Great-grandson of Dostoevsky: Fyodor Mikhailovich was interested in women, and his sex was normal BG. Dmitry Dostoevsky: “I was healed and baptized in Staraya Russa

The educational experience of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was largely formed from the impressions of childhood, when his cruel, imperious, stingy father, Mikhail Andreevich, authoritarianly dictated his pedagogical will to his sons. Father was engaged with them primarily in natural scientific research (since he was a doctor), he read Karamzin's "History of the Russian State", the Gospel, and the Lives of the Saints. The authority of the father from childhood was perceived by the writer as something solid, indestructible and not even amenable to discussion. Subsequently, he confessed to his brother Mikhail that it was difficult to find people like their father: “because they were real, genuine people.” He adhered to this opinion in spite of everything - in spite of the cruel nature of his father, in spite of his tyranny in relation to the peasants, for which he was killed by them. And yet, all his life, Fyodor Mikhailovich, who, according to his father, believed in the theory of heredity, was afraid to adopt his negative qualities.

It would seem that the writer, after his difficult childhood, after a difficult study at the Engineering School, life after hard labor and very difficult personal stories, fate did not bode well for a happy family. But, largely due to the character, love, dedication of his last wife Anna Grigorievna, Fyodor Mikhailovich's family life nevertheless developed.

Anna Grigoryevna and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Having married, the Dostoevskys went abroad. Their first daughter* was born and died there. Anna Grigoryevna became pregnant again, about which one of his friends wittily writes to Dostoevsky: “I am glad, first of all, that you have finished the novel The Idiot. And the second - that Anna Grigorievna also began to think about the novel. And what - she herself cannot say, although she will think about it for 9 months. Where will Anna Grigoryevna's novel come into being?

Apparently, this "romance", the first surviving child, was destined to be born in Florence. But nevertheless this did not happen. When the "romance" of his wife was approaching "completion", Dostoevsky became agitated. He did not know Italian, so he began to think: if his wife starts giving birth and loses consciousness, then he will not be able to communicate with the doctors. And the Dostoevskys left for Germany - Dostoevsky spoke German well, even translated Schiller's Robbers.

Daughter Lyubov Fedorovna was born in Dresden in 1869. And in 1871, already in St. Petersburg, the son of Fedor was born.

Dostoevsky-teacher: "Love to buy the hearts of our children"

At that time, in the 70s of the XIX century, many parents and school teachers began to turn to Dostoevsky as a well-known author of works about children (in particular, Netochka Nezvanova, The Little Hero, etc.), which served as one of the impetus edition of the Writer's Diary, where many pages are devoted to education. When creating the Diary, Dostoevsky was interested in the situation of children in factories, visited orphanages, juvenile colonies, critically assessed the education system in them and made recommendations.

In Dostoevsky's prose and journalism, one can see what the author considered the main vices of education. First of all, the neglectful attitude of adults to the inner world of the child, which never goes unnoticed by the child. Then there is the excessive intrusiveness of adults that irritates children. Then - bias, leading to erroneous conclusions about the nature of the child. He condemns cruelty to children, the suppression of any originality in them. Dostoevsky especially condemns flirting with children, blind love for them and the desire to make everything easier for the child. And concludes:

“First of all, we need to buy the hearts of our children with love, we need to give the child the sun, a bright example and at least a drop of love for him ... We teach, and they make us better only by one contact with them. We must be related to them in soul every hour.”

Dostoevsky allows punishment, but no punishment should be accompanied by a loss of faith in the possibility of correcting the child.

The main pedagogy is the parental home. The writer sees the core of the problem here:

“In our families, the highest goals of life are almost never mentioned, and the idea of ​​immortality is not only not thought at all, but it is even too often treated satirically - and this is all in front of children, from their very early age ...”

Therefore, education and upbringing according to Dostoevsky is not only a science, but also “a spiritual light that illumines the soul, enlightens the heart, guides the mind and shows it the way.” That is why the writer especially sharply criticized the pedagogy of his day, which gives rise to atheists, “Svidrigailovs”, “Stavrogins” and “non-chaevs”.

Dostoevsky was also interested in public education. He believed that it should not go against religious beliefs, because “it is important to preserve tenderness and cordial religious feeling in society”. In his "intuitive" pedagogy, Dostoevsky foresaw many provisions that are essential for modern pedagogy as well. He spoke about the role of heredity in shaping the spiritual image of a person, about the developing and educating nature of education, about the influence of a child's speech development on his mental abilities.

Dostoevsky-father: “I tremble for the children and their fate”

It is unlikely that Dostoevsky the father somehow systematized his pedagogical methods and principles. For him, pedagogy has always been lively, effective, practical. His upbringing of his stepson Pavel (the son of Isaeva's first wife) was unsuccessful. The young man was ungrateful, arrogant, dismissive of his stepfather, despite the fact that Dostoevsky, even with his difficult financial situation, helped him financially as much as possible. Therefore, the father tried to make every effort so that the education of his own children would achieve its goal.

Fyodor and Lyubov Dostoevsky

He started doing them too early, when most fathers still keep their children in the nursery. He probably knew that he was not destined to see Lyuba and Fedya grow up, and was in a hurry to plant good thoughts and feelings in their receptive souls.

For this purpose, he chose the same means that his father had previously chosen - reading great writers. Daughter Lyubov remembered the first of the literary evenings that her father regularly arranged for them:

“One autumn evening in Staraya Russa, when the rain poured down in torrents and yellow leaves covered the ground, my father announced to us that he would read Schiller’s “Robbers” aloud to us.(in his own translation, presumably - Yu.D.). I was seven years old at the time, and my brother was barely six years old. Mother wished to attend this first reading. Dad read with enthusiasm, sometimes stopping to explain to us a difficult expression. But since sleep took possession of me the more the more ferocious the Moors became, I convulsively opened my poor tired children's eyes as wide as possible, and brother Fyodor fell asleep completely unceremoniously ... When my father looked at his audience, he fell silent, burst out laughing and began to laugh at himself . "They can't understand it, they are still too young," he said sadly to his mother. Poor father! He hoped to experience with us the delight that Schiller's dramas aroused in him; he forgot that he was twice our age when he himself could appreciate them!”

The writer read Pushkin's stories to children, Lermontov's Caucasian poems, Taras Bulba. After their literary taste was more or less developed, he began to read to them the poems of Pushkin and Alexei Tolstoy, the two Russian poets whom he most loved. Dostoevsky read them amazingly, and in particular he could not read one of them without tears - Pushkin's poem "The Poor Knight".

The writer's family did not neglect the theater either. In Russia at that time it was accepted that parents took their children to ballet. Dostoevsky was not a fan of ballet and never attended it. He preferred opera. He himself was very fond of Glinka's opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila" and instilled this love in his children.

When his father was away or his job did not allow him to do it himself, he asked his wife to read to the children the works of Walter Scott and Dickens - that "great Christian", as he calls him in The Writer's Diary. During lunch, he asked the children about their impressions and restored entire episodes from these novels.

Dostoevsky loved to pray with the whole family. During Holy Week he fasted, went to church twice a day, and put aside all literary work. He loved the Easter night service very much. Children usually did not attend this service filled with great joy. But the writer certainly wanted to show his daughter this marvelous service when she was barely nine years old. He placed her on a chair so she could see better, and lifted her high in his arms, explaining what was happening.

Dostoevsky the father took care not only of the spiritual, but also of the material condition of the children. In 1879, shortly before his death (+1881), he wrote to his wife about the purchase of the estate:

“I’m still, my dear, thinking about my death myself and about what I will leave you and the children with ... You don’t like villages, but I have all the convictions that the village is capital, which will triple by the age of the children, and that the one who owns land, participates in political power over the state. This is the future of our children… I tremble for the children and for their fate.”

Daughter Love lived with her father for 11 years, until his death. One day her father wrote her this letter:

“My dear angel, I kiss you, and bless you, and love you very much. Thank you for writing me letters, I will read them and kiss them. And I'll think of you every time I get it."

“Listen to your mother and don’t quarrel with Fedya. Don't forget to both study. I pray to God for all of you and ask Him for your health. Convey my regards to the priest (Dostoevsky's friend, the old priest Father John Rumyantsev. - Yu.D.). Goodbye, dear Lilichka, I love you very much.

Writer Markevich recalls the day of Dostoevsky's funeral:

"Two children(Lyuba 11 years old, Fedya 9 years old - Y.D.) they hurriedly and fearfully crossed themselves on their knees. The girl in a desperate impulse rushed to me, grabbed my hand: “Pray, I beg you, pray for dad, so that if he had sins, God would forgive him.” She spoke with some striking childish expression.

At the grave of Dostoevsky. Center: A.G. Dostoevskaya and the writer's children - Fedor and Lyubov

Lyubov Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya: To find happiness...

It is difficult to live and create under the shadow of a genius. Lyubov Fedorovna also dared to become a writer, but her attempt failed. She wrote three novels which she published at her own expense. These works were rather coldly received and never republished. Someone suggested that she take a pseudonym, but she refused, tried to win the literary Olympus under the name Dostoevskaya, probably not imagining what temptations it was associated with.

She was often sick, she never had a family. She left Russia before the revolution, was treated in Europe. Her only significant contribution to literature is a large book of memoirs about her father. These memories became the main work of her life. Separate excerpts of this book were published in the USSR in the 20s of the XX century - but only the biographical information about the father, Dostoevsky's genealogy, her reflections on the revolution, of course, were seized by Soviet censorship.

The questionnaire filled out by her, still an 18-year-old girl, is very indicative. Here are some answers from it:

- What is your goal in life?
- Find happiness on earth and do not forget about the future life.
- What is happiness?
— In a calm conscience.
- What is the misfortune?
— In self-abasement and suspicious character.
- How long would you like to live?
- As long as possible.
What death would you like to die?
— left unanswered.
What is the most important virtue for you?
- Sacrifice yourself for others.
- What is your favorite writer?
- Dostoevsky.
— Where would you like to live?
Where there is more sun...

She spent her last years in Italy, where she died at the age of 56 in 1926.

Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky: Save and Continue

Dostoevsky's son Fyodor graduated from the law and natural faculties of Derpt University and became a major horse breeder. He has had a love for horses since childhood. Father wrote about little Fed:

“Fechka also asks to go for a walk, but you can’t even think about it. Grieve and cry. I show him the horses through the window when they ride, he is terribly interested in and loves horses, shouting whoa.

Fedor Fedorovich, apparently, adopted the vanity and desire to excel from his grandfather, Mikhail Andreevich. At the same time, attempts to prove himself in the literary field soon disappointed him. However, according to some contemporaries, he had abilities, but it was the label “the son of the writer Dostoevsky” that prevented him from revealing them.

In 1918, after the death of his mother, who was expelled from her own dacha by a watchman and spent her last days in a Yalta hotel, Fedor Fedorovich came to the Crimea and, risking his life (he was almost shot by the Chekists, thinking that he was smuggling), took the archive to Moscow father.

Fedor Fedorovich died in 1921. His son, Andrei Fyodorovich Dostoevsky, became the only successor to the direct line of descendants of the great writer.

Dostoevsky's children did not become geniuses and outstanding personalities: they say that nature rests on children. And world history knows no duplication of geniuses in one family, from generation to generation. Geniuses are born once in a century. It was the same with Tolstoy's children - many of them wrote, left memoirs, but who remembers them today, except for literary critics and admirers of the great old man's work? Lyuba and Fedya grew up, undoubtedly, decent and responsible people. And in such a “scattered” fate of Lyubov and Fyodor, of course, those storms and thunderstorms that swept over Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and which their father, the great writer-prophet, foresaw and predicted back in the 19th century, are largely to blame.

In the end, at God's judgment we will be asked not for what we left behind, but for what kind of people we were. In this regard, I am sure that the children of Dostoevsky have something to justify themselves before the Almighty.

Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky, Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevskaya, Lyubov Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya

Note:
* Another child of the Dostoevskys, the youngest son, did not live to be three years old and died in 1878. Fedor Mikhailovich took the early death of his two children very hard.

Name: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Age: 59 years old

Place of Birth: Moscow

A place of death: St. Petersburg

Activity: Russian writer

Family status: was married

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Biography

At the very first meeting with his future wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, Dostoevsky told her, a completely alien and unfamiliar girl, the story of his life. “His story made a terrible impression on me: I had a chill on my skin,” Anna Grigoryevna recalled. This apparently secretive and stern man told me his whole past life in such detail, so sincerely and sincerely, that I was involuntarily surprised. Only later did I understand that Fyodor Mikhailovich, completely alone and surrounded by hostile people against him, was at that time thirsty to tell someone a biography about his life ... "

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in 1821 into the once noble Dostoevsky family, whose family originated from the Russian-Lithuanian gentry. The chronicles mention the fact that back in 1506, Prince Fyodor Ivanovich Yaroslavich granted his voivode Danila Rtishchev a family coat of arms and a vast Dostoevo estate near present-day Brest, and from that voivode the entire numerous Dostoevsky family went. However, by the beginning of the century before last, only one coat of arms remained from the family inheritance, and the father of the future writer Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky was forced to feed his family by his own labor - he worked as a staff doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital on Bozhedomka in Moscow. The family lived in an outbuilding at the hospital, where all eight children of Mikhail Andreevich and his wife Maria Feodorovna were born.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - childhood and youth

Fedya Dostoevsky received a decent education for the noble children of that time - he knew Latin, French and German. The mother taught children the basics of literacy, then Fedor, together with his older brother Mikhail, entered the Moscow private boarding school of Leonty Chermak. “The humane attitude towards us, children, on the part of the parents was the reason that during their lifetime they did not dare to put us in a gymnasium, although it would have cost much less,” Fyodor Mikhailovich’s brother, Andrei Dostoevsky, later wrote in his memoirs about his biography.

Gymnasiums did not enjoy a good reputation at that time, and in them there was the usual and ordinary corporal punishment for every slightest offense. As a result, private pensions were preferred. When Fedor turned 16, his father sent them and Mikhail to study at Kostomarov's private boarding school in St. Petersburg. After graduation, the boys moved to the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School, which was then considered one of the privileged educational institutions for the "golden youth". Fedor also considered himself a member of the elite - primarily intellectual, since the money sent by his father was sometimes not enough even for the bare necessities.

Unlike Mikhail, who did not attach much importance to this, Fedor was embarrassed by his old dress and the constant lack of cash. During the day, the brothers went to school, and in the evenings they often visited literary salons, where at that time the works of Schiller, Goethe, as well as Auguste Comte and Louis Blanc, French historians and sociologists that were fashionable in those years, were discussed.

The carefree youth of the brothers ended in 1839, when news of the death of their father came to St. Petersburg - according to the existing “family legend”, Mikhail Andreevich died on his estate Darovoye at the hands of his own serfs, whom he caught red-handed stealing timber. Perhaps it was the shock associated with the death of his father that forced Fyodor to move away from the evenings in bohemian salons and join the socialist circles, which then acted in large numbers among the students.

The members of the circle talked about the ugliness of censorship and serfdom, about the corruption of the bureaucracy and the oppression of freedom-loving youth. “I can say that Dostoevsky never was and never could be a revolutionary,” his classmate Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky later recalled. The only thing is that he, as a noble man of feelings, could be carried away by feelings of indignation and even anger at the sight of injustices and violence committed against the humiliated and offended, which became the reason for his visits to the Petrashevsky circle.

It was under the influence of Petrashevsky's ideas that Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote his first novel, Poor People, which made him famous. Success changed the life of yesterday's student - the engineering service was over, now Dostoevsky could rightfully call himself a writer. The name of Dostoevsky in his biography became known not only in the circles of writers and poets, but also among the general reading public. Dostoevsky's debut turned out to be successful, and no one had any doubts that his path to the heights of literary glory would be direct and easy.

But life decreed otherwise. In 1849, the "Petrashevsky case" broke out - the reason for the arrest was the public reading of Belinsky's letter to Gogol, forbidden by censorship. All two dozen of those arrested, including Dostoevsky, repented of being carried away by "harmful ideas." Nevertheless, the gendarmes saw in their "pernicious conversations" signs of the preparation of "distemper and rebellion, threatening to overthrow any order, trampling on the most sacred rights of religion, law and property."

The court sentenced them to death by firing squad on the Semyonovsky parade ground, and only at the last moment, when all the convicts were already standing on the scaffold in the clothes of suicide bombers, the emperor relented and announced a pardon with the replacement of the execution with hard labor. Mikhail Petrashevsky himself was sent to hard labor for life, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, like most of the "revolutionaries", received only 4 years of hard labor, followed by service in ordinary soldiers.

Fyodor Dostoevsky served his term in Omsk. At first he worked at a brick factory, he fired alabaster, later he worked in an engineering workshop. “All four years I lived hopelessly in prison, behind the walls, and went out only to work,” the writer recalled. - The work was hard, and I happened to be exhausted, in bad weather, in sputum, in slush or in winter in an unbearable cold ... We lived in a heap, all together, in one barracks. The floor is an inch dirty, dripping from the ceiling - everything is see-through. We slept on bare bunks, one pillow was allowed. They covered themselves with short sheepskin coats, and their legs were always bare all night. You tremble all night. I consider those 4 years as the time in which I was buried alive and closed in a coffin ... ”During hard labor, Dostoevsky’s epilepsy worsened, the attacks of which then tormented him all his life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Semipalatinsk

After his release, Dostoevsky was sent to serve in the seventh Siberian linear battalion at the fortress of Semipalatinsk - then this town was known not as a nuclear test site, but as a provincial fortress that guarded the border from the raids of Kazakh nomads. “It was a semi-city, semi-village with crooked wooden houses,” Baron Alexander Wrangel, who at that time served as the prosecutor of Semipalatinsk, recalled many years later. Dostoevsky was settled in an ancient hut, which stood in the most bleak place: a steep wasteland, loose sand, not a bush, not a tree.

Fyodor Mikhailovich paid five rubles for his premises, laundry and food. But what was his food like? At that time, four kopecks were given to the soldier for welding. Of these four kopecks, the company commander and the cook kept one and a half kopecks in their favor. Of course, life was cheap then: one pound of meat cost a penny, a pood of buckwheat - thirty kopecks. Fyodor Mikhailovich took home his daily portion of cabbage soup. porridge and black bread, and if he didn’t eat it himself, he gave it to his poor mistress ... "

There, in Semipalatinsk, Dostoevsky fell seriously in love for the first time. His chosen one was Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of a former gymnasium teacher, and now an official in the tavern, exiled for some sins from the capital to the ends of the world. “Maria Dmitrievna was over thirty years old,” Baron Wrangel recalled. - A rather beautiful blonde of medium height, very thin, passionate and exalted by nature. She caressed Fyodor Mikhailovich, but I don’t think that she deeply appreciated him, she simply took pity on the unfortunate man downtrodden by fate ... I don’t think that Maria Dmitrievna was in any way seriously in love.

Fyodor Mikhailovich took the feeling of pity and compassion for mutual love and fell in love with her with all the ardor of youth. Painful and fragile. Maria reminded the writer of her mother, and in his attitude towards her there was more tenderness than passion. Dostoevsky was ashamed of his feelings for a married woman, worried and tormented by the hopelessness of the situation. But about a year after they met, in August 1855, Isaev died suddenly, and Fyodor Mikhailovich immediately made his beloved a marriage proposal, which, however, the widow did not immediately accept.

They married only at the beginning of 1857, when Dostoevsky received an officer's rank and Maria Dmitrievna gained confidence that he could provide for her and her son Pavel. But, unfortunately, this marriage did not live up to Dostoevsky's hopes. Later he wrote to Alexander Wrangel: “Oh, my friend, she loved me endlessly, I loved her too without measure, but we did not live happily with her ... We were positively unhappy together with her (according to her strange, suspicious and painful - fantastic character) - we could not stop loving each other; even the more unhappy they were, the more they became attached to each other.

In 1859, Dostoevsky, together with his wife and stepson, returned to St. Petersburg. And he found that his name was not at all forgotten by the public, on the contrary, he was accompanied everywhere by the glory of the writer and "political prisoner." He began to write again - first the novel Notes from the House of the Dead, then Humiliated and Insulted, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. Together with his older brother Mikhail, he opened the Vremya magazine - his brother, who bought his own tobacco factory with his father's inheritance, subsidized the release of the almanac.

Alas, a few years later it turned out that Mikhail Mikhailovich was a very mediocre businessman, and after his sudden death, huge debts remained at the factory and at the editorial office of the magazine, which Fyodor Mikhailovich had to take on. Later, his second wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, wrote: “To pay these debts, Fyodor Mikhailovich had to work beyond his strength ... How artistically my husband’s works would have won if he had not taken on these debts and could write novels without hastily, reviewing and finishing before sending them to print.

In literature and society, the works of Dostoevsky are often compared with the works of other talented writers and Dostoevsky is reproached for the excessive complexity, intricacy and piling up of his novels, while in others their creations are finished, and in Turgenev, for example, they are almost jewelry honed. And it rarely occurs to anyone to recall and weigh the circumstances under which other writers lived and worked, and under which my husband lived and worked.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - biography of personal life

But then, in the early 60s, it seemed that Dostoevsky had a second youth. He amazed those around him with his efficiency, he was often excited and cheerful. At this time, a new love came to him - it was a certain Apollinaria Suslova, a graduate of the boarding school for noble maidens, who later became the prototype of both Nastasya Filippovna in The Idiot and Polina in The Gambler. Apollinaria was the complete opposite of Maria Dmitrievna - a young, strong, independent girl.

And the feelings that the writer had for her were also completely different than his love for his wife: instead of tenderness and compassion, there was passion and a desire to possess. In her memoirs about her father, the daughter of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Lyubov Dostoevskaya, wrote that Apollinaria in the autumn of 1861 sent him “a declaration of love. The letter was found among my father's papers - it is written simply, naively and poetically. At first glance, we have before us a timid young girl, blinded by the genius of the great writer. Dostoevsky was touched by Polina's letter. This declaration of love came to him at the moment when he most needed it ... "

Their relationship lasted three years. At first, Polina was flattered by the adoration of the great writer, but gradually her feelings for Dostoevsky cooled off. According to the biographers of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Apollinaria was waiting for some kind of romantic love, but met the real passion of a mature man. Dostoevsky himself assessed his passion as follows: “Apollinaria is a big egoist. Egoism and pride in it are colossal. She demands everything from people, all perfections, does not forgive a single imperfection in respect for other good traits, but she herself relieves herself of the slightest duties to people. Leaving his wife in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky traveled around Europe with Apollinaria, spent time in the casino - Fyodor Mikhailovich turned out to be a passionate but unlucky player - and lost a lot at roulette.

In 1864, Dostoevsky's "second youth" ended unexpectedly. In April, his wife Maria Dmitrievna died. and just three months later, brother Mikhail Mikhailovich suddenly died. Dostoevsky later wrote to his old friend Wrangel: “... I was suddenly left alone, and I was just scared. The whole life was broken in two at once. The one half that I crossed was everything I lived for. and in the other, still unknown half, everything is alien, everything is new, and not a single heart that could replace both of them for me.

In addition to mental suffering, the death of his brother also entailed serious financial consequences for Dostoevsky: he found himself without money and without a magazine that was closed for debts. Fedor Mikhailovich offered Apollinaria Suslova to marry him - this would also solve issues with his debts, because Polina was from a fairly wealthy family. But the girl refused, by that time there was no trace of her enthusiastic attitude towards Dostoevsky. In December 1864, she wrote in her diary: “They talk to me about FM. I just hate him. He made me suffer so much when it was possible to do without suffering.

Another failed bride of the writer was Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, a representative of an ancient noble family, the sister of the famous Sophia Kovalevskaya. According to the writer's biographers, at first things seemed to be going to the wedding, but then the engagement was canceled without explanation. However, Fyodor Mikhailovich himself always claimed that it was he who freed the bride from this promise: “This is a girl of high moral qualities: but her convictions are diametrically opposed to mine, and she cannot give them up, she is too straightforward. It is unlikely that therefore our marriage could be happy.

From the hardships of life, Dostoevsky tried to hide abroad, but creditors pursued him there too, threatening him with the deprivation of copyright, an inventory of property, and a debtor's prison. His relatives also demanded money - the widow of brother Mikhail believed that Fedor was obliged to provide her and her children with a decent existence. Desperately trying to get at least some money, he entered into onerous contracts to write two novels at once - "The Gambler" and "Crime and Punishment", but soon realized that he had neither the moral nor the physical strength to meet the deadlines set by the contracts. Dostoevsky tried to distract himself with the game, but luck, as usual, did not accompany him, and, losing the last money, he became more and more depressed and melancholy. In addition, because of the undermined peace of mind, he was literally tormented by seizures of epilepsy.

It was in this state that 20-year-old Anna Grigorievna Snitkina found the writer. For the first time, Anna heard the name of Dostoevsky at the age of 16 - from her father Grigory Ivanovich, a poor nobleman and petty Petersburg official, who was a passionate admirer of literature, was fond of the theater. According to her own recollections, Anya secretly took an edition of Notes from the House of the Dead from her father, read at night and shed bitter tears on the pages. She was an ordinary Petersburg girl of the middle of the 19th century - from the age of nine she was sent to study at the School of St. Anna on Kirochnaya Street, then - to the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium.

Anyuta was an excellent student, avidly read women's novels and seriously dreamed of rebuilding this world - for example, becoming a doctor or teacher. Despite the fact that already during her studies at the gymnasium it became clear that literature was much closer and more interesting for her than the natural sciences. In the fall of 1864, a graduate of Snitkin entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Pedagogical Courses. But neither physics nor mathematics were given to her, and biology became a torment at all: when the teacher in the class began to dissect a dead cat, Anya fainted.

In addition, a year later her father fell seriously ill, and Anna had to earn money herself to support the family. She decided to leave her teaching career and went to study shorthand courses, opened by Professor Olkhin, famous in those years. “At first, shorthand was definitely not successful for me,” Anya later recalled, “and only after the 5th or 6th lecture did I begin to master this gibberish letter.” A year later, Anya Snitkina was considered Olkhin's best student, and when Dostoevsky himself turned to the professor, wanting to hire a stenographer, he did not even have a doubt who to send to the famous writer.

Their acquaintance took place on October 4, 1866. “At twenty-five past twelve, I went up to Alonkin’s house and asked the janitor who was standing at the gate where apartment No. 13 was,” Anna Grigorievna recalled. - The house was large, with many small apartments inhabited by merchants and artisans. He immediately reminded me of that house in the novel "Crime and Punishment", in which the hero of the novel Raskolnikov lived. Dostoevsky's apartment was on the second floor. I rang, and an elderly maid immediately opened the door for me, who invited me into the dining room ...

The maid asked me to sit down, saying that the master would come immediately. Indeed, Fyodor Mikhailovich appeared two minutes later... At first glance, Dostoevsky seemed to me rather old. But as soon as he spoke, he immediately became younger, and I thought that he was hardly more than thirty-five to seven years old. He was of medium height and carried very straight. Light brown, even slightly reddish hair, was heavily pomaded and carefully smoothed. But what struck me was his eyes; they were different: one - brown, in the other - the pupil was dilated in the entire eye and the irises were imperceptible. This duality of the eyes gave Dostoevsky's gaze a kind of enigmatic expression...”

However, at first their work did not work out: Dostoevsky was annoyed by something and smoked a lot. He tried to dictate a new article for Russkiy Vestnik, but then, apologizing, invited Anna to come in at eight o'clock in the evening. Arriving in the evening, Snitkina found Fyodor Mikhailovich in much better condition, he was talkative and hospitable. He admitted that he liked the way she behaved at the first meeting - seriously, almost sternly, did not smoke and did not at all resemble modern shorn girls. Gradually, they began to communicate freely, and unexpectedly for Anna, Fyodor Mikhailovich suddenly began to tell her the biography of his life.

This evening conversation became for Fyodor Mikhailovich the first pleasant event in such a difficult last year of his life. The very next morning after his “confession”, he wrote in a letter to the poet Maikov: “Olkhin sent me his best student ... Anna Grigorievna Snitkina is a young and rather handsome girl, 20 years old, of a good family, who completed her gymnasium course excellently, with extremely kind and clear character. Our work went great...

Thanks to the efforts of Anna Grigorievna, Dostoevsky managed to fulfill the incredible terms of the contract with the publisher Stelovsky and write the whole novel "The Gambler" in twenty-six days. “At the end of the novel, I noticed that my stenographer sincerely loves me,” Dostoevsky wrote in one of his letters. - Although she never said a word about it to me, I liked her more and more. Since I have been terribly bored and hard to live since the death of my brother, I suggested that she marry me ... The difference in years is terrible (20 and 44), but I am more and more convinced that she will be happy. She has a heart, and she knows how to love.

Their engagement took place literally a month later, on November 8, 1866. As Anna Grigorievna herself recalled, when making an offer, Dostoevsky was very worried and, fearing to receive a direct refusal, first spoke about the fictional characters of the novel he allegedly conceived: they say, do you think a young girl, suppose her name is Anya, could love tenderly her loving , but an old and sick artist, besides burdened with debts?

“Imagine that this artist is me, that I confessed my love to you and asked you to be my wife. Tell me what would you say? - Fyodor Mikhailovich's face expressed such embarrassment, such heartfelt anguish, that I finally realized that this was not just a literary conversation and that I would deal a terrible blow to his vanity and pride if I gave an evasive answer. I looked at the excited face of Fyodor Mikhailovich so dear to me and said: - I would answer you that I love you and will love you all my life!

I will not convey the tender, full of love words that Fyodor Mikhailovich spoke to me in those unforgettable moments: they are sacred to me ... "

Their wedding took place on February 15, 1867 at about 8 pm in the Izmailovsky Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. It seemed that Anna Grigoryevna's joy would never end, but literally a week later the harsh reality reminded of itself. Firstly, Dostoevsky's stepson Pavel spoke out against Anna, regarding the appearance of a new woman as a threat to his interests. “Pavel Aleksandrovich developed a view of me as a usurper, as a woman who forcibly entered their family, where hitherto he was the complete master,” Dostoevskaya recalled.

Unable to interfere with our marriage, Pavel Alexandrovich decided to make it unbearable for me. It is quite possible that with his constant troubles, quarrels and slanders against me Fyodor Mikhailovich, he hoped to quarrel us and force us to disperse. Secondly, the young wife was constantly slandered by other relatives of the writer, who feared that she would "cut" the amount of financial assistance that Dostoevsky distributed to them from his fees. It got to the point that after a month of living together, constant scandals so complicated the life of the newlyweds. that Anna Grigorievna seriously feared a final break in relations.

The catastrophe, however, did not happen - and mainly thanks to the extraordinary mind, determination and energy of Anna Grigoryevna herself. She pawned all her valuables in a pawnshop and persuaded Fyodor Mikhailovich to go abroad, to Germany, secretly from relatives, in order to change the situation and at least live together for a short time. Dostoevsky agreed to escape, explaining his decision in a letter to the poet Maykov: “There are two main reasons. 1) Save not only mental health, but even life in certain circumstances. .. 2) Creditors”.

It was planned that the trip abroad would take only three months, but thanks to the prudence of Anna Grigoryevna, she managed to snatch her beloved from her usual environment for four whole years, which prevented her from becoming a full wife. “Finally, a period of serene happiness came for me: there were no money worries, there were no faces standing between me and my husband, there was a full opportunity to enjoy his company.”

Anna Grigorievna weaned her husband from addiction to roulette, having somehow managed to arouse shame in his soul for the lost money. Dostoevsky wrote in one of his letters to his wife: “A great deed has been done to me, the vile fantasy that has tormented me for almost ten years has disappeared (or, better, since the death of my brother, when I was suddenly crushed by debts): I kept dreaming of winning; dreamed seriously, passionately ... Now it's all over! I will remember this all my life and every time I will bless you, my angel. No, it's yours now, yours inseparably, all yours. Until now, half of this damned fantasy belonged.

In February 1868, in Geneva, the Dostoevskys finally had their first child - a daughter, Sophia. “But we were not given long to enjoy our cloudless happiness. - wrote Anna Figorievna. - In the first days of May, the weather was wonderful, and on the urgent advice of the doctor, we took our dear baby to the park every day, where she slept in her stroller for two or three hours. On one unfortunate day during such a walk, the weather suddenly changed, and, apparently, the girl caught a cold, because that same night she developed a fever and coughed. Already on May 12, she died, and Dostoevsky's grief seemed to know no bounds.

“Life seems to have stopped for us; all our thoughts, all our conversations focused on memories of Sonya and that happy time when she illuminated our lives with her presence ... But the merciful Lord took pity on our suffering: we soon became convinced that the Lord blessed our marriage and we can again hope have a child. Our joy was immeasurable, and my dear husband began to take care of me with the same attention. just like my first pregnancy.

Later, Anna Grigorievna gave birth to her husband two more sons - the eldest Fedor (1871) and the younger Alexei (1875). True, the Dostoevsky spouses once again had a bitter lot to survive the death of their child: in May 1878, the three-year-old Alyosha died of an attack of epilepsy.

Anna Grigorievna supported her husband in difficult times, was for him both a loving wife and a spiritual friend. But besides this, she became for Dostoevsky, in modern terms, his literary agent and manager. It was thanks to the practicality and initiative of his wife that he was able to finally pay off all the debts that had poisoned his life for years. Anna Grigorievna began with that. what. having studied the intricacies of publishing, she decided to print and sell Dostoevsky's new book - the novel "Demons" herself.

She did not rent a room for this, but simply indicated her home address in newspaper advertisements and paid off the buyers herself. To her husband's considerable surprise, literally in a month the entire circulation of the book was already sold out, and Anna Grigorievna officially established a new enterprise: “F.M. Dostoevsky (exclusively for non-residents).

Finally, it was Anna Grigorievna who insisted that the family leave noisy St. Petersburg forever - away from obsessive and greedy relatives. The Dostoevskys chose to live in the town of Staraya Russa in the Novgorod province, where they bought a two-story wooden mansion.

Anna Grigorievna wrote in her memoirs: “The time spent in Russa is one of my most beautiful memories. The children were quite healthy, and during the whole winter it was not necessary to invite a doctor to them. which did not happen when we lived in the capital. Fyodor Mikhailovich also felt good: thanks to a calm, measured life and the absence of all unpleasant surprises (so frequent in St. Petersburg), her husband's nerves got stronger, and epileptic seizures occurred less frequently and were less severe.

And as a result of this, Fyodor Mikhailovich rarely got angry and irritated, and was always almost good-natured, talkative and cheerful ... Our daily life in Staraya Russa was all distributed by the hour, and this was strictly observed. Working at night, the husband got up no earlier than eleven o'clock. Going out to drink coffee, he called the children, and they happily ran to him and told all the incidents that had happened that morning, and about everything they had seen on a walk. And Fyodor Mikhailovich, looking at them, rejoiced and maintained the most lively conversation with them.

Never before or since have I seen a man who is as skilled as my husband. enter into the worldview of children and thus interest them in your conversation. In the afternoon, Fyodor Mikhailovich called me into his office to dictate what he managed to write during the night ... In the evening, playing with the children, Fyodor Mikhailovich, to the sound of an organ (Fyodor Mikhailovich bought it himself for the children, and now they amuse themselves with it and his grandchildren) danced quadrille, waltz and mazurka with me. My husband was especially fond of the mazurka and, to be fair, he danced it smartly, with enthusiasm ... "

Fyodor Dostoevsky - death and funeral

In the autumn of 1880, the Dostoevsky family returned to St. Petersburg. They decided to spend this winter in the capital - Fyodor Mikhailovich complained of feeling unwell, and Anna Grigoryevna was afraid to entrust his health to provincial doctors. On the night of January 25-26, 1881, he was working as usual when his fountain pen fell behind a bookcase with books. Fyodor Mikhailovich tried to move the bookcase, but from strong exertion his throat bled - in recent years the writer suffered from emphysema. For the next two days, Fyodor Mikhailovich remained in a serious condition, and on the evening of January 28 he died.

The funeral of Dostoevsky became a historic event: almost thirty thousand people accompanied his coffin to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Every Russian person experienced the death of the great writer as national mourning and personal grief.

Anna Grigoryevna could not come to terms with Dostoevsky's death for a long time. On the day of her husband's funeral, she vowed to devote the rest of her life to serving his name. Anna Grigorievna continued to live in the past. As her daughter Lyubov Fedorovna wrote, “mother did not live in the twentieth century, but remained in the 70s of the nineteenth. Her people are Fyodor Mikhailovich's friends, her society is a circle of departed people close to Dostoevsky. She lived with them. Everyone who works on the study of the life or works of Dostoevsky seemed to her a kindred person.

Anna Grigoryevna died in June 1918 in Yalta and was buried at the local cemetery - far from St. Petersburg, from her relatives, from Dostoevsky's dear grave. In her will, she asked to be buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, next to her husband, and at the same time they would not put up a separate monument, but simply cut out a few lines. In 1968, her last wish was fulfilled.

Three years after the death of Anna Grigoryevna, the famous literary critic L.P. Grossman wrote about her: “She managed to melt the tragic personal life of Dostoevsky into the calm and complete happiness of his last pores. She undoubtedly extended the life of Dostoevsky. With the deep wisdom of a loving heart, Anna Grigorievna managed to solve the most difficult task - to be the life companion of a nervously ill person, a former convict, an epileptic and the greatest creative genius.

1821, October 30 (November 11), Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in Moscow in the right wing of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. The Dostoevsky family had six more children: Mikhail (1820-1864), Varvara (1822-1893), Andrei, Vera (1829-1896), Nikolai (1831-1883), Alexandra (1835-1889). Fedor grew up in a rather harsh environment, over which the gloomy spirit of his father hovered - a “nervous, irritable, conceited” man, always busy caring for the well-being of the family.

Children 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. There was also a nanny hired from Moscow bourgeois women, whose name was Alena Frolovna. Dostoevsky remembered her with the same tenderness as Pushkin remembered Arina Rodionovna. It was from her that he heard the first fairy tales: about the Firebird, Alyosha Popovich, the Blue Bird, etc.

Dostoevsky's parents F.M. - father Mikhail Andreevich and mother Maria Fedorovna

Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1789-1839), the son of a Uniate priest, doctor (head doctor, surgeon) 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 Darovoe. 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) - from a merchant family, a religious woman, annually took children to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, taught them to read from the book "One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments" (in the novel "" memories about this book are included in the story of the elder Zosima about his childhood). In the house of parents, they read aloud the History of the Russian State by N. M. Karamzin, the works of G. R. Derzhavin, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin.

In his mature years, Dostoevsky recalled with particular enthusiasm his acquaintance with the Scriptures: “We in our family knew the Gospel almost from the first childhood.” The Old Testament "Book of Job" also became a vivid childhood impression of the writer. The younger brother of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Andrei Mikhailovich, wrote that “brother Fedya read more historical, serious works, as well as novels that came across. Brother Mikhail loved poetry and wrote poetry himself ... But they put up at Pushkin, and both, it seems, knew almost everything by heart then ... ”

The death of Alexander Sergeevich by young Fedya was perceived as a personal grief. Andrei Mikhailovich wrote: “Brother Fedya, in conversations with his older brother, repeated several times that if we didn’t have family mourning (the mother, Maria Fedorovna, died), then he would ask his father’s permission to mourn for Pushkin.”

Youth of Dostoevsky

Museum "Manor of F.M. Dostoevsky in the village of Darovoe"

From 1832, the family annually spent the summer in the village of Darovoe (Tula province), bought by the father. Meetings and conversations with peasants were forever deposited in Dostoevsky's memory and later served as creative material (the story "" from the Writer's Diary for 1876).

In 1832, Dostoevsky and his elder brother Mikhail began to study with teachers who came to the house, from 1833 they studied at the boarding house of N. I. Drashusov (Sushara), then at the boarding school of L. I. Chermak, where the astronomer D. M. Perevoshchikov, a paleologist A. M. Kubarev. 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. The atmosphere of educational institutions and isolation from the family evoked a painful reaction in Dostoevsky (the autobiographical features of the hero of the novel "", who is experiencing deep moral upheavals in the "Tushara boarding house"). At the same time, the years of study were marked by an awakened passion for reading.

In 1837, the writer's mother died, and soon his father took Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail to St. Petersburg to continue their education. The writer did not meet his father again, who died in 1839 (according to official information, he died of apoplexy, according to family legend, he was killed by serfs). Dostoevsky's attitude to his father, a suspicious and painfully suspicious man, was ambivalent.

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.

First literary publications

Even on the way to St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky was mentally “composing a novel from Venetian life,” and in 1838 Riesenkampf told “about his own literary experiences.”

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 lectures in classes. ... We are sent to fencing training, we are given lessons in fencing, dancing, singing ... they put us 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. Subsequently, Dostoevsky always believed that the choice of an educational institution was erroneous. He suffered from the military atmosphere and drill, from disciplines alien to his interests and from loneliness.

As his colleague at the school, the artist K. A. Trutovsky, testified, Dostoevsky kept himself closed, but impressed his comrades with his erudition, a literary circle formed around him. The first literary ideas took shape in the school.

In 1841, at an evening hosted by brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky read excerpts from his dramatic works, which are known only by their names - "Mary Stuart" and "Boris Godunov", - giving rise to associations with the names of F. Schiller and A. S. Pushkin, apparently, the deepest literary passions of the young Dostoevsky; was also read by N. V. Gogol, E. Hoffmann, V. Scott, George Sand, V. Hugo.

After graduating from college, having served less than a year in the St. Petersburg engineering team, in the summer of 1844 Dostoevsky retired with the rank of lieutenant, deciding to devote himself completely to literary creativity.

Among the literary predilections of Dostoevsky of that time was O. de Balzac: the translation of his story "Eugene Grande" (1844, without indicating the name of the translator) the writer entered the literary field. At the same time, Dostoevsky worked on the translation of novels by Eugene Sue and George Sand (they did not appear in print). The choice of works testified to the literary tastes of the novice writer: in those years, he was not alien to romantic and sentimentalist style, he liked dramatic collisions, large-scale characters, and action-packed narration. In the works of George Sand, as he recalled at the end of his life, he was "struck ... by the chaste, the highest purity of types and ideals and the modest charm of the strict restrained tone of the story."

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 in the early summer of 1844, having decided to devote himself entirely to literature, he resigned and retired with the rank of lieutenant.

Novel "Poor People"

In January 1844, Dostoevsky completed the translation of Balzac's Eugene Grande, which he was then particularly 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 "".

The novel "Poor Folk", 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".

Belinsky V.G. - Russian literary critic. 1843 Artist Kirill Gorbunov.

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, compiled an anonymous program announcement for the Zuboskal almanac (03, 1845, No. 11), and in early December, at the evening at Belinsky's, he reads the chapters "" (03, 1846, No. 2), in which for the first time gives a psychological analysis of the split consciousness, "duality". The story "" (1846) and the story "" (1847), in which many of the motifs, ideas and characters of Dostoevsky's works of the 1860-1870s are sketched out, were not understood by modern criticism.

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 "", "", the cycle of sharp socio-psychological feuilletons "Petersburg Chronicle" and the unfinished novel "" - 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 suspicious, 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 writer is burdened by the exhausting work for the “Notes of the Fatherland”. Poverty forced him to take on any literary work (in particular, he edited articles for A. V. Starchevsky's Reference Encyclopedic Dictionary).

Arrest and exile

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 the III section. 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: "... retired lieutenant engineer Dostoevsky, for not reporting the distribution of a criminal letter about religion and government by the writer Belinsky and the malicious essay 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 4-year hard labor with the deprivation of "all 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 ... both pure and naive, 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 "" 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 stories - "" and "", Dostoevsky entered into negotiations with M.N. Katkov, Nekrasov, A.A. Kraevsky. However, modern criticism did not appreciate and bypassed almost complete silence these first works of the “new” Dostoevsky.

On March 18, 1859, at the request of Dostoevsky, he was dismissed “due to illness” with 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 Dostoevsky's permission to live in St. Petersburg, where he arrived in December 1859.

The heyday of Dostoevsky's work

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.

“is a transitional work, a kind of return at a new stage of development to the motifs of the creativity of the 1840s, enriched by the experience experienced and re-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. Huge success had "".

In Siberia, according to Dostoevsky, "gradually and after a very, very long time" his "beliefs" changed. The essence of these changes, Dostoevsky in the most general form formulated 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 magazines Vremya and Epoch, the Dostoevsky brothers acted as the ideologists of "pochvennichestvo" - a specific modification of the ideas of Slavophilism.

"Pochvennichestvo" was rather an attempt to outline the contours of the "general idea", to find a platform that would reconcile Westerners and Slavophiles, "civilization" and the people's beginning. 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. Dostoevsky continues this controversy in the story "" ("The Age", 1864) - a philosophical and artistic prelude to the "ideological" novels of the writer.

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 consists in the consciousness of ugliness. Only I alone brought out the tragedy of the underground, which consists in suffering, in self-punishment, in the consciousness of the best and in the impossibility of achieving it, and, most importantly, in the vivid conviction of these unfortunate people that everyone is like that, and therefore, it’s not worth even correcting!

Novel "The Idiot"

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 "", "" 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 - "" and Nastasya Filippovna - "").

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.

Novel "Crime and Punishment"

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 Russkiy Vestnik, 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 Vera Mikhailovna's sister, where he wrote the novel "" 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 compelled to denounce himself. I was 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 reality is 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 - "" and "". Dostoevsky resorted to an unusual way of working: on October 4, 1866, the stenographer A.G. Snitkin; he began to dictate 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 "multi-developed, but in everything unfinished, distrustful and not daring not to believe, rebelling against 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 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 on it. The main idea of ​​the novel is to depict a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult than this in the world, and especially now ... "

Dostoevsky started the novel "", interrupting work on the widely conceived epics "Atheism" and "The Life of a Great Sinner" and hastily composing a "tale" "". The immediate impetus for the creation of the novel was the “Nechaev case”.

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 writer's attention was drawn to the circumstances of the murder, the ideological and organizational principles of the terrorists ("Revolutionary's Catechism"), 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 “demonic” 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, Dostoevsky in December 1872 agrees to take over the editorship of The Citizen, stipulating in advance that he takes on these duties temporarily.

In The Citizen (1873), Dostoevsky implemented the long-conceived idea of ​​the 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 harsh 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 refused to be an editor, although he occasionally collaborated on The Citizen and 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 the Epoch and Sovremennik, and with Nekrasov, at whose suggestion (1874) the writer publishes his new novel "" - "a novel of education", his genus "Fathers and Sons" of 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.

"A Writer's Diary"

In con. 1875 Dostoevsky again returns to journalistic work - the "mono-journal" "" (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 interested me personally the most.

"Diary" 1876-1877 - a fusion of journalistic articles, essays, feuilletons, "anti-critic", memoirs and works of art. The Diary refracted Dostoevsky's immediate, hot on the heels, 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.

A large place in the "Diary" is occupied by the writer's attempts to see the contours of the "new creation" in the modern chaos, the foundations of the "folding" life, to predict the appearance of "the coming future Russia of honest people who need only one truth."
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, Dostoevsky, under the impression of Nekrasov's "Last Songs", visits the dying poet, often sees him in November; December 30 delivers a speech at the funeral of Nekrasov.

Dostoevsky's activity required 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 was at the trial of Vera Zasulich in the hall of the St. Petersburg District Court, and in April he answered 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. In The Diary of a Writer, the ideas and plot of his last novel matured and tested. 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 novel "The Brothers Karamazov"

"" - 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 "" 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 schemnik 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 "" 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.

Death and funeral of the writer

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.

Books on the biography of Dostoevsky F.M.

Dostoevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich // Russian biographical dictionary: in 25 volumes. - SPb.-M., 1896-1918.

Pereverzev VF, Riza-Zade F. Dostoevsky Fedor Mikhailovich // Literary Encyclopedia. - M.: Izd-vo Kom. Acad., 1930. - T. 3.

Friedlander G. M. Dostoevsky // History of Russian Literature. - Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In-t rus. lit. (Pushkin. House). - M.; L .: AN SSSR, 1956. - T. 9. - S. 7-118.

Grossman L. P. Dostoevsky. - M.: Young Guard, 1962. - 543 p. - (Life of remarkable people; issue 357).

Friedlander G. M. F. M. Dostoevsky // History of Russian Literature. - Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In-t rus. lit. (Pushkin. House). - L .: Nauka., 1982. - T. 3. - S. 695-760.

Ornatskaya T. I., Tunimanov V. A. Dostoevsky Fedor Mikhailovich // Russian Writers. 1800-1917.

Biographical Dictionary. - 624 p. - ISBN 5-85270-064-9.

Chronicle of the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky: 1821-1881 / Comp. Yakubovich ID, Ornatskaya TI - Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) RAS. - St. Petersburg: Academic project, 1993. - T. 1 (1821-1864). - 540 p. - ISBN 5-7331-043-5.

Chronicle of the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky: 1821–1881 / Comp. Yakubovich ID, Ornatskaya TI - Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) RAS. - St. Petersburg: Academic project, 1994. - T. 2 (1865-1874). - 586 p. - ISBN 5-7331-006-0.

Chronicle of the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky: 1821–1881 / Comp. Yakubovich ID, Ornatskaya TI - Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) RAS. - St. Petersburg: Academic project, 1995. - T. 3 (1875-1881). - 614 p. - ISBN 5-7331-0002-8.

Troyes A. Fyodor Dostoevsky. - M.: Eksmo, 2005. - 480 p. - ("Russian biographies"). - ISBN 5-699-03260-6.

Saraskina L. I. Dostoevsky. - M.: Young Guard, 2011. - 825 p. - (Life of remarkable people; issue 1320). - ISBN 978-5-235-03458-7.

Inna Svechenovskaya. Dostoevsky. Fight with passion. Publisher: "Neva", 2006. - ISBN: 5-7654-4739-2.

Saraskina L.I. Dostoevsky. 2nd edition. Publishing house "Molodaya Gvardiya", 2013 Series: Life of wonderful people. - ISBN: 978-5-235-03458-7.

Without children it would be wrong to love humanity like that.

(Fedor Dostoevsky )

Who did the children of Dostoevsky become, how did their fate develop and how did the Great writer treat his offspring?

Despite the cruel upbringing, sometimes even tyranny, little Fyodor Dostoevsky respected his father. When the writer had his own children, he tried to adopt only the bright sides of Father Mikhail Andreevich and educate the little Dostoevskys with all love and tenderness. So, from early childhood, Lyuba and Fedor participated in literary evenings, when the writer read them the works of Geniuses - Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Tolstov.
Twice a week, Fyodor Mikhailovich attended church, without his children. But once, when Lyubochka was 9 years old, the writer took her with him to the Service, put her on a chair and told about what was happening.
So how many children did Dostoevsky have and what characters did his descendants have? In total, the writer had four children and an adopted son from his first wife, with whom the relationship did not immediately start.

Isaev Pavel Alexandrovich

Adopted son of F. M. Dostoevsky from his first wife Maria

• Date of birth - November 10 (22), 1847
• Date of death - 1900

Despite the coldness of his stepson, Dostoevsky always treated him with warmth.

Little is known about his fate. From 1857 to 1859, Pavel studied on the Siberian cadet leave, but was expelled due to "childish pranks." Fyodor Mikhailovich worried about him, found teachers, places of service, but because of his character and behavior, Pavel did not stay anywhere for a long time. Judging by the letters, the writer was always worried about the future of his adopted son and sent him money until the end of his days.
As for Anna Grigorievna, in her memoirs she did not speak very well of Pavel. Once, having learned about the engagement of Fyodor and Anna, Isaev Jr. showed up in the writer's office, where he rudely expressed his attitude to the wedding. That day there was a quarrel between them and Fyodor Mikhailovich even kicked his stepson out of his office. Dostoevsky's entourage insisted that Pavel was behaving rudely, pompously and lazily, but despite this, the writer always said that he considered his adopted son an honest and kind fellow, and indeed, between them, all the same, there was some kind of affection of their own. When Pavel's son was born, he was named after Dostoevsky - Fedor.

According to Anna Grigorievna, Pavel Isaev is the prototype of Alexander Lobov in the work “Eternal Husband”.

Sofia Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya

The first daughter of F. M. Dostoevsky

• Date of birth - February 21 (March 5), 1868
• Date of death - May 12 (24), 1868

On February 22, 1868, little Sophia was born. When, worried, Fyodor Mikhailovich for the first time heard a child's cry behind the door, he rushed into the room where Anna was lying exhausted with her little daughter and began to kiss the hands of his dear wife.
In his letters to his sister V. M. Ivanova, Dostoevsky wrote: “Anna gave me a daughter. A nice, healthy and smart girl who looks ridiculously like me.” The birth of his daughter stirred up in the writer those feelings that were unknown to him until that moment. Not for a minute did he leave the little angel - he took care, swaddled and assured that, despite such an early age, Sonya would recognize him.

At the beginning of May, on the urgent recommendations of doctors, the Dostoevsky family went for a walk with little Sophia. On one of these days, during a walk, a strong wind began and Sonya, most likely, caught a cold. The girl's cough and high temperature did not arouse suspicion among the doctors, they assured that Sophia would soon recover, and even 3 hours before her death, they were convinced of their words.
But fate was not favorable to Dostoevsky. After several days spent in torment, the small body became lifeless. It is impossible to describe the grief of Anna and Fedor at that moment. Dostoevsky lost weight, became haggard and was inconsolable.
Sonya's grave is located in Geneva, in the cemetery of the Kings. On a small plate there is an inscription in French “Sophia. Daughter of Fyodor and Anna Dostoyevsky.

Lyubov Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya

The second daughter of F. M. Dostoevsky

• Date of birth September 14, 1869
• Date of death November 10, 1926

When the second daughter was born, Dostoevsky's life sparkled with new colors. Fyodor Mikhailovich treated Lyuba with extraordinary tenderness, bathed her, lulled her to sleep and was happy. In his letters to his family, he wrote:The girl is healthy, cheerful, developed beyond her years, she always sings with me when I sing to her, and she all laughs; rather quiet non-capricious child. Looks like me to the point of being ridiculous, to the slightest bit”.

When Lyuba was 11 years old, Fedor Mikhailovich was already dying. The bitter loss affected her daughter's health, and although the writer said that Lyubochka was a healthy child, concern about her nervous health slipped through his letters. His fears were not unfounded. After the death of her father, Lyuba spent a lot of time in sanatoriums and resorts in order to recover from numerous diseases. She was also unlucky with her personal life. Until the end of her days, Lyubov Fedorovna remained alone. Trying to imitate Fyodor Mikhailovich in everything, Lyuba herself began to write works, but, unfortunately, her works had no value.

Dostoevsky's daughter died at the age of 57, from leukemia, in Italy.

Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky

The eldest native son of F. M. Dostoevsky

• Date of birth - July 16 (28), 1871
• Date of death - January 4, 1922

“If a son is born, at least ten minutes before midnight on July 15, we will call him Vladimir,” Anna Grigorievna recalled, but Dostoevsky’s first son was not destined to bear the name Vladimir. He was born on July 16 and was named after his father. And so Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky was born.

From childhood, Dostoevsky Jr. showed an extraordinary interest in horse breeding. Often the Dostoevskys were afraid that the horses would hurt their son, but Fedya always found a common language with the horses. So, the son of the famous writer became a specialist in horse breeding. A few years after the death of his father, Fedya moved to live in Simferopol. The first marriage of Dostoevsky Jr. was not happy, and by the age of 30 he was divorced and devoted his life to horse racing, where he earned first places and won all the prizes.

Once in Simferopol, a costume ball was held at the governor's, and it was there that Fedor found his love and second wife Ekaterina. Soon a daughter appeared in their family, who died a couple of minutes after birth. A little later, Catherine gave birth to the writer's son of two heirs - Andrei and Fedor.

When Fyodor's mother Anna Grigorievna died, he remained to live in the Crimea, but was arrested and sentenced to death. Using then his last name, Dostoevsky Jr. was released.

He returned to Moscow in 1921. Hunger and numerous illnesses left him no chance of life. He died in 1922.

Alexey Fyodorovich Dostoevsky

The second son of F. M. Dostoevsky

• Date of birth - August 10 (22), 1875
• Date of death - May 16 (28), 1978

On August 10, another son appeared in the Dostoevsky family, who was named Alexei. In his letters, Fyodor Mikhailovich often mentioned that the child was healthy and strong. From the memoirs of Lyubov Fedorovna, it is known that Lesha was his father's favorite of all the children. Little Lyuba and Fedya were not allowed to enter the writer's office without asking, when Lesha could enter at any time.

Dostoevsky's love for little Lesha was special, as if he knew that his second son would soon be gone.

On May 16, 1978, Anna and Fedor noticed convulsive twitches on Alexei's face. They immediately went to the doctor, but he convinced his parents that Lesha was all right. When the convulsions persisted, the Dostoevskys turned to another doctor, Professor Uspensky. After examining the shaking body of little Lesha, he said that everything would pass soon. From the memoirs of Anna Grigoryevna: “Fyodor Mikhailovich went to see the doctor off, returned terribly pale and knelt by the sofa, I wanted to ask him what exactly the doctor had said (and he, as I found out later, told Fyodor Mikhailovich that the agony had already begun), but he forbade me to speak with a sign.” On that day, the second son of the writer died.

Son of a writer and He graduated from the St. Petersburg gymnasium, then the law and natural faculties of the University of Dorpat, was a major specialist in horse breeding and horse breeding. A.G. Dostoevskaya recalls: “Eight days after arrival in St. Petersburg, on July 16<1871 г.>, early in the morning, our eldest son Fedor was born. I felt ill the day before. Fyodor Mikhailovich, who had been praying all day and all night for a successful outcome, later told me that he had decided, if a son was born, at least ten minutes before midnight, to name him Vladimir, the name of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir, whose memory is celebrated on July 15. But the baby was born on the 16th and was named Fedor, in honor of his father, as we decided long ago. Fyodor Mikhailovich was terribly happy both that a boy was born and that the family “event” that worried him so much had successfully taken place ”( Dostoevskaya A.G. Memories. 1846-1917. M.: Boslen, 2015. S. 257).

Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky. Simferopol. 1902.

On the same day, July 16, 1871, Dostoevsky wrote to A.N. Snitkina, mother A.G. Dostoevskaya: “Today, at six o'clock in the morning, God gave us a son, Fyodor. Anya kisses you. She is in very good health, but the agony was terrible, although not long. I suffered in total for seven hours. But thank God, everything was right. The grandmother was Pavel Vasilievna Nikiforova. The doctor came today and found everything excellent. Anya was already sleeping and eating. The child, your grandson, is unusually large and healthy. We all bow to you and kiss you ... "

Dostoevsky all the years enthusiastically treated his son Fedya. "Here is Fedka ( was born here six days after arrival (!), - Dostoevsky wrote to the doctor S.D. Yanovsky on February 4, 1872 - now six months old) would probably have received a prize at last year's London exhibition of infants (just so as not to jinx it!). "Fedya has my<характер>, my innocence, - Dostoevsky noted in a letter to A.G. Dostoevskaya dated July 15 (27), 1876 - I can only boast of this, although I know that you yourself, perhaps more than once, laughed at my innocence.

As if predicting the future fate of his son, a specialist in horse breeding, A.G. Dostoevskaya recalls: “Our eldest son, Fedya, was extremely fond of horses from infancy, and, living for years in Staraya Russa, Fyodor Mikhailovich and I were always afraid that his horses would hurt him: two or three years old, he sometimes escaped from old nanny, ran to a strange horse and hugged her leg. Fortunately, the horses were country horses, accustomed to the fact that children were spinning around them, and therefore everything went well. When the boy grew up, he began to ask for a live horse as a gift. Fyodor Mikhailovich promised to buy, but somehow it could not be done. I bought a foal in May 1880...” ( Dostoevskaya A.G. Memories. 1846-1917. M.: Boslen, 2015. S. 413).

“The Christmas tree of 1872 was special: our eldest son, Fedya, was present for the first time “consciously,” writes A.G. Dostoevskaya. - The Christmas tree was lit early, and Fyodor Mikhailovich solemnly led his two chicks into the living room.

The children were, of course, amazed by the glowing lights, decorations and toys that surrounded the Christmas tree. They were given gifts by the Pope: daughters - a lovely doll and tea doll utensils, son - a large trumpet, into which he immediately blew, and a drum. But the biggest effect on both children was made by two bay horses from the folder, with magnificent manes and tails. They were harnessed to popular popular sleds, wide, for two. The children threw away their toys and got into the sled, and Fedya, seizing the reins, began to wave them and drive the horses. The girl, however, soon got bored with the sled, and she turned to other toys. It was not so with the boy: he lost his temper with delight; shouted at the horses, struck the reins, probably remembering how the peasants passing by our dacha in Staraya Russa did it. Only by some trick did we manage to carry the boy out of the living room and put him to bed.

Fyodor Mikhailovich and I sat for a long time and recalled the details of our little holiday, and Fyodor Mikhailovich was pleased with it, perhaps more than his children. I went to bed at twelve, and my husband boasted to me about a new book bought from Wolf today, very interesting for him, which he was going to read at night. But it was not there. About one o'clock he heard frantic crying in the nursery, immediately hurried there and found our boy, flushed with a cry, escaping from the hands of the old woman Prokhorovna and muttering some incomprehensible words (He was less than a year and a half old, and he still spoke indistinctly). At the cry of the child, I woke up and ran to the nursery. Since Fedya's loud cry could wake his sister, who was sleeping in the same room, Fyodor Mikhailovich decided to take him to his office. When we were passing through the drawing-room, and by the light of the candle Fedya saw the sled, he instantly fell silent and with such force stretched his whole powerful body down to the sled that Fyodor Mikhailovich could not restrain him and found it necessary to put him there. Although tears continued to roll down the child's cheeks, he was already laughing, grabbed the reins and began to wave and smack them again, as if to drive horses. When the child, apparently, had completely calmed down, Fyodor Mikhailovich wanted to take him to the nursery, but Fedya burst into bitter weeping and wept until he was again put into the sleigh. Here my husband and I, at first frightened by a mysterious illness for us that had happened to the child, and having already decided, despite the night, to invite a doctor, understood what was the matter: obviously, the boy’s imagination was amazed by the Christmas tree, toys and the pleasure that he experienced, sitting in a sleigh, and now, waking up at night, he remembered the horses and demanded his new toy. And since his demand was not satisfied, he raised a cry, which achieved his goal. What was to be done: the boy finally, as they say, "looked around" and did not want to go to sleep. In order not to keep all three awake, we decided that the nurse and I would go to bed, and Fyodor Mikhailovich would sit with the boy and, when he got tired, take him to bed. And so it happened. The next day my husband merrily complained to me:

- Well, Fedya tortured me at night! I did not take my eyes off him for two or three hours, I was always afraid that he would wriggle out of the sleigh and hurt himself. Already the nanny came twice to call him "bainki", and he waves his arms and wants to cry again. So they sat together until five o'clock. Then he, apparently, got tired and began to lean to the side. I supported him, and, I see,<он>fell asleep soundly, and I carried him to the nursery. So I didn’t have to start the book I bought, ”Fyodor Mikhailovich laughed, apparently extremely pleased that the incident, which at first frightened us, ended so well” ( Dostoevskaya A.G. Memories. 1846-1917. M.: Boslen, 2015. S. 294-295).

August 13 (25), 1879 Dostoevsky in a letter to A.G. Dostoyevsky from Bad Ems asked her anxiously: “You write about Fed that he keeps going to the boys. He is in precisely such years when there is a crisis from the 1st childhood to conscious comprehension. I notice a lot of deep features in his character, and the only thing is that he is bored where another (ordinary) child would not even think to be bored. But here's the problem: this is the age at which former activities, games and sympathies change to others. He would have needed a book for a long time, so that he would gradually love to read meaningfully. I already read something in his summer. Now, having nothing to do, he instantly falls asleep. But soon he will start looking for other and already bad consolations if there is no book. And he still can't read. If you knew how I think about it here and how it worries me. And when will he learn? Everything is learning, not learning!”

However, Dostoevsky worried in vain. Having received two higher educations, Fedor Fedorovich was "a very wealthy man before the October Revolution" ( Volotskoy M.V. Chronicle of the family of Dostoevsky. 1506-1933. M., 1933. S. 133). His childhood friend, later attorney at law V.O. Levenson recalls: “Fyodor Fedorovich was a man of unconditional ability, with a strong will, stubborn in achieving his goal. He behaved with dignity and forced to respect himself in any society. Painfully proud and conceited, he strove to be the first everywhere. A great passion for sports, he skated very well and even took prizes. He tried to prove himself in the literary field, but soon became disillusioned with his abilities.<...>. In the development of Fyodor Fedorovich's personality, an extremely negative and painful role was played by the label "Dostoevsky's son", which was so firmly stuck to him and haunted him throughout his life. He was jarred by the fact that when he was introduced to someone, they invariably added "the son of F.M. Dostoevsky", after which he usually had to listen to the same phrases he had heard an infinite number of times, answer questions that had long been boring etc. But he was especially tormented by that atmosphere of close attention and expectation from him of something exceptional, which he so often felt around him. With his isolation and painful pride, all this served as a constant source of his painful experiences, one might say disfigured his character ”(Ibid., pp. 137-138).

The second wife of Fedor Fedorovich E.P. Dostoevskaya tells about him: “He inherited extreme nervousness from his father. Closed, suspicious, secretive (he was frank with only very few people, in particular with his childhood friend, later a barrister V.O. Levenson). Never been cheerful. Like his father, he is prone to gambling, as well as to reckless extravagance. In general, in relation to money spending, the same broad nature as his father. In the same way, like his father (and also his son Andrei), uncontrollably quick-tempered, and sometimes afterwards he did not even remember his outbursts. Usually, after difficult periods of nervousness, he sought to atone for his behavior with increased gentleness and kindness ”(Ibid., p. 138).

Civil wife of Fedor Fedorovich since May 16, 1916 L.S. Michaelis left memories of him with the addition of poems by Fyodor Fedorovich dedicated to her: “He read and loved literature, mainly classical. Of contemporary writers, he loved L. Andreev, Kuprin, and a few others. He treated most of the young poets who performed at one time in Moscow cafes with derision. He himself also loved to write poems and stories, but, having written, he destroyed them. Only a few things I managed to save and save.

Many views of Fyodor Mikhailovich were completely alien to his son. So, for example, he could never understand his father and agree with him in his views on the universal significance of the Russian people. Fedor Fedorovich held much more modest views on the qualities of the Russian people, in particular, he always considered him very lazy, rude and prone to cruelty.

I will also point out that he hated the monument to Dostoevsky by the sculptor Merkurov, opened in 1918 on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and repeatedly said with what pleasure he would have blown up with dynamite the mutilated, in his opinion, figure of his father.

There was a lot of not only contradictory, but simply careless in it. (By the way, he found a great similarity between himself and Dmitri Karamazov). This was especially true in his attitude to money. If he received a large amount of money, he began by working out some very reasonable plan for what he would use this money for. But immediately after this, the most unnecessary and unproductive spending began (a common feature with his father). The most unexpected and strange purchases were made, and as a result, in a short time, the entire amount disappeared, and he asked me with surprise: "Where did you and I put all the money so quickly?"

Fyodor Fedorovich's carelessness and extravagance were combined, strange as it may seem, with great pedantry and accuracy in some of his actions. He always kept his promise. He was extremely accurate when scheduling meetings - he himself always came to the minute at the appointed time and lost his temper when the one with whom he persuaded to meet was at least 10 minutes late<...> ».

Poems by F.F. Dostoevsky

I'm away from you now and I'm full of you
Feelings are tremulous, thoughts are happy
My life, the East caught fire at dawn!
You, Night of the Past, disappear silently!

Cold heart and cold feelings.
Tired analysis of everything.
So the barren soil is bound by cold,
It won't give you anything.
But revived again, warmed by the sun,
In the spring, washed with dew,
Wonderful green luxuriously dressed,
The former shines with beauty.
So be you the sun, welcome in the spring,
Take a look - and warm the rays.
Would you be joy
so long awaited
Come, come quickly!

I need you and your voice
I hear with joyful excitement,
Catching with hot impatience
The tone of the words you answered.
Understand that voices tint
Gives me everything in a single moment:
Ile joy victorious click,
Ile torture moral dungeon.

In the Tango pub

White tablecloth, lights in crystal,
Fruit vase, gloves, two roses,
Two wine glasses, a crown on the table.
And wearily careless poses.
Romance words, music sounds.
Sharp faces, strange movements,
Bare shoulders and bare arms
Cigarette smoke, vague desires...

(Ibid., pp. 141, 145-147).

In 1926, on August 18, in the newspaper "Rul", published in Berlin in Russian, an article appeared "The Son of Dostoevsky (Page of Memoirs)", signed by the initials E.K. publication of manuscripts left after the death of F.M. Dostoevsky. This transfer of manuscripts abroad reminds me of the sad story of the son of the late great writer F.F. Dostoevsky, also already deceased. In 1918, Fedor Fedorovich made his way with incredible difficulties to the Crimea, where his mother, the widow of the great writer, A.G., was mortally ill. Dostoevskaya. After burying his mother, Fedor Fedorovich remained in the Crimea, where he fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks after the evacuation of the Crimea by the Wrangel army. What was done there in those days is beyond description.

In any case, in order to vividly and truthfully depict the infernal horror and the satanic bacchanalia that was then taking place in the Crimea, a new Dostoevsky is needed.

For my part, I will confine myself to pointing out a small fact: Bela Kun, the guest executioner sent by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to the Crimea, showed such unprecedented and unheard-of cruelty even for the "Red Terror" that another executioner, far from sentimental, Kedrov sent telegram to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in which he asked "to stop the aimless slaughter."

It was during this period that Fedor Fedorovich was arrested. At night they brought him to some barracks in Simferopol. The interrogator, some drunken fellow in a leather jacket, with swollen red eyelids and a sunken nose, began the "interrogation" in the following form:

- Why did you come here?

- In 1918 I came here to my dying mother and stayed here.

- To the mother ... mother ... the bastard himself, go already grandfather and also mother-r-r-i ...

Dostoevsky was silent.

- Shoot!

The executions took place right there, in the yard, and while the interrogation was going on, shots were heard every minute. Seven "investigators" were working in the barracks at the same time. Dostoevsky was immediately seized and dragged towards the courtyard. Then, beside himself, he shouted:

- Scoundrels, monuments are being erected to my father in Moscow, and you are shooting me.

Noseless, apparently embarrassed and slurred: "What are you talking about? What father? What monuments? What is your last name?"

- My surname is D-o-s-t-o-e-vsky.

— Dostoevsky? Never heard.

Fortunately, at that moment a small, dark, nimble man ran up to the investigator and began to whisper something quickly in his ear.

The noseless man slowly raised his head, stupidly looked with inflamed eyelids in the direction of Dostoevsky and said: "Go to hell as long as you're intact."

In 1923 Dostoevsky returned to Moscow completely ill. He was desperately in need, and when his acquaintances found out about this and rushed to him, they found a depressing picture - Fedor Fedorovich was dying of hunger. They did everything in their power ... they called the doctor, but it was too late; the body was so exhausted that it could not stand it.

When Dostoevsky was already lying dead on his wretched wooden bed, the silence of death was broken by the appearance of Lunacharsky, sent from the "pea jester", who, after two months of Dostoevsky's fuss about issuing him temporary assistance, finally arrived on time, as always, having sent 23 rubles from the People's Commissariat of Education. 50 k. Unfortunately, Lunacharsky's participation in Dostoevsky's affairs was not limited to this. Before his death, Dostoevsky gave a sealed package to his friend, which contained letters and manuscripts of Fyodor Mikhailovich. Fedor Fedorovich begged to transfer these papers into the hands of his son, the grandson of the great writer.

Lunacharsky found out about this, demanded this package for making copies and photographs, and undertook to return all the papers with an honest word. It is hardly worth adding that neither papers, nor copies, nor photographs have ever been seen again. What Lunacharsky received for the manuscripts that went abroad, I do not know.

There are errors and inaccuracies in these memoirs, for example, it is known that Fedor Fedorovich could not bury his mother, but ended up in Yalta, where she died, only after her death. He could not return to Moscow in 1923, since he died in Moscow on January 4, 1922. However, his son, the writer's grandson, Andrei Fyodorovich Dostoevsky, in 1965, in a conversation with S.V. Belov, not knowing about this article in the Rul newspaper, confirmed, according to his mother, E.P. Dostoevskaya, the fact that his father was arrested in the Crimea by the railway Cheka as a speculator: it was suspected that he was carrying contraband in metal cans and baskets, but in fact there were manuscripts of Dostoevsky that survived after Anna Grigorievna Dostoevsky, which Fedor Fedorovich, by the way, specially handed over to the Center. archive (see: Belov S.V."To Fyodor Dostoevsky - from grateful demons" // Literator. 1990. June 22. No. 22).

There are 2 letters from Dostoevsky to his son for 1874 and 1879.