He grew up in a rather harsh environment, over which hovered the gloomy spirit of his father - a "nervous, irritable, conceited" man, always busy caring for the well-being of the family. Children (there were 7 of them; Fedor is the second son) were brought up in fear and obedience, according to the traditions of antiquity, spending most of their time in front of their parents. Rarely leaving the walls of the hospital building, they communicated very little with the outside world, except through the patients, with whom Fyodor Mikhailovich, secretly from his father, sometimes spoke, and even through the former nurses, who usually appeared in their house on Saturdays (from whom Dostoevsky got acquainted with the fairy world). The brightest memories of Dostoevsky’s late childhood are connected with the village - a small estate that his parents bought in the Kashirsky district of the Tula province in 1831. The family spent the summer months there, usually without a father, and the children enjoyed almost complete freedom. Dostoevsky left for life many indelible impressions from peasant life, from various meetings with peasants (Muzhik Marey, Alena Frolovna, etc.; see "Diary of a Writer" for 1876, 2 and 4, and 1877, July - August). Liveliness of temperament, independence of character, extraordinary responsiveness - all these traits manifested themselves in him already in early childhood. Dostoevsky began to study quite early; his mother taught him the alphabet. Later, when they began to prepare him and his brother Michael for an educational institution, he studied the Law of God with a deacon, who captivated not only children, but also parents with his stories from the Holy History, and French in the half board N.I. Drashusova. In 1834, Dostoevsky entered the German boarding school, where he was especially fond of the lessons of literature. At that time he read Karamzin (especially his story), Zhukovsky, V. Scott, Zagoskin, Lazhechnikov, Narezhnago, Veltman and, of course, the "demigod" Pushkin, whose worship remained with him for the rest of his life. At the age of 16, Dostoevsky lost his mother and was soon assigned to an engineering school. He could not put up with the barracks spirit that reigned in the school, he had little interest in the subjects of teaching; he did not get along with his comrades, lived in solitude, gained a reputation as an "unsociable eccentric." He all goes into literature, reads a lot, thinks even more (see his letters to his brother). Goethe, Schiller, Hoffmann, Balzac, Hugo, Corneille, Racine, Georges Sand - all this is included in the circle of his reading, not to mention everything original that appeared in Russian literature. Georges Sand captivated him as "one of the most clairvoyant forebodings of a happier future awaiting mankind" ("A Writer's Diary", 1876, June). Georges-and's motives interested him even in the last period of his life. By the beginning of the 1940s, his first attempt at independent creativity dates back to the dramas "Boris Godunov" and "Mary Stuart" that have not come down to us. Apparently, "Poor people" were started at the school. In 1843, at the end of the course, Dostoevsky was enrolled in the service of the St. Petersburg engineering team and sent to the drawing engineering department. He continued to lead a solitary life, full of passionate interest in literature alone. He translates Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, as well as Georges Sand and Xu. In the autumn of 1844, Dostoevsky resigned, deciding to live only by literary work and "hellish work." "Poor people" are already ready, and he dreams of a major success: if they pay little in "Otechestvennye Zapiski", then 100,000 readers will read it. At the direction of Grigorovich, he gives his first story to Nekrasov in his "Petersburg Collection". The impression she made on Grigorovich, Nekrasov and Belinsky was amazing. Belinsky warmly welcomed Dostoevsky as one of the future great artists of the Gogol school. This was the happiest moment in Dostoevsky's youth. Subsequently, remembering him in hard labor, he was strengthened in spirit. Dostoevsky was accepted into Belinsky's circle as one of his equals, often visited him, and then, probably, the social and human ideals that Belinsky so passionately preached were finally strengthened in him. Dostoevsky's good relations with the circle very soon deteriorated. The members of the circle did not know how to spare his morbid pride and often laughed at him. He still continued to meet with Belinsky, but he was very offended by the bad reviews about his subsequent works, which Belinsky called "nervous nonsense." The success of "Poor People" had an extremely exciting effect on Dostoevsky. He works nervously and passionately, grabbing onto a variety of topics, dreaming of "plugging the belt" of himself and everyone else. Prior to his arrest in 1849, Dostoevsky wrote 10 stories, in addition to various sketches and unfinished works. All were published in Otechestvennye Zapiski (with the exception of the Novel in 9 Letters, Sovremennik, 1847): Double and Prokharchin, 1846; "Mistress" - 1847; "Weak Heart", "Another's Wife", "Jealous Husband", "Honest Thief", "Christmas Tree and Wedding", "White Nights" - 1848, "Netochka Nezvanova" - 1849 The last story remained unfinished: on the night of April 23, 1849, Dostoevsky was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he stayed for 8 months (the Little Hero was written there; published in Otechestvennye Zapiski, 1857). The reason for the arrest was his involvement in the Petrashevsky case. Dostoevsky made friends with the circles of the Fourierists, most closely with the circle of Durov (where his brother Mikhail was also). He was blamed for attending their meetings, taking part in the discussion of various socio-political issues, in particular, the issue of serfdom, rebelling with others against the severity of censorship, listening to the reading of the "Soldier's conversation", knew about the proposal to start a secret lithograph and read Belinsky's famous letter to Gogol several times at meetings. He was sentenced to death, but the sovereign replaced it with hard labor for 4 years. On December 22, Dostoevsky, along with other convicts, was brought to the Semyonovsky parade ground, where they were performed the ceremony of announcing the verdict of death by shooting. The condemned survived all the horror of the "suicide bombers", and only at the last moment they were announced, as a special favor, a real sentence (for Dostoevsky's experiences at that moment, see "The Idiot"). On the night of December 24-25, Dostoevsky was shackled and sent to Siberia. In Tobolsk, he was met by the wives of the Decembrists, and Dostoevsky received from them the blessing of the Gospel, which he never parted with. Then he was sent to Omsk and here in the "Dead House" he served his sentence. In "Notes from the House of the Dead" and even more precisely in letters to his brother (February 22, 1854) and Fonvizina (early March of the same year), he conveys about his experiences in hard labor, about his state of mind immediately after leaving there and about those consequences it had in his life. He had to experience "all the vengeance and persecution that they (convicts) live and breathe for the nobility." "But the eternal concentration in oneself," he writes to his brother, "where I ran away from the bitter reality, has borne fruit." They consisted - as can be seen from the second letter - "in the strengthening of the religious feeling", extinguished was "under the influence of the doubts and unbelief of the age." This is what he apparently means by the "regeneration of convictions" about which he speaks in the Writer's Diary. One must think that hard labor deepened the anguish of his soul even more, strengthened his ability to painfully analyze the last depths of the human spirit and its suffering. At the end of the term of hard labor (February 15, 1854) ) Dostoevsky was appointed as a private in the Siberian linear battalion No. 7 in Semipalatinsk, where he stayed until 1859. Baron A.E. Wrangel took him there under his protection, greatly easing his position. We know very little about Dostoevsky's inner life during this period; Baron Wrangel in his "Memoirs" gives only its external appearance. Apparently, he reads a lot (requests for books in letters to his brother), works on "Notes". Here, it seems, the idea of "Crime and Punishment" is already born. Of the external facts of his life, it should be noted his marriage to Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the widow of the overseer in the tavern (February 6, 1857, in the city of Kuznetsk). Dostoevsky experienced a lot of painfully difficult things in connection with his love for her (he met her and fell in love with her during the life of her first husband). On April 18, 1857, Dostoevsky was restored to his former rights; On August 15 of the same year he received the rank of ensign, soon submitted a letter of resignation and on March 18, 1859 was fired, with permission to live in Tver. In the same year, he published two stories: "Uncle's Dream" ("Russian Word") and "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants" ("Notes of the Fatherland"). Yearning in Tver, striving with all his might to the literary center, Dostoevsky strenuously fusses about permission to live in the capital, which he soon receives. In 1860 he had already settled in St. Petersburg. All this time Dostoevsky endured extreme material need; Maria Dmitrievna was already sick with consumption at that time, and Dostoevsky earned very little from literature. Since 1861, together with his brother, he began to publish the magazine "Time", which immediately becomes a great success and completely provides them. In it, Dostoevsky publishes his "Humiliated and Insulted" (61, books 1 - 7), "Notes from the House of the Dead" (61 and 62 years) and a short story "Bad Anecdote" (62, book 11). In the summer of 1862, Dostoevsky went abroad for treatment, visited Paris, London (a meeting with Herzen) and Geneva. He described his impressions in the journal Vremya (Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, 1863, books 2-3). Soon the magazine was closed for an innocent article by N. Strakhov on the Polish question (1863, May). The Dostoevskys petitioned for permission to publish it under a different title, and at the beginning of 64, Epoch began to appear, but without the previous success. The patient himself, spending all his time in Moscow at the bedside of his dying wife, Dostoevsky could hardly help his brother. Books were compiled somehow, hastily, extremely late, and there were very few subscribers. April 16, 1864 wife died; On June 10, Mikhail Dostoevsky died unexpectedly, and on September 25, one of the closest collaborators, beloved by Dostoevsky, Apollon Grigoriev, died. Blow after blow and a mass of debts finally upset the matter, and at the beginning of 1865 The Epoch ceased to exist (Dostoevsky published in it Notes from the Underground, books 1-2 and 4, and Crocodile, in the last book). Dostoevsky was left with 15,000 rubles of debt and a moral obligation to support the family of his late brother and his wife's son from his first husband. At the beginning of July 1865, having somehow settled his financial affairs for a while, Dostoevsky went abroad, to Wiesbaden. Nervously upset, on the verge of despair, whether in a thirst for oblivion or in the hope of winning, he tried to play roulette there and lost to a penny (see the description of sensations in the novel "The Gambler"). I had to resort to the help of an old friend Wrangel in order to somehow get out of a difficult situation. In November, Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg and sold his copyright to Stelovsky, with the obligation to add a new one to the previous works - the novel "The Gambler". Then he finished "Crime and Punishment", which soon began to be published in the "Russian Bulletin" (1866, 1 - 2, 4, 6, 8, 11 - 12 books). This novel made a huge impact. Again the name of Dostoevsky was on everyone's lips. This was facilitated, in addition to the great merits of the novel, by the remote coincidence of its plot with the actual fact: at the time when the novel was already being printed, a murder was committed in Moscow with the aim of robbery by student Danilov, who motivated his crime somewhat similar to Raskolnikov. Dostoevsky was very proud of his artistic insight. In the autumn of 1866, in order to fulfill his obligation to Stellovsky by the deadline, he invited Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, a stenographer, to his place and dictated The Gambler to her. On February 15, 1867, she became his wife, and two months later they went abroad, where they stayed for more than 4 years (until July 1871). This foreign trip was an escape from creditors who had already filed for collection. On the way, he took 3,000 rubles from Katkov for the planned novel "The Idiot"; of this money he left most of his brother's family. In Baden-Baden, he was again captivated by the hope of winning and again lost everything: money, his suit, and even his wife's dresses. I had to make new loans, work desperately, "on postage" (31/2 sheets a month) and need the bare necessities. These 4 years, in terms of funds, are the most difficult in his life. His letters are filled with desperate requests for money, all sorts of calculations. His irritability reaches an extreme degree, which explains the tone and nature of his works for this period ("Demons", and partly "The Idiot"), as well as his clash with Turgenev. Driven by need, his creativity was very intensive; written "The Idiot" ("Russian Messenger", 68 - 69), "Eternal Husband" ("Dawn", 1 - 2 books, 70) and most of the "Demons" ("Russian Messenger", 71 , 1 - 2, 4, 7, 9 - 12 books and 72, 11 - 12 books). In 1867, The Diary of a Writer was conceived, and at the end of 68, the novel Atheism, which later formed the basis of The Brothers Karamazov, was conceived. Upon returning to St. Petersburg, the brightest period in Dostoevsky's life begins. Clever and energetic Anna Grigoryevna took all the money matters into her own hands and quickly corrected them, freeing him from debts. From the beginning of 1873, Dostoevsky became the editor of Grazhdanin with a pay of 250 rubles a month, in addition to the fee for articles. There he conducts a review of foreign policy and prints feuilletons: "A Writer's Diary". At the beginning of 1874, Dostoevsky already left The Citizen to work on the novel The Teenager (Notes of the Fatherland, 1975, books 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 11 and 12). During this period, the Dostoevskys spent the summer months in Staraya Russa, from where he often went to Ems for treatment in July and August; once they stayed there for the winter. From the beginning of 1876, Dostoevsky began to publish his "Diary of a Writer" - a monthly magazine without employees, without a program and departments. In material terms, the success was great: the number of divergent copies ranged from 4 to 6 thousand. The "Diary of a Writer" found a warm response both among its adherents and among its detractors, due to its sincerity and rare responsiveness to the exciting events of the day. In his political views, Dostoevsky is very close to the right-wing Slavophiles in it, sometimes even merges with them, and in this respect the "Diary of a Writer" is of no particular interest; but it is valuable, firstly, from reminiscences, and secondly, as a commentary on Dostoevsky's artistic work: you often find here a hint of some fact that gave impetus to his imagination, or even a more detailed development of one or another idea touched upon in a work of art; there are also many excellent stories and essays in the Diary, sometimes only outlined, sometimes completely completed. Since 1878, Dostoevsky stopped the "Diary of a Writer", as if passing away, in order to start his last story - "The Brothers Karamazov" ("Russian Messenger", 79 - 80 years). "A lot of my me lay down in him," he himself says in a letter to I. Aksakov. The novel was a huge success. During the printing of part 2, Dostoevsky was destined to experience the moment of the highest triumph at the Pushkin holiday (June 8, 1880), at which he delivered his famous speech, which led the large audience to indescribable delight. In it, Dostoevsky, with true pathos, expressed his idea of a synthesis between West and East, by merging both principles: the general and the individual (the speech was published with explanations in the only issue of the "Diary of a Writer" for 1880). It was his swan song, on January 25, 1881, he handed over to censorship the first issue of the Writer's Diary, which he wanted to resume, and on January 28 at 8:38 pm he was no longer alive. In recent years, he suffered from emphysema. On the night of 25/26, a rupture of the pulmonary artery occurred; he was followed by an attack of his usual illness - epilepsy. The love of reading Russia for him was expressed on the day of the funeral. Huge crowds of people saw off his coffin; 72 deputations participated in the procession. All over Russia they responded to his death as a great public misfortune. Dostoevsky was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra on January 31, 1881 - Characteristics of creativity. From the point of view of the basics, the main guiding ideas, Dostoevsky's work can be divided into 2 periods: from "Poor People" to "Notes from the Underground" and from "Notes" to the famous speech at the Pushkin holiday. In the first period, he is an ardent admirer of Schiller, Georges Sand and Hugo, an ardent defender of the great ideals of humanism in their usual, generally accepted sense, the most devoted student of Belinsky - a socialist, with his deep pathos, his intense excitement in upholding the natural rights of the "last man" is not inferior to himself teacher. In the second, he, if he does not completely renounce all his previous ideas, then some of them certainly overestimate and, having overestimated, discard, and although he leaves a part, he tries to put completely different grounds under it. This division is convenient in that it sharply emphasizes that deep crack in his metaphysics, that visible "regeneration of his convictions," which actually showed up very soon after hard labor and - presumably - not without its effect on acceleration, and perhaps even direction. inner mental work. He starts out as a faithful student of Gogol, author of The Overcoat, and understands the duties of an artist-writer, as taught by Belinsky. “The most downtrodden last person is also a person and is called your brother” (the words he said in “Humiliated and Insulted”) - this is his main idea, the starting point of all his works for the first period. Even the world is the same Gogolian, bureaucratic, at least in most cases. And according to his idea, he is almost always divided into two parts: on the one hand, weak, pitiful, downtrodden "officials for writing" or honest, truthful, painfully sensitive dreamers who find comfort and joy in someone else's happiness, and on the other - "Their Excellencies" puffed up to the point of losing their human appearance, in essence, perhaps, not at all evil, but according to their position, as if by duty they distort the lives of their subordinates, and next to them are middle-sized officials who claim to be bontonous, imitating their superiors in everything . From the very beginning, Dostoevsky's background is much broader, the plot is more intricate, and more people are involved in it; the spiritual analysis is incomparably deeper, the events are described more vividly, more painfully, the sufferings of these little people are expressed too hysterically, almost to the point of cruelty. But these are the inalienable properties of his genius, and not only did they not interfere with the glorification of the ideals of humanism, but, on the contrary, they further strengthened and deepened their expression. Such are "Poor people", "Double", "Prokharchin", "A novel in 9 letters" and all other stories published before hard labor. According to the guiding idea, Dostoevsky's first works after penal servitude also belong to this category: "The Humiliated and Insulted", "The Village of Stepanchikovo" and even "Notes from the House of the Dead". Although in the "Notes" the pictures are entirely painted with the gloomy-severe colors of Dante's hell, although they are imbued with an unusually deep interest in the soul of the criminal as such, and therefore could be attributed to the second period, nevertheless, here, apparently, the goal is the same: arouse pity and compassion for the "fallen", show the moral superiority of the weak over the strong, reveal the presence of the "spark of God" in the hearts of even the most notorious, notorious criminals, on whose foreheads are the stigma of eternal damnation, contempt or hatred of all living in the "norm". In some places and sometimes in Dostoevsky even earlier one comes across some strange types - people "with a convulsively intense will and inner impotence"; people to whom resentment and humiliation give some painful, almost voluptuous pleasure, who already know all the confusion, all the bottomless depth of human experiences, with all the transitional steps between the most opposite feelings, know to the point that they no longer "distinguish between love and hatred", they cannot contain themselves ("Mistress", "White Nights", "Netochka Nezvanova"). But still, these people only slightly disturb the general image of Dostoevsky as the most talented representative of the Gogol school, created mainly thanks to the efforts of Belinsky. "Good" and "Evil" are still in their former places, Dostoevsky's former idols are sometimes forgotten, as it were, but they are never offended, they are not subjected to any reassessment. Dostoevsky sharply distinguishes from the very beginning - and this, perhaps, is the root of his future convictions - an extremely peculiar understanding of the essence of humanism, or, more precisely, of the essence that is taken under the protection of humanism. Gogol's attitude to his hero, as is often the case with a humorist, is purely sentimental. A shade of condescension, looking "from top to bottom" makes itself clearly felt. Akaky Akakievich, with all our sympathy for him, is always in the position of "little brother". We feel sorry for him, we sympathize with his grief, but not for a single moment do we completely merge with him, consciously or unconsciously we feel our superiority over him. This is him, this is his world, but we, our world, are completely different. The insignificance of his experiences does not at all lose its character, but is only skillfully covered by the soft, sad laughter of the writer. At best, Gogol refers to his position as a loving father or an experienced older brother to the misfortunes of a little unreasonable child. Dostoevsky is not like that at all. Even in his very first works he looks at this "last brother" quite seriously, approaches him closely, intimately, precisely as if he were quite an equal. He knows - and not with his mind, but with his soul comprehends - the absolute value of each individual, whatever its social value. For him, the experiences of the most “useless” being are just as holy, inviolable, as the experiences of the greatest figures, the greatest benefactors of this world. There are no "great" and "small" ones, and the point is not that more should begin to sympathize with the smaller. Dostoevsky immediately transfers the center of gravity to the region of the "heart", the only sphere where equality prevails, and not an equation, where there are no and cannot be any quantitative correlations: every moment is there exclusively, individually. It is this peculiarity, by no means stemming from any abstract principle, inherent in Dostoevsky alone as a result of the individual qualities of his nature, and gives his artistic genius the tremendous strength that is needed to rise in the depiction of the inner world of the smallest of the smallest to world level, universal. For Gogol, for those who always evaluate, always compare, such tragic scenes as a student's funeral or Devushkin's state of mind when Varenka leaves him ("Poor People") are simply unthinkable; what is needed here is not recognition in principle, but a feeling of the absoluteness of the human "I" and the exceptional ability resulting from this feeling to stand entirely in the place of another, without bending down to him and without raising him to himself. From this follows the first most characteristic feature in Dostoevsky's work. At first, he seems to have a completely objectified image; you feel that the author is somewhat aloof from his hero. But then his pathos begins to grow, the process of objectification breaks off, and then the subject - the creator and the object - the image are already merged together; the experiences of the hero become the experiences of the author himself. That is why readers of Dostoevsky are left with the impression that all his characters speak the same language, that is, the words of Dostoevsky himself. This feature of Dostoevsky corresponds to other features of his genius, also very early, almost at the very beginning, manifested in his work. Striking is his predilection for depicting the sharpest, most intense human torment, his irresistible desire to cross the line beyond which artistry loses its softening power, and unusually painful pictures begin, sometimes more terrible than the most terrible reality. For Dostoevsky, suffering is an element, the primordial essence of life, raising those in whom it is most fully embodied to the highest pedestal of fatal doom. All people for him are too individual, exceptional in each of their experiences, absolutely autonomous in the only area that is important and valuable to him - in the area of \u200b\u200bthe "heart"; they obscure the general background surrounding their reality. Dostoevsky literally breaks the closed chain of life into separate links, at each given moment so riveting our attention to a single link that we completely forget about its connection with others. The reader immediately enters into the most hidden side of the human soul, enters by some roundabout ways, always lying aside from the mind. And this is so unusual that almost all of his faces give the impression of fantastic creatures, only one side of his, the most distant, in contact with our world of phenomena, with the realm of the mind. Hence, the very background against which they perform - life, environment - also seems fantastic. Meanwhile, the reader does not doubt for a minute that he is facing the real truth. It is in these features, or rather, in one reason that gives birth to them, that the source of the bias towards the views of the second period lies. Everything in the world is relative, including our values, our ideals and aspirations. Humanism, the principle of universal happiness, love and brotherhood, a beautiful harmonious life, the resolution of all questions, the alleviation of all pains - in a word, everything we strive for, what we so painfully crave, all this is in the future, in a distant fog, for others, for subsequent, for not yet existing. But what about now with this particular person who has come into the world for the time allotted to her, what about her life, her torments, what consolation can she give? Sooner or later, but inevitably, a moment must come when a person protests with all the forces of his soul against all these distant ideals, demands, and above all from himself, exclusive attention to his short-term life. Of all the theories of happiness, the most painful for a given individual is positively sociological, most consistent with the prevailing spirit of science. It proclaims the principle of relativity both in quantity and in time: it has in mind only the majority, undertakes to strive for the relative happiness of this relative majority, and sees the approach of this happiness only in a more or less distant future. Dostoevsky begins his second period with a merciless critique of positive morality and positive happiness, with the debunking of our dearest ideals, since they are based on such a basis, cruel for a single person. In "Notes from the Underground" the first antithesis, "I and Society" or "I and Mankind," is put forward very strongly, and the second one is already outlined: "I and the World." For 40 years a man lived in the "underground"; delved into his soul, tormented, conscious of his own and others' insignificance; more morally and physically, he aspired somewhere, did something and did not notice how life passed stupidly, disgustingly, tediously, without a single bright moment, without a single drop of joy. Life has been lived, and now the painful question is relentlessly pursued: why? Who needed her? Who needed all his suffering, which distorted his whole being? But he, too, once believed in all these ideals, he also saved someone or was going to save, worshiped Schiller, wept over the fate of his "little brother", as if there was someone else smaller than him. How to live the pale years of the remainder? Where to look for consolation? It does not exist and cannot exist. Despair, boundless malice - that's what he left as a result of life. And he brings this malice to light, throws his bullying in people's faces. All a lie, stupid self-deception, a stupid game of spillikins of stupid, insignificant people, in their blindness fussing about something, worshiping something, some kind of stupid invented fetishes that do not withstand any kind of criticism. At the cost of all his torments, at the cost of all his ruined life, he bought his right to the merciless cynicism of the following words: I want tea and if the world perishes, I will say: "I want tea, and let the world perish." If the world does not care about him, if history in its forward movement ruthlessly destroys everyone along the way, if the illusory improvement of life is achieved at the cost of so many sacrifices, so many sufferings, then he does not accept such a life, such a world - he does not accept in the name of his absolute rights, as once an existing person. And what can they object to this: positivistic-social ideals, the coming harmony, the crystal kingdom? The happiness of future generations, if it can console anyone, is a complete fiction: it is based on an incorrect calculation or an obvious lie. It assumes that as soon as a person finds out what is his benefit, he immediately and without fail will begin to strive for it, and the benefit consists in living in harmony, obeying the general established norms. But who decided that a person is looking only for benefits? After all, it seems only from the point of view of the mind, but the mind plays the least role in life, and it is not for him to curb the passions, the eternal desire for chaos, for destruction. At the very last moment, when the crystal palace is about to be completed, there will certainly be some gentleman with a retrograde physiognomy who will put his hands on his hips and say to all people: “Well, gentlemen, can’t we push all this prudence at once , solely with the aim that all these logarithms go to hell and that we again live according to our stupid will, "even if in misfortune. And he will certainly find followers for himself, and not even a few, so that all this rigmarole, called history, will have to start all over again. For "one's own, free and free will, one's own, even the wildest whim, one's own fantasy - that's all there is that missed, most profitable benefit that does not fit into any classification and from which all systems , all theories constantly fly to hell. " This is how a man from the "underground" rages; Dostoevsky comes to such a frenzy, standing up for the ruined life of an individual person. It was Belinsky's fiery student who, together with his teacher, could come to such a conclusion, recognizing the absoluteness of the beginning of personality. All the future destructive work of Dostoevsky is inscribed here. In the future, he will only deepen these thoughts, call out from the underworld more and more forces of chaos - all the passions, all the ancient instincts of man, in order to finally prove all the failure of the usual foundations of our morality, all its weakness in the fight against these forces, and thereby clear the ground for a different justification - mystical-religious. Raskolnikov, the hero of one of the most brilliant works in world literature, "Crime and Punishment", fully assimilates the thoughts of a person "from the underground". Raskolnikov is a most consistent nihilist, much more consistent than Bazarov. Its basis is atheism, and all his life, all his actions are only logical conclusions from it. If there is no God, if all our categorical imperatives are mere fiction, if ethics can thus be explained only as the product of certain social relations, then wouldn’t the so-called double-entry bookkeeping of morality be more correct, wouldn’t it be more scientific: one for the masters, another for slaves? And he creates his own theory, his own ethics, according to which he allows himself to violate our basic norm, which prohibits the shedding of blood. People are divided into ordinary and extraordinary, into the crowd and heroes. The first are a cowardly, submissive mass, at which the prophet has every right to shoot from cannons: "obey, trembling creature, and do not argue." The second are bold, proud, born rulers, Napoleons, Caesars, Alexanders of Macedon. This is all allowed. They themselves are the creators of laws, the establishers of all kinds of values. Their path is always littered with corpses, but they calmly step over them, bringing with them new higher values. It's up to everyone to decide for himself and for himself who he is. Raskolnikov made up his mind and sheds blood. That is his scheme. Dostoevsky puts into it content of extraordinary genius, where the iron logic of thought merges with the subtle knowledge of the human soul. Raskolnikov does not kill the old woman, but the principle, and until the last minute, being already in hard labor, does not recognize himself as guilty. His tragedy is not at all the result of pangs of conscience, revenge on the part of the "norm" he violated; she is completely different; she is all in the consciousness of her insignificance, in the deepest resentment, in which only fate is to blame: he turned out to be not a hero, he did not dare - he is also a trembling creature, and this is unbearable for him. He did not reconcile; before whom or before what should he humble himself? There is nothing obligatory, categorical, after all; and people are even smaller, stupider, more vile, more cowardly than him. Now in his soul there is a feeling of complete isolation from life, from the people dearest to him, from all those who live normally and with the norm. Thus the starting point of the "underground man" is complicated here. In the novel, a number of other people are also brought out. And as always, only the fallen ones, martyrs of their passions or ideas, are deeply tragic and interesting, struggling in agony on the verge of the line, either transgressing it, or punishing themselves for having crossed (Svidrigailov, Marmeladov). The author is already close to resolving the questions posed by him: to the abolition of all antitheses in God and in the belief in immortality. Sonya Marmeladova also violates the norm, but God is with her, and this is her inner salvation, her special truth, the motive of which deeply penetrates the entire gloomy symphony of the novel. In The Idiot, Dostoevsky's next major novel, the critique of positive morality, and with it the first antithesis, is somewhat weakened. Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna are simply martyrs of their irresistible passions, victims of internal, soul-rending contradictions. The motifs of cruelty, unbridled voluptuousness, attraction to Sodom - in a word, Karamazovism - already sound here with all their terrible catastrophic power. Of the secondary ones - after all, all the images, including Rogozhin and Nastasya Filippovna, were conceived only as a background for Prince Myshkin - these motives become the main ones, captivate the artist’s tense soul, and he reveals them in all their captivating breadth. The more strongly put forward the second, even more painful antithesis for man: I and the world, or I and the cosmos, I and nature. Few pages are devoted to this antithesis, and one of the minor characters, Hippolyte, puts it, but her gloomy spirit hovers over the whole work. Under its aspect, the whole meaning of the novel changes. Dostoevsky's thought goes, as it were, in the following way. Can even those chosen ones, Napoleons, be happy? How can a person live without God in his soul, with only one mind, since there are inexorable laws of nature, the all-consuming mouth of the “terrible, dumb, mercilessly cruel beast” is always open, ready to devour you every moment? Let a person reconcile himself in advance with the fact that all life consists in incessantly eating each other, let him, accordingly, take care of only one thing, in order to somehow retain a place at the table, so that he himself can eat as many people as possible; but what joy can there be in life at all, since it has a deadline, and with every moment the fatal, inexorable end draws nearer and nearer? Dostoevsky's "underground" man already thinks that the ability to reason is only about one-twentieth of the entire ability to live; reason knows only what it has managed to know, but human nature acts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously and unconsciously. But in this very nature, in her unconscious, there are depths where, perhaps, the true key to life is hidden. Among the raging passions, among the noisy and colorful worldly bustle, only Prince Myshkin was bright in spirit, although not joyful. To him alone are gaps open to the realm of the mystical. He knows all the impotence of reason in resolving eternal problems, but in his soul he senses other possibilities. Holy fool, "blessed", he is smart with a higher mind, comprehends everything with his heart, with his gut. Through the "sacred" illness, in a few inexpressibly happy seconds before the attack, he learns the highest harmony, where everything is clear, meaningful and justified. Prince Myshkin - sick, abnormal, fantastic - and yet one feels that he is the healthiest, strongest, most normal of all. In the depiction of this image, Dostoevsky reached one of the highest peaks of creativity. Here Dostoevsky embarked on a direct path to his sphere of the mystical, in the center of which is Christ and faith in immortality - the only unshakable foundation of morality. The next novel, The Possessed, is another bold ascent. It has two uneven parts both in quantity and quality. In one, there is a vicious criticism, amounting to a caricature, of the social movement of the 1970s and of its old inspirers, the reassured, self-satisfied priests of humanism. The latter are ridiculed in the person of Karmazinov and the old man Verkhovensky, in whom they see mutilated images of Turgenev and Granovsky. This is one of the shadow sides, which are many in Dostoevsky's journalistic activity. Important and valuable is another part of the novel, which depicts a group of people with "theoretically irritated hearts", struggling to solve world problems, exhausted in the struggle of all sorts of desires, passions and ideas. The former problems, the former antitheses, pass here into their last stage, into the opposition: "God-Man and Man-God." Stavrogin's tense will gravitates equally to the upper and lower abyss, to God and the devil, to the pure Madonna and to the sins of Sodom. Therefore, he is able to simultaneously preach the ideas of God-manhood and human-deity. Shatov listens first, Kirillov second; he himself is not captured by either one or the other. He is hampered by his "inner impotence", weakness of desires, inability to be ignited by either thought or passion. There is something from Pechorin in him: nature gave him tremendous strength, a great mind, but in his soul there is a deadly cold, his heart is indifferent to everything. He is deprived of some mysterious, but the most necessary sources of life, and his last destiny is suicide. Shatov also dies unfinished; Kirillov alone carries out the idea of human deity he has assimilated to the end. The pages devoted to him are amazing in their depth of spiritual analysis. Kirillov - at some limit; one more movement, and he seems to comprehend the whole mystery. And he, like Prince Myshkin, also has seizures of epilepsy, and in the last few moments he is given a feeling of supreme bliss, all resolving harmony. Longer - he says himself - the human body is not able to withstand such happiness; It seems that one more moment - and life would stop by itself. Perhaps these moments of bliss give him the courage to oppose himself to God. There is some unconscious religious feeling in him, but it is littered with the tireless work of the mind, his scientific convictions, his confidence as a mechanical engineer that all cosmic life can and should be explained only mechanically. Ippolit's languor (in The Idiot), his horror before the inexorable laws of nature - this is Kirillov's starting point. Yes, the most offensive, the most terrible thing for a person, with which he absolutely cannot put up, is death. In order to somehow get rid of her, of her fear, a person creates a fiction, invents God, in whose bosom he seeks salvation. God is the fear of death. This fear must be destroyed, and God will die with it. To do this, it is necessary to show self-will, in all its fullness. No one has so far dared to kill himself without any extraneous reason. But he, Kirillov, will dare and thereby prove that he is not afraid of her. And then the greatest world upheaval will take place: man will take the place of God, become a man-god, for, having ceased to be afraid of death, he will physically begin to be reborn, will finally overcome the mechanical nature and will live forever. This is how a person compares his strength with God, in a semi-delusional fantasy dreaming of overcoming Him. The God of Kirillov is not in three persons, there is no Christ here; this is the same cosmos, the deification of the same mechanicalness that frightens him so much. But it cannot be mastered without Christ, without faith in the Resurrection and in the miracle of immortality that follows from this. The scene of suicide is amazing for those terrible torments that Kirillov is experiencing in his inhuman horror before the coming end. - In the next, less successful novel, The Teenager, the pathos of thought is somewhat weaker, comparatively less emotional tension. There are variations on previous themes, but already complicated by somewhat different motives. There is a kind of possibility of overcoming the former extreme denials by a person, and in our everyday sense, healthy. The protagonist of the novel, a teenager, knows the distant echoes of Raskolnikov's theory - the division of people into "daring" and "trembling creatures." He would also like to rank himself among the first, but not in order to cross the "line", to violate the "norms": there are other aspirations in his soul - a thirst for "goodness", a premonition of synthesis. He is also attracted to Wille zur Macht, but not in the usual way. He bases his activity on the original idea of the "stingy knight" - the acquisition of power through money, assimilates it entirely up to: "this consciousness is enough for me." But, being by nature alive, mobile, he imagines such a consciousness not as calm in contemplation alone: he wants to feel powerful for just a few minutes, and then he will distribute everything and go into the desert to celebrate even greater freedom - freedom from worldly fuss, from myself. Thus, the highest recognition of one's "I", the highest affirmation of one's personality, thanks to the organic presence in the soul of the elements of Christianity, at the very last line passes into its negation, into asceticism. Another hero of the novel, Versilov, also gravitates toward synthesis. He is one of the rare representatives of the world idea, "the highest cultural type of support for all"; torn apart by contradictions, he languishes under the yoke of incredibly huge egoism. There are perhaps a thousand like him, no more; but for their sake, perhaps, Russia existed. The mission of the Russian people is to create, through this thousand, such a general idea that would unite all the particular ideas of the European peoples, merge them into a single whole. This thought about the Russian mission, the most dear to Dostoevsky, is varied by him in different ways in a whole series of journalistic articles; it was already in the mouths of Myshkin and Shatov, it is repeated in The Brothers Karamazov, but only Versilov is its bearer, as a separate image, as if specially created for this purpose. - "The Brothers Karamazov" - the last, most powerful artistic word of Dostoevsky. Here is the synthesis of his whole life, all his intense searches in the field of thought and creativity. Everything that he wrote before is nothing more than ascending steps, partial attempts at incarnation. According to the main plan, Alyosha was supposed to be the central figure. In the history of mankind, ideas die and with them people, their carriers, but they are replaced by new ones. The situation in which humanity now finds itself cannot continue any longer. There is the greatest confusion in the soul; on the ruins of old values, a tormented person bends under the weight of age-old questions, having lost all justifying meaning of life. But this is not absolute death: here is the pangs of the birth of a new religion, a new morality, a new man who must unite - first in himself, and then in action - all the particular ideas that until then guided life, illuminate everything with a new light, answer in listening to all questions. Dostoevsky managed to fulfill only the first part of the plan. In the 14 books that have been written, the birth is only being prepared, the new being is only outlined, attention is paid mainly to the tragedy of the end of the old life. Above the whole work powerfully sounds the last blasphemous cry of all its deniers, who have lost their last foundations: "Everything is allowed!". Against the backdrop of spidery voluptuousness - Karamazovism - the naked human soul is ominously illuminated, disgusting in its passions (Fyodor Karamazov and his illegitimate son Smerdyakov), unrestrained in its falls and yet helplessly restless, deeply tragic (Dmitry and Ivan). Events rush with extraordinary speed, and in their swift run a mass of sharply defined images arise - old, familiar from previous creations, but here profound and new, from different strata, classes and ages. And they are all entangled in one strong knot, doomed to physical or spiritual death. Here the sharpness of analysis reaches extreme dimensions, reaches cruelty, torment. All this, as it were, is only the foundation on which the most tragic figure rises - Ivan, this intercessor, the plaintiff for all people, for all the suffering of mankind. In his rebellious cry, in his rebellion against Christ himself, all the groans and cries that came out of human lips merged. What meaning can there still be in our life, what values we should worship, since the whole world is in evil and even God cannot justify it, since the Chief Architect himself built it and continues to build it every day on tears already, in any case, innocent creatures - a child. And how can one accept such a world, so falsely, so cruelly built, even if there is God and immortality, there has been and will be the Resurrection? The future harmony in the second coming - no longer positivistic, but the real, genuine universal happiness and forgiveness - can it pay for, justify at least one tear of a child hunted by dogs or shot by Turks at the very second when he smiled at them with his innocent childish smile? No, Ivan would rather remain outside the threshold of the crystal palace, with his unrequited insult, but he would not allow the mother of a tortured child to embrace his tormentor: for herself, for her maternal torment, she can still forgive, but she must not, she does not dare to forgive for the torment your child. So Dostoevsky, once accepting the “last man” into his heart, recognizing his experiences as an absolute value in itself, took his side against everyone: against society, the world and God, carried his tragedy through all his works, raised it to the level of the world, brought it to struggle against himself, against his own last refuge, against Christ. This is where "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" begins - the final idea of this final creation. The entire thousand-year history of mankind is focused on this great duel, on this strange, fantastic meeting of a 90-year-old elder with the Savior who came a second time, who descended on the haystacks of weeping Castile. And when the elder, in the role of an accuser, tells Him that He did not foresee the future history, was too proud in His demands, overestimated the Divine in man, did not save him, that the world had long turned away from Him, had gone along the path of the Smart Spirit and would reach the him to the end that he, the old inquisitor, is obliged to correct His feat, to become the head of the weak suffering people and at least by deception to give them the illusion of what was rejected by Him during the three great temptations - then in these speeches imbued with deep sorrow it is clear one hears self-mocking, Dostoevsky's rebellion against himself. After all, the discovery that Alyosha makes: "Your inquisitor does not believe in God" still does little to save him from his murderous arguments. Not without reason, just about the "Grand Inquisitor" Dostoevsky escaped these words: "Through a great crucible of doubts, my hosanna came." In the written parts there is one crucible of doubts: his hosanna, Alyosha and the elder Zosima, are greatly hushed up before the greatness of his denials. Thus ends the artistic path of the martyr Dostoevsky. In his last work, again, with titanic power, the same motives as in the first sounded: pain for the "last man", boundless love for him and his suffering, readiness to fight for him, for the absoluteness of his rights, with everyone, not excluding God. Belinsky certainly would have recognized him as his former student. - Bibliography. 1. Editions: the first posthumous collected works of 1883; edition of A. Marx (supplement to the magazine "Niva" 1894 - 1895); edition 7, A. Dostoevskaya, in 14 volumes, 1906; edition 8, "Enlightenment", the most complete: here are variants, passages and articles that were not included in previous editions (the appendix to "Demons" is valuable). - II. Biographical information: O. Miller "Materials for the biography of Dostoevsky", and N. Strakhov "Memoirs of F.M. Dostoevsky", (both in the first volume of the edition of 1883); G. Vetrinsky "Dostoevsky in the memoirs of contemporaries, letters and notes" ("Historical Literary Library", Moscow, 1912); Baron A. Wrangel "Memories of Dostoevsky in Siberia" (St. Petersburg, 1912); Collection "Petrashevtsy", edited by V.V. Kallash; Vengerov "Petrashevtsy" ("Encyclopedic Dictionary" Brockhaus-Efron); Akhsharumov "Memoirs of Petrashevets"; A. Koni "Essays and Memoirs" (1906) and "On the Path of Life" (1912, vol. II). - III. Criticism and bibliography: a) On creativity in general: N. Mikhailovsky "Cruel Talent" (vol. V, pp. 1 - 78); G. Uspensky (vol. III, pp. 333 - 363); O. Miller "Russian writers after Gogol"; S. Vengerov, "Sources of the Dictionary of Russian Writers" (vol. II, pp. 297 - 307); Vladislavlev "Russian Writers" (Moscow, 1913); V. Solovyov, "Three speeches in memory of Dostoevsky" (works, vol. III, pp. 169 - 205); V. Chizh "Dostoevsky as a psychopathologist" (Moscow, 1885); N. Bazhenov "Psychiatric conversation" (Moscow, 1903); Kirpichnikov "Essays on the history of new literature" (vol. I, Moscow, 1903); V. Pereverzev "Creativity of Dostoevsky" (Moscow, 1912). Of the latest trends in criticism of Dostoevsky: V. Rozanov "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor" (ed. 3, St. Petersburg, 1906); S. Andreevsky "Literary Essays" (3rd edition, St. Petersburg. , 1902); D. Merezhkovsky "Tolstoy and Dostoevsky" (5th edition, 1911); L. Shestov "Dostoevsky and Nietzsche" (St. Petersburg, 1903); V. Veresaev "Living Life" (Moscow, 1911); Volzhsky "Two Essays" (1902); his "Religious and Moral Problem in Dostoevsky" ("The World of God", 6 - 8 books, 1905); S. Bulgakov, collection "Literary Matter" (St. Petersburg, 1902); Yu. Aikhenwald "Silhouettes" (vol. II); A. Gornfeld "Books and people" (St. Petersburg, 1908); V. Ivanov "Dostoevsky and the novel-tragedy" ("Russian Thought", 5 - 6, 1911); A. Bely "The tragedy of creativity" (Moscow, 1911); A. Volynsky "About Dostoevsky" (2nd edition, St. Petersburg, 1909); A. Zakrzhevsky "Underground" (Kyiv, 1911); his "Karamazovshchina" (Kyiv, 1912). - b) On individual works: V. Belinsky, vol. IV, edition of Pavlenkov ("Poor people"); his, v. X ("Double") and XI ("Mistress"); I. Annensky "The Book of Reflections" ("Double" and "Prokharchin"); N. Dobrolyubov "The Downtrodden People" (vol. III), about "The Humiliated and Insulted". About "Notes from the House of the Dead" - D. Pisarev ("The Dead and the Perishing", vol. V). "On "Crime and Punishment": D. Pisarev ("Fight for Life", vol. VI); N. Mikhailovsky ("Literary Memoirs and Modern Troubles", vol. II, pp. 366 - 367); I. Annensky ( "The Book of Reflections", vol. II). About "Demons": N. Mikhailovsky (op. vol. I, pp. 840 - 872), A. Volynsky ("The Book of Great Wrath"). About "The Brothers Karamazov": S Bulgakov ("From Marxism to Idealism", 1904, pp. 83 - 112), A. Volynsky ("The Kingdom of the Karamazovs"), V. Rozanov ("The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor") About the "Diary of a Writer": N. Mikhailovsky (in collected works), Gorshkov (M.A. Protopopov) "Preacher of a new word" ("Russian Wealth", book 8, 1880) Foreign criticism: Brandes "Deutsche literarische Volkshefte", No. 3 (B., 1889); K. Saitschik "Die Weltanschauung D. und Tolstojs" (1893), N. Hoffman "Th. M. D." (B., 1899); E. Zabel "Russische Litteraturbilder" (B., 1899); Dr. Poritsky "Heine D., Gorkij" (1902); Jos. Muller "D. - ein Litteraturbild" (Munich, 1903); Segaloff "Die Krankheit D." (Heidelberg, 1906); Hennequi "Etudes de crit. scientif." (P., 1889); Vogue "Nouvelle bibliotheque popoulaire. D." (P., 1891); Gide "D. d "apres sa correspondance" (1911); Turner "Modern Novelists of Russia" (1890); M. Baring "Landmarks in Russian Literature" (1910). See M. Zaidman's free work: "F. M. Dostoevsky in Western Literature". A more complete bibliography - A. Dostoevskaya "Bibliographic index of works and works of art relating to the life and work of Dostoevsky"; V. Zelinsky "Critical commentary on the writings of Dostoevsky" (bibliography until 1905) ); I.I. Zamotin "F.M. Dostoevsky in Russian criticism" (part I, 1846 - 1881, Warsaw, 1913). A. Dolinin.

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich

Born in Moscow. Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1789-1839), a doctor (head doctor) of the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, in 1828 received the title of hereditary nobleman. In 1831 he acquired the village of Darovoe in the Kashirsky district of the Tula province, in 1833 the neighboring village of Chermoshnya. In terms of raising children, the father was an independent, educated, caring family man, but he had a quick-tempered and suspicious character. After the death of his wife in 1837, he retired and settled in Darovoye. According to the documents, he died of apoplexy; according to the recollections of relatives and oral tradition, he was killed by his peasants. Mother, Maria Fedorovna (nee Nechaeva; 1800-1837). The Dostoevsky family had six more children: Mikhail, Varvara (1822-1893), Andrei, Vera (1829-1896), Nikolai (1831-1883), Alexandra (1835-1889).

In 1833 Dostoevsky was sent to half board by N. I. Drashusov; there he and brother Michael went "daily in the morning and returned to dinner." From the autumn of 1834 to the spring of 1837, Dostoevsky attended the private boarding school of L. I. Chermak, where the astronomer D. M. Perevoshchikov and paleologist A. M. Kubarev taught. The Russian language teacher N. I. Bilevich played a certain role in the spiritual development of Dostoevsky. Memories of the boarding house served as material for many of the writer's works.

It was hard to survive the death of his mother, which coincided with the news of the death of A.S. Pushkin (which he perceived as a personal loss), Dostoevsky traveled with his brother Mikhail to St. Petersburg in May 1837 and entered the preparatory boarding school of K. F. Kostomarov. At the same time, he met I. N. Shidlovsky, whose religious and romantic mood fascinated Dostoevsky. From January 1838, Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School, in which he described an ordinary day as follows: "... from early morning until evening, we barely have time to follow the lectures in the classes. ... We are sent to fencing training, we are given lessons in fencing, dancing , penya ... put on guard, and all the time passes in this ... ". The heavy impression of the "hard labor years" of the teachings was partially brightened up by friendly relations with V. Grigorovich, doctor A. E. Rizenkampf, officer on duty A. I. Savelyev, artist K. A. Trutovsky.

Even on the way to St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky mentally "composed a novel of Venetian life," and in 1838 Riesenkampf told "about his own literary experiences." A literary circle is formed around Dostoevsky in the school. On February 16, 1841, at a party hosted by brother Mikhail on the occasion of his departure to Revel, Dostoevsky read excerpts from two of his dramatic works, Mary Stuart and Boris Godunov.

Dostoevsky informed his brother about the work on the drama The Jew Yankel in January 1844. The manuscripts of the dramas have not been preserved, but their titles already reveal the literary passions of the novice writer: Schiller, Pushkin, Gogol. After the death of his father, the relatives of the writer's mother took care of Dostoevsky's younger brothers and sisters, and Fyodor and Mikhail received a small inheritance. After graduating from college (end of 1843), he was enlisted as a field engineer-second lieutenant in the St. Petersburg engineering team, but already at the beginning of the summer of 1844, having decided to devote himself entirely to literature, he resigned and retired with the rank of lieutenant.

In January 1844, Dostoevsky completed the translation of Balzac's Eugene Grande, which at that time he was especially fond of. The translation was Dostoevsky's first published literary work. In 1844, he begins and in May 1845, after numerous alterations, finishes the novel Poor Folk.

The novel "Poor People", whose connection with Pushkin's "Station Master" and Gogol's "Overcoat" was emphasized by Dostoevsky himself, was an exceptional success. Based on the traditions of the physiological sketch, Dostoevsky creates a realistic picture of the life of the "downtrodden" inhabitants of "Petersburg corners", a gallery of social types from a street beggar to "His Excellency".

Dostoevsky spent the summer of 1845 (as well as the next) in Revel with his brother Mikhail. In the autumn of 1845, upon his return to St. Petersburg, he often met with Belinsky. In October, the writer, together with Nekrasov and Grigorovich, draws up an anonymous program announcement for the almanac "Zuboskal" (03, 1845, No. 11), and in early December, at the evening at Belinsky's, he reads the chapters of "The Double" (03, 1846, No. 2), in which for the first time gives a psychological analysis of the split consciousness, "duality".

The story "Mr. Prokharchin" (1846) and the story "The Hostess" (1847), in which many of the motifs, ideas and characters of Dostoevsky's works of the 1860s and 1870s were sketched out, were not understood by modern critics. Belinsky also radically changed his attitude towards Dostoevsky, condemning the "fantastic" element, "pretentiousness", "mannership" of these works. In other works of the young Dostoevsky - in the stories "Weak Heart", "White Nights", the cycle of sharp socio-psychological feuilletons "Petersburg Chronicle" and the unfinished novel "Netochka Nezvanova" - the problems of the writer's work are expanded, psychologism is intensified with a characteristic emphasis on the analysis of the most complex, elusive internal phenomena.

At the end of 1846, relations between Dostoevsky and Belinsky cooled down. Later, he also had a conflict with the editors of Sovremennik: Dostoevsky's hypocritical, conceited character played a big role here. The mockery of the writer by recent friends (especially Turgenev, Nekrasov), the sharp tone of Belinsky's critical reviews of his works were keenly experienced by the writer. Around this time, according to Dr. S.D. Yanovsky, Dostoevsky developed the first symptoms of epilepsy. The exhausting work for the "Notes of the Fatherland" burdens the writer. Poverty forced him to take on any literary work (in particular, he edited articles for A. V. Starchevsky's Reference Encyclopedic Dictionary).

In 1846, Dostoevsky became close to the Maykov family, regularly visited the literary and philosophical circle of the Beketov brothers, in which V. Maikov dominated, and A.N. Maykov and A.N. Pleshcheev - friends of Dostoevsky. From March-April 1847 Dostoevsky became a visitor to the "Fridays" of M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky. He also participates in the organization of a secret printing house for printing appeals to peasants and soldiers. Dostoevsky's arrest took place on April 23, 1849; his archive was taken away during his arrest and probably destroyed in Section III. Dostoevsky spent 8 months in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress under investigation, during which he showed courage, hiding many facts and trying to mitigate the guilt of his comrades as much as possible. He was recognized by the investigation as "one of the most important" among the Petrashevites, guilty of "the intent to overthrow the existing domestic laws and state order." The initial verdict of the military court commission read: "... the retired engineer-lieutenant Dostoevsky, for not reporting on the distribution of a criminal letter about religion and government by the writer Belinsky and the malicious composition of Lieutenant Grigoriev, to deprive the ranks, all the rights of the state and subject him to death by shooting." On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky, along with others, awaited the execution of the death sentence on the Semyonovsky parade ground. According to the resolution of Nicholas I, the execution was replaced by a 4-year hard labor with the deprivation of "all the rights of the state" and subsequent surrender to the soldiers.

On the night of December 24, Dostoevsky was sent from St. Petersburg in chains. January 10, 1850 arrived in Tobolsk, where the meeting of the writer with the wives of the Decembrists - P.E. Annenkova, A.G. Muravyova and N.D. Fonvizina; they gave him the gospel, which he kept all his life. From January 1850 to 1854, Dostoevsky, together with Durov, served hard labor as a "laborer" in the Omsk fortress. In January 1854 he was enrolled as a private in the 7th line battalion (Semipalatinsk) and was able to resume correspondence with his brother Mikhail and A. Maikov. In November 1855, Dostoevsky was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and after much trouble by the prosecutor Wrangel and other Siberian and St. Petersburg acquaintances (including E.I. Totleben) - to ensign; in the spring of 1857, the writer was returned to hereditary nobility and the right to publish, but police supervision over him continued until 1875.

In 1857 Dostoevsky married the widowed M.D. Isaeva, who, according to him, was "a woman of the soul of the most exalted and enthusiastic ... An idealist was in the full sense of the word ... and pure, and moreover, she was just like a child." The marriage was not happy: Isaeva agreed after long hesitation that tormented Dostoevsky. In Siberia, the writer began work on memories of hard labor (the "Siberian" notebook, containing folklore, ethnographic and diary entries, served as a source for "Notes from the House of the Dead" and many other Dostoevsky's books). In 1857 his brother published the story "The Little Hero" written by Dostoevsky in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Having created two "provincial" comic novels - "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants", Dostoevsky entered into negotiations with M.N. Katkov, Nekrasov, A.A. Kraevsky. However, modern criticism did not appreciate and passed almost complete silence on these first works of the "new" Dostoevsky.

On March 18, 1859, Dostoevsky, at the request, was dismissed "due to illness" in the rank of second lieutenant and received permission to live in Tver (with a ban on entry into the St. Petersburg and Moscow provinces). On July 2, 1859, he left Semipalatinsk with his wife and stepson. Since 1859 - in Tver, where he resumed his former literary acquaintances and made new ones. Later, the chief of the gendarmes informed the governor of Tver about allowing Dostoevsky to live in St. Petersburg, where he arrived in December 1859.

Dostoevsky's intensive activity combined editorial work on "foreign" manuscripts with the publication of his own articles, polemical notes, notes, and, most importantly, works of art. The novel "Humiliated and Insulted" is a transitional work, a kind of return at a new stage of development to the motives of the creativity of the 1840s, enriched by the experience experienced and felt in the 1850s; autobiographical motifs are very strong in it. At the same time, the novel contained the features of the plots, style and heroes of the late Dostoevsky's works. "Notes from the House of the Dead" was a huge success.

In Siberia, according to Dostoevsky, "gradually and after a very, very long time" his "beliefs" changed. The essence of these changes, Dostoevsky formulated in the most general form as "a return to the folk root, to the recognition of the Russian soul, to the recognition of the spirit of the people." In the journals "Vremya" and "Epokha" the Dostoevsky brothers appeared as the ideologists of "pochvennichestvo" - a specific modification of the ideas of Slavophilism. "Pochvennichestvo" was rather an attempt to outline the contours of a "general idea", to find a platform that would reconcile Westerners and Slavophiles, "civilization" and the people's principle. Skeptical about the revolutionary ways of transforming Russia and Europe, Dostoevsky expressed these doubts in works of art, articles and announcements of Vremya, in a sharp polemic with the publications of Sovremennik. The essence of Dostoevsky's objections is the possibility, after the reform, of a rapprochement between the government and the intelligentsia and the people, of their peaceful cooperation. This controversy is continued by Dostoevsky in the story Notes from the Underground (The Epoch, 1864), a philosophical and artistic prelude to the writer's "ideological" novels.

Dostoevsky wrote: “I am proud that for the first time I brought out the real man of the Russian majority and for the first time exposed his ugly and tragic side. The tragedy lies in the consciousness of ugliness. and, most importantly, in the vivid conviction of these unfortunates that everyone is like that, and therefore, it’s not even worth correcting!

In June 1862 Dostoevsky went abroad for the first time; visited Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, England. In August 1863 the writer went abroad for the second time. In Paris, he met with A.P. Suslova, whose dramatic relationship (1861-1866) was reflected in the novel The Gambler, The Idiot and other works. In Baden-Baden, carried away, by the gambling of his nature, by playing roulette, he loses "all, completely to the ground"; this longstanding hobby of Dostoevsky is one of the qualities of his passionate nature. In October 1863 he returned to Russia. Until mid-November, he lived with his sick wife in Vladimir, and at the end of 1863-April 1864- in Moscow, visiting St. Petersburg on business.

1864 brought heavy losses to Dostoevsky. On April 15, his wife died of consumption. The personality of Maria Dmitrievna, as well as the circumstances of their "unhappy" love, were reflected in many of Dostoevsky's works (in particular, in the images of Katerina Ivanovna - "Crime and Punishment" and Nastasya Filippovna - "The Idiot"). On June 10, M.M. died. Dostoevsky. On September 26, Dostoevsky attends Grigoriev's funeral. After the death of his brother, Dostoevsky took over the publication of the periodical Epoch, burdened by a large debt and lagging behind by 3 months; the magazine began to appear more regularly, but a sharp drop in subscriptions in 1865 forced the writer to stop publishing. He owed creditors about 15 thousand rubles, which he was able to pay only towards the end of his life. In an effort to provide conditions for work, Dostoevsky signed a contract with F.T. Stellovsky for the publication of the collected works and undertook to write a new novel for him by November 1, 1866.

In the spring of 1865, Dostoevsky was a frequent guest of the family of General V.V. Korvin-Krukovsky, whose eldest daughter, A.V. Korvin-Krukovskaya, he was greatly infatuated with. In July, he left for Wiesbaden, from where in the autumn of 1865 he offered Katkov a story for the Russian Messenger, which later developed into a novel. In the summer of 1866, Dostoevsky was in Moscow and at a dacha in the village of Lyublino, close to the family of his sister Vera Mikhailovna, where he wrote the novel Crime and Punishment at night.

"Psychological account of one crime" became the plot outline of the novel, the main idea of which Dostoevsky outlined as follows: "Insoluble questions arise before the murderer, unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's truth, earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up being forced to inform on himself. I am forced to die in hard labor, but to join the people again ... ". St. Petersburg and "current reality", the richness of social characters, "the whole world of class and professional types" are accurately and multifacetedly depicted in the novel, but this is reality transformed and discovered by the artist, whose gaze penetrates to the very essence of things. Intense philosophical disputes, prophetic dreams, confessions and nightmares, grotesque caricature scenes that naturally turn into tragic, symbolic meetings of heroes, the apocalyptic image of a ghostly city are organically linked in Dostoevsky's novel. The novel, in the words of the author himself, "was extremely successful" and raised his "reputation as a writer."

In 1866, the expiring contract with the publisher forced Dostoevsky to simultaneously work on two novels - Crime and Punishment and The Gambler. Dostoevsky resorted to an unusual way of working: on October 4, 1866, the stenographer A.G. Snitkin; he began dictating to her the novel The Gambler, which reflected the writer's impressions of his acquaintance with Western Europe. In the center of the novel is the clash of the "many developed, but in everything unfinished, distrustful and not daring not to believe, rebelling against the authorities and fearing them" "foreign Russian" with "finished" European types. The protagonist is "a poet in his own way, but the fact is that he himself is ashamed of this poetry, for he deeply feels its baseness, although the need for risk ennobles him in his own eyes."

In the winter of 1867 Snitkina becomes Dostoyevsky's wife. The new marriage was more successful. From April 1867 to July 1871 Dostoevsky and his wife lived abroad (Berlin, Dresden, Baden-Baden, Geneva, Milan, Florence). There, on February 22, 1868, a daughter, Sophia, was born, whose sudden death (May of the same year) Dostoevsky was very upset. September 14, 1869 daughter Love was born; later in Russia on July 16, 1871 - son Fedor; Aug 12 1875 - son Alexei, who died at the age of three from a fit of epilepsy.

In 1867-1868 Dostoevsky worked on the novel The Idiot. “The idea of the novel,” the author pointed out, “is my old and beloved, but so difficult that for a long time I did not dare to take it up. The main idea of the novel is to portray a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult in the world, and especially now ... "

Dostoevsky started the novel "Demons" by interrupting work on the widely conceived epics "Atheism" and "The Life of a Great Sinner" and hastily composing the "tale" "The Eternal Husband". The "nechaev case" served as a direct impetus for the creation of the novel. The activities of the secret society "People's Reprisal", the murder by five members of the organization of a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I.I. Ivanov - these are the events that formed the basis of "Demons" and received a philosophical and psychological interpretation in the novel. The attention of the writer was attracted by the circumstances of the murder, the ideological and organizational principles of the terrorists ("Catechism of the Revolutionary"), the figures of accomplices in the crime, the personality of the leader of the society, S.G. Nechaev. In the process of working on the novel, the idea changed many times. Initially, it is a direct response to events. The framework of the pamphlet subsequently expanded significantly, not only the Nechaevs, but also the figures of the 1860s, the liberals of the 1840s, T.N. Granovsky, Petrashevites, Belinsky, V.S. Pecherin, A.I. Herzen, even the Decembrists and P.Ya. Chaadaev find themselves in the grotesque-tragic space of the novel.

Gradually, the novel develops into a critical depiction of the common "disease" experienced by Russia and Europe, a vivid symptom of which is the "devilism" of Nechaev and the Nechaevites. In the center of the novel, in its philosophical and ideological focus, there are placed not the sinister "swindler" Pyotr Verkhovensky (Nechaev), but the mysterious and demonic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin, who "allowed himself everything".

In July 1871 Dostoevsky with his wife and daughter returned to St. Petersburg. The writer and his family spent the summer of 1872 in Staraya Russa; this city became the family's permanent summer residence. In 1876 Dostoevsky bought a house here.

In 1872, the writer visits the Wednesdays of Prince V. P. Meshchersky, a supporter of counter-reforms and publisher of the newspaper-magazine Grazhdanin. At the request of the publisher, supported by A. Maikov and Tyutchev, in December 1872 Dostoevsky agreed to take over the editing of The Citizen, having stipulated in advance that he would take on these duties temporarily. In "The Citizen" (1873), Dostoevsky implemented the long-conceived idea of "A Writer's Diary" (a cycle of essays of a political, literary and memoir nature, united by the idea of direct, personal communication with the reader), published a number of articles and notes (including political reviews "Foreign events "). Soon Dostoevsky began to feel weary, ed. work, the clashes with Meshchersky also took on an increasingly sharp character, the impossibility of turning the weekly into "an organ of people with independent convictions" became more obvious. In the spring of 1874, the writer resigned as editor, although he occasionally collaborated on The Citizen later. Due to deteriorating health (increased emphysema) in June 1847, he leaves for treatment in Ems and repeats trips there in 1875, 1876 and 1879.

In the mid 1870s. Dostoevsky resumed relations with Saltykov-Shchedrin, interrupted at the height of the controversy between Epoch and Sovremennik, and with Nekrasov, at whose suggestion (1874) the writer publishes his new novel Teenager - a "novel of education" in Otechestvennye Zapiski, a kind of "Fathers and Sons" by Dostoevsky.

The personality and worldview of the hero are formed in an atmosphere of "general decay" and the collapse of the foundations of society, in the fight against the temptations of the century. The teenager's confession analyzes the complex, contradictory, chaotic process of becoming a person in an "ugly" world that has lost its "moral center", the slow maturation of a new "idea" under the powerful influence of the "great thought" of the wanderer Versilov and the philosophy of life of the "pretty" wanderer Makar Dolgoruky.

At the end of 1875, Dostoevsky again returned to journalistic work - the "mono-journal" "A Writer's Diary" (1876 and 1877), which was a great success and allowed the writer to enter into a direct dialogue with correspondent readers. The author defined the nature of the publication as follows: "The Diary of a Writer will look like a feuilleton, but with the difference that a feuilleton in a month naturally cannot be like a feuilleton in a week. I am not a chronicler: on the contrary, it is a perfect diary in the full sense of the word, that is, a report on what most interested me personally. Dostoevsky's direct impressions and opinions about the most important phenomena of European and Russian socio-political and cultural life, which worried Dostoevsky about legal, social, ethical-pedagogical, aesthetic and political problems, were refracted in the "Diary" in hot pursuit. "the writer's attempts to see in the modern chaos the contours of a" new creation ", the foundations of a" emerging "life, to predict the appearance of" the advancing future Russia of honest people who need only one truth" are occupied.

Criticism of bourgeois Europe, a deep analysis of the state of post-reform Russia are paradoxically combined in the Diary with polemics against various currents of social thought in the 1870s, from conservative utopias to populist and socialist ideas.

In the last years of his life, Dostoevsky's popularity increased. In 1877 he was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In May 1879, the writer was invited to the International Literary Congress in London, at the session of which he was elected a member of the honorary committee of the international literary association. Dostoevsky actively participates in the activities of the St. Petersburg Frebel Society. He often performs at literary and musical evenings and matinees with reading excerpts from his works and Pushkin's poems. In January 1877, under the influence of Nekrasov's "Last Songs", Dostoevsky visits the dying poet, often seeing him in November; December 30 delivers a speech at the funeral of Nekrasov.

Dostoevsky's activity demanded direct acquaintance with "living life". He visits (with the assistance of A.F. Koni) the colony of juvenile delinquents (1875) and the Orphanage (1876). In 1878, after the death of his beloved son Alyosha, he made a trip to Optina Hermitage, where he talked with Elder Ambrose. The writer is especially concerned about the events in Russia. In March 1878, Dostoevsky is at the trial of Vera Zasulich in the hall of the St. Petersburg District Court, and in April he answers a letter from students who asked to speak out about the beating of participants in a student demonstration by shopkeepers; In February 1880, he was present at the execution of I. O. Mlodetsky, who shot at M. T. Loris-Melikov. Intensive, diverse contacts with the surrounding reality, active journalistic and social activities served as a multilateral preparation for a new stage in the writer's work. The "Diary of a Writer" matured and tested the ideas and plot of his last novel. At the end of 1877, Dostoevsky announced the termination of the "Diary" in connection with the intention to engage in "one artistic work that has developed ... in these two years of publishing the Diary inconspicuously and involuntarily."

"The Brothers Karamazov" is the final work of the writer, in which many ideas of his work were artistically embodied. The history of the Karamazovs, as the author wrote, is not just a family chronicle, but a typified and generalized "image of our modern reality, our modern intellectual Russia." The philosophy and psychology of "crime and punishment", the dilemma of "socialism and Christianity", the eternal struggle between "God" and "devil" in the souls of people, the theme of "fathers and children" traditional for classical Russian literature - such is the problematic of the novel.

In "The Brothers Karamazov" a criminal offense is connected with the great world "questions" and eternal artistic and philosophical themes. In January 1881, Dostoevsky speaks at a meeting of the board of the Slavic Charitable Society, works on the first issue of the renewed Diary of a Writer, learns the role of the schemer in A. K. Tolstoy's Death of Ivan the Terrible for a home performance in the salon of S. A. Tolstoy, makes a decision " be sure to participate in the Pushkin evening" on January 29. He was going to "publish The Writer's Diary" ... for two years, and then dreamed of writing the second part of The Brothers Karamazov, where almost all the former heroes would appear ... ". On the night of January 25-26, Dostoevsky began to bleed in his throat. On the afternoon of January 28, Dostoevsky said goodbye to the children, at 8:38. he died in the evening.

On January 31, 1881, with a huge gathering of people, the funeral of the writer took place. He is buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

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