Dostoevsky's women. Favorite women of Dostoevsky

“My dear angel, Anya: I kneel down, pray to you and kiss your feet. You are my future everything - and hope, and faith, and happiness, and bliss "

A woman who was a gift of life after much suffering.

Birth

Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina was born on August 30 (September 11), 1846, in St. Petersburg. Her father was an official - Grigory Ivanovich Snitkin. Mother - Maria Anna Maltopeus - Swedish, of Finnish origin. Anya inherited pedantry and accuracy from her mother, which played an important role in the distant future. Her father always respected the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, therefore, from the age of 16, Snitkina was fascinated by the books of the Great writer.

Education

In 1858, Anya decides to give her heart to science and enters the St. Anne's School. He successfully graduates and then goes to pedagogical courses, but drops out after a year. He quits not on a whim, but because his father is seriously ill. So, Anna is forced to support her family. Despite her illness, Anya's father insists that she attend shorthand courses, which, in the future, brought her together with Dostoevsky. Snitkina was such a diligent student that she achieved the status of "best stenographer" from Professor Olkhin.

Acquaintance with Dostoevsky

On October 4, 1866, Dostoevsky experiences one of the most confusing moments of his life. Then Professor Olkhin negotiates with Anna about the work of a stenographer and introduces her to Fyodor Mikhailovich, who needed a stenographer and, as it turned out later, Anna herself.

After the first meeting with Fedor, Anna said, “At first glance, he seemed to me quite old. But as soon as he spoke, he immediately became younger, and I thought that he was hardly more than thirty-five or seven years old. Light brown hair was heavily pomaded and carefully combed. But what struck me was his eyes: they were different, one was brown, in the other the pupil was dilated to the entire eye and the irises were imperceptible.

Just during the period of acquaintance with Anna, the writer is experiencing hard times. He starts playing roulette, loses, loses his earnings and himself. He was given strict conditions, according to which he must write new novel for short periods. Then the writer resorts to the help of a stenographer. Together they began to work on the novel "The Gambler" and in record time (only 26 days) Anya and Fedor Mikhailovich managed to write a novel and fulfill the strict conditions of the contract.

Love for Anna and wedding

This collaboration built a bridge between the young woman Anna and the world famous writer. He opened his whole life to Anya, trusted him as a person who had known him all his life and decides to confess his feelings to Anna. Fearing rejection, Dostoevsky cunningly approaches this issue, invents a story about how old painter fell in love with a girl much younger than him. And he asked Anna - what would she do in the place of this girl. Anna, either understanding with her heart what was at stake, or Dostoevsky betrayed himself, nervously, said: “I would answer you that I love you and will love you all my life.
So, Dostoevsky forever finds his beloved woman, who was faithful to him until the end of his days.
Relatives of Fyodor Mikhailovich were against marriage, but this did not stop either Dostoevsky or Anna. And, almost immediately after the wedding, Anna sold all her savings and took the writer to Germany. Taking everything into your fragile female hands, Snitkina paid off her husband's debts, together they overcame roulette and together they began to know happiness.

Children of Anna Snitkina and Dostoevsky

In 1868, Dostoevskaya gives her husband her first daughter Sonechka. “Anna gave me a daughter,” Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote to his sister, “a nice, healthy and smart girl who looks ridiculously like me.” But happiness was short-lived - after 3 months, the daughter dies of a cold.

In 1869, the second daughter of the writer, Lyubov Dostoevskaya, was born. In 1871 - the son of Fedor and in 1975 - the son of Alexei. Alexei inherited his father's disease and died at the age of 3 from an attack of epilepsy.

A series of grief in the Dostoevsky family did not allow any of them to break. Anna is actively engaged in the work of her husband - publishes articles, novels and stories. Fedor writes charming works, which, in the future, will be read by the whole world.

Death of Anna Dostoevskaya

In 1881, when death broke into their family once again and died great writer, Anna remained true to her oath, which she gave on the day of their wedding. Until her death, she collected the material of her deceased husband and published every sentence written by him. Dostoevsky's daughter said that her mother stayed to live in the period of the 1870s.
Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya died in the summer of 1918 from malaria. Before her death, she wrote the words "... And if fate pleases, I will find, next to him, a place of my eternal rest."

At the end of the 20th century, English psychologists, after conducting a series of studies, deduced a generalized formula for an ideal wife. From a man's point of view, of course. According to the formula, the ideal wife for a man will be that woman who, firstly, always (or almost always) says “yes” to her husband. That is: "Yes, dear!" Or - "Okay, honey!" Or, even better - "As you say, so be it, dear!" And secondly, the one that says, or, even better, with all her appearance and behavior lets her husband know that he is “the most wonderful man in the world!” In other words, that for her he is the Lord God himself in earthly incarnation.

Dostoevsky fabulously lucky. He found such a woman! Anna G. Snitkina, his stenographer and second wife, turned out to be a real gift from heaven for him, a reward for long suffering. Even Leo Tolstoy, whose wife, Sofya Andreevna, is considered the model of a writer’s wife, remarked, not without envy: “Many Russian writers would feel better if they had wives like Dostoevsky’s.”

With his character, habits and way of life, Dostoevsky could easily end up in a lunatic asylum or end his life in prison. But it is so customary that, as the Persian proverb says, “two equally good heads cannot lie on the same pillow”. Irritable, nervous, touchy, terribly jealous and quick-tempered, "a real psycho", God sent a calm and pacifying angel to balance.

Dostoevsky's wife should be beyond suspicion

By the end of life Dostoevsky get rid of such unattractive features as resentment, envy and irascibility, but from one quality - jealousy- will continue to suffer to the same extent as in his youth. And no wonder: after all, he is in his own skin - twice! - with his first wife (Maria) and with his first lover (Apollinaria) - he experienced the bitterness of betrayal. Yes, and how can you not be jealous when you are old, and weak, and ugly, and she, Anna, is young, and beautiful, and so sexy!

Attacks of jealousy seized him suddenly, sometimes arising out of the blue. He will suddenly return home at an odd hour - and, well, rummage through cabinets and look under all the beds! Or, for no reason at all, he will become jealous of his neighbor - a weak old man ...

Any trifle could serve as a reason for an outbreak of jealousy. For example: I looked at such and such for too long! Or - smiled too broadly at such and such! One day, returning from a visit, he immediately began to accuse her of being a soulless coquette and that she had been amiable with a neighbor all evening, tormenting her husband with this. She tried to justify herself, but he, forgetting that they were in a hotel, yelled at her at the top of his voice. His face twisted and became terrible, she was afraid that he would kill or beat her, and burst into tears. Only then did he come to his senses, began to kiss her hands, he himself began to cry and confessed his monstrous jealousy. After this scene, she gave herself the word "to protect him from such difficult impressions."

Dostoevsky will work out a number of rules for her, which, at his request, she will continue to adhere to in the future: do not walk in sexy tight-fitting dresses, do not smile at men, do not laugh in conversation with them, do not paint your lips, do not line your eyes ... Indeed, with From now on, Anna Grigoryevna will behave with men with extreme restraint and dryness.

Impressibility of Dostoevsky

"Beauty will save the world." Only a person who himself was deprived of beauty and did not hope to ever enjoy it could say such a thing. Feeling like a Quasimodo Dostoevsky extremely emotionally reacted to any beauty. But above all - on the beauty of women. Still: what kind of beauty would agree to be next to such a nonentity and a freak?! And this is how he realized himself for a long time. That is why his reaction to any beautiful face, and especially ... beautiful female legs, was so impressionable.

Oh those legs! If she sees a piece of a slender ankle from under a coquettishly raised dress, she will faint. He sees stockings with a garter in the window on a lady's mannequin - he is looking for a bench to take a breath and not lose consciousness. He will end almost every letter to Anna Grigorievna with a mental kiss of her legs: “I kiss five fingers on your leg, I kiss your leg and heel, I kiss and I don’t kiss, I keep imagining it ...”, “I kiss you every minute in my dreams all the way, every minute passionately. I especially love what is said about: “And with this lovely object, he is delighted and intoxicated.” I kiss this subject every minute in all forms and intend to kiss all my life”, “Oh, how I kiss, how I kiss! Anka, don’t say that it’s rude, but what should I do, that’s me, I can’t be judged ... I kiss your toes, then your lips, then what “I am delighted and intoxicated with.”

His impressionability clearly went beyond the norm. When some street beauty said “no” to him, he fainted. And if she said yes, the result was often exactly the same.

Dostoevsky - Russian "Marquis de Sade"

Say that Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky possessed increased sexuality, which means almost nothing to say. This physiological property was so developed in him that, despite all efforts to hide it, it involuntarily broke out - in words, looks, actions. This, of course, was noticed by those around him and ... ridiculed him. Turgenev called him " Russian Marquis de Sade. Unable to control the sensual fire, he resorted to the services of prostitutes. But many of them, having once tasted Dostoevsky's love, then refused his proposals: his love was too unusual, and, most importantly, painful.

His sexuality was sadomasochistic. He liked to turn a woman into his toy, and after that he wanted to feel like her thing himself ... Not everyone could endure this.

To calm the sexual heat did not help neither dousing cold water, nor work up a sweat.

Fantastic woman of Dostoevsky

Only one remedy could save him from the abyss of debauchery: a beloved woman. And when such a thing appeared in his life, Dostoevsky changed. It was she, Anna, who was for him both an angel-savior, and an assistant, and that very sexual toy with which one could do everything without guilt and remorse. She was 20, he was 45. Anna was young and inexperienced, and did not see anything strange in those intimate relationships that her husband offered her. She took violence and pain for granted. Even if she didn't approve, or didn't like what he wanted, she didn't say no to him, and didn't show her displeasure in any way. She once wrote: "I'm ready to spend the rest of my life kneeling before him". She put his pleasure above all else. For he was for her God...

They were perfect couple . Having finally realized all his sexual fantasies and desires, he was cured not only of the complexes of the freak and the sinner, but also of the epilepsy that had tormented him for many years. Moreover, with her support and help, he was able to write his best works. She was able to experience the bright, rich and genuine happiness of a wife, lover, mother next to him.

Anna Grigorievna remained faithful to her husband to the end. In the year of his death, she was only 35 years old, but she considered her women's life finished and devoted herself to the service of his name. She published complete collection his writings, collected his letters and notes, forced his friends to write his biography, founded the Dostoevsky school in Staraya Russa wrote her own memoirs. All free time she gave to the organization of his literary heritage.

AT 1918 year, in Last year of her life, the then-novice composer Sergei Prokofiev came to Anna Grigorievna and asked him to make some kind of recording in his album, “dedicated to the sun”. She wrote: “The sun of my life is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Anna Dostoevskaya ... "

More than anything, the genius loved to kiss the toes on women's feet.

On the occasion of the 190th anniversary of the birth of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the first book dedicated to the sexual searches of the great writer was published - “ secret life Dostoevsky. Passions, obsessions, vices. The authors K. and T. ENKO thoroughly analyzed the relationship of a genius with women. With the permission of the Eksmo publishing house, Express Gazeta publishes fragments of the book.

Interest in Dostoevsky's eroticism arises because in his novels and stories he speaks so passionately about the secrets and madness of sex, many times shows debauchers, molesters and voluptuaries, so figuratively presents sinners and femme fatale that the reader has the right to ask himself the question: where did Dostoevsky come from such knowledge of the detailed sensual eroticism of his corrupt heroes and heroines?
... In the Dostoevsky family, children were brought up in obedience, no frivolities were allowed. It was allowed to talk about women only in verse. Sisters who were younger than Fedor, and peasant girls - this is the female society that a teenager under 16 found around him. His first erotic sensations were, of course, associated with these childhood memories - and this was subsequently reflected in his life and work.

In any case, Dostoevsky the writer discovered an increased interest in little girls, brought them out in several novels and stories, and the topic of molestation of a minor relentlessly attracted him: it was not for nothing that he dedicated pages to her in The Humiliated and Insulted, Crime and Punishment and Possessed. ".
Dostoevsky is credited with physical intimacy with a 12-year-old girl who was allegedly brought to him by a governess. This tale about Dostoevsky was allowed to roam around the world by his biographer N. N. Strakhov, and with reference to Professor P. A. Viskovaty, to whom Dostoevsky himself allegedly boasted about this personally. Here is what Anna Grigorievna, the second wife of the writer, writes about this in her Memoirs: “For my part, I can testify that, despite the sometimes extremely real depictions of the vile deeds of the heroes of his works, my husband remained a stranger to “perversion” all his life.

Had a passion for prostitutes

Dostoevsky's sexual life began in St. Petersburg, when he entered the Main Engineering School. Only two or three friends knew that, despite his outward lethargy and coldness, he was a hot, impulsive young man. Even then he was distinguished by painful impressionability. He avoided going to visit, did not know how to behave in public and was terribly embarrassed in women's society. At the beginning of 1840, he fainted when, at a party at Vielgorsky he was introduced to the famous beauty in those years Senyavina.

But Dostoevsky was not a virgin. Women interested him, and he showed a heightened interest in them. Like most epileptics, he had an increased sexual excitability. "Illumination of the flesh" came to him not in the form of an enthusiastic youthful first love, but in the form of random meetings with women of easy virtue. Young Dostoevsky began to distinguish between love and physical pleasure. He wrote: "I am so dissolute that I can no longer live normally, I am afraid of typhus or fever and my nerves are sick." “Minushki, Klarushka, Mariana, etc. prettier to impossible, but cost terrible money. The other day Turgenev and Belinsky they scolded me to dust for a disorderly life, ”he wrote to his brother in November 1845.
When Dostoevsky settled in St. Petersburg, he began to read public readings at student evenings. After one of his performances, he was approached by a slender young girl with large grey-blue eyes, Apollinaria Prokofievna Suslova. She wrote him a letter - the first to offer her heart to Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky was her first man. Apollinaria did not look for beauty or physical charm in him. She liked some of his features. He had very strong, albeit small, hands: when he and Apollinaria were engaged intimate relationship, he squeezed her in his arms until it hurt. In general, he was very strong physically when he felt well, but after seizures of epilepsy, he became weak, like a child. Apollinaria recalled that their sexual relations were devoid of romance. Dostoevsky and Apollinaria tried to act like a master, and then he ran into sharp resistance, because she herself was, in her spirit and willpower, from the breed of masters, and not slaves. This is the reason for all further clashes, and especially for difficult feeling, which then took possession of Apollinaria and looked so much like hatred and a desire for revenge ...
From the diary of Apollinaria: “Yesterday Fyodor Mikhailovich pestered me again. He said that I looked too seriously and sternly at things that were not worth it ... Fyodor Mikhailovich again turned everything into a joke and, leaving me, said that it was humiliating for him to leave me like that (it was at 1 a.m., I undressed lying in bed).

Seduced the wife of an English sailor

FROM Martha Brown, the fugitive wife of a Baltimore sailor, Dostoevsky met at the end of 1864. At this time, he recalled the loss of his wife as a misfortune and God's punishment, and separation from Apollinaria doomed him to loneliness ... Dostoevsky once suggested that she move to his apartment and temporarily live there. He was apparently driven not only by pity and the desire to give shelter to the homeless. Letter from Martha from the hospital (from the beginning of 1865): “Whether or not I will be able to satisfy you physically and whether that spiritual harmony will be realized between us, on which the continuation of our acquaintance will depend, but believe me that I will always be grateful to you for the fact that you, even for a minute or for a while, honored me with your friendship and your favor. Marfa Brown managed to physically satisfy Dostoevsky for a short time: they broke up two months later.

Satisfied his wife until his death

Dostoevsky found sexual harmony in his second marriage.
Marrying the writer, Anna Grigorievna was hardly aware of what awaited her, and only after the marriage did she understand the difficulty of the questions that confronted her. There were his jealousy and suspicion, and his passion for the game, and his illness. And above all the problem of physical relations. At first he did not have a passionate desire, and he treated her with some caution and restraint. Physically, she was inexperienced and naive, she was ready to consider the pathological as normal, in her naivety she believed that this was how it should be, and naturally and calmly answered what another woman, more experienced or instinctively more understanding, would seem strange or insulting. and perhaps even monstrous. Many years later, a year before his death, when he was almost 60 years old and she was barely 35, he wrote to her from Ems: “You write -“ love me! ”, But don’t I love you? Already one of my constant (not only: more and more, growing every year) my marital admiration for you could tell you a lot, but you either do not want to understand this, or, due to your inexperience, you do not understand this at all. Yes, point me to any other marriage you want, where this phenomenon would be in the same strength as in our twelve-year marriage. And my delight and admiration is inexhaustible. You will say that this is only one side and the roughest. No, not rude, but, in essence, everything else depends on it. I long to kiss every toe on your leg, and I will reach the goal, you will see.
No wonder Dostoevsky spoke of his "increasing" marital rapture. He cautiously introduced her into the world of voluptuousness: he knew well both his sadistic and masochistic tendencies, and his fury when he was "allowed" to kiss her legs. After all, the purely physical pleasure from the sexual act and its peak gave him the feeling of a breakthrough into eternity.

- (nee Snitkina; August 30 (September 12), 1846, St. Petersburg, Russian empire- June 9, 1918, Yalta, Crimea) - Russian memoirist. Stenographer, assistant, and since 1867 the second wife of F. M. Dostoevsky, the mother of his children - Sophia (February 22, 1868 - May 12 (24), 1868), Lyubov (1869-1926), Fyodor (1871-1922) and Alexei ( 1875-1878) Dostoevsky; publisher creative heritage Fyodor Mikhailovich. Known as one of the first philatelists in Russia.

Biography

Born in St. Petersburg, in the family of a petty official Grigory Ivanovich Snitkin. Since childhood, I have been reading the works of Dostoevsky. Student of shorthand courses.
From October 4, 1866, as a stenographer and copyist, she participated in the preparation for publication of the novel "The Gambler" by F. M. Dostoevsky. On February 15, 1867, Anna Grigoryevna became the writer's wife, and two months later the Dostoevskys went abroad, where they remained for more than four years(until July 1871).

On the way to Germany, the couple stopped for a few days in Vilna. In December 2006, a memorial tablet was unveiled on the building, located at the place where the hotel where the Dostoevskys stayed, was opened (sculptor Romualdas Kvintas).

Heading south to Switzerland, the Dostoevskys stopped at Baden, where at first Fyodor Mikhailovich won 4,000 francs at roulette, but he could not stop and lost everything that happened to him, not excluding his dress and his wife's belongings. For almost a year they lived in Geneva, where the writer worked desperately, and sometimes needed the bare necessities. On March 6 (February 22), 1868, their first daughter, Sophia, was born; but on May 24 (12), 1868, at the age of three months, the child died, to the indescribable despair of the parents. In 1869, in Dresden, the Dostoevskys had a daughter, Lyubov (d. 1926).

Upon the return of the spouses to St. Petersburg, their sons Fedor (July 16, 1871 - 1922) and Alexei (August 10, 1875 - May 16, 1878) were born to them. The brightest period in the life of the novelist began, in a beloved family, with a kind and intelligent wife, who took into her own hands all the economic issues of his activities (money and publishing) and soon freed her husband from debts. Since 1871, Dostoevsky gave up roulette forever. Anna Grigorievna arranged the life of the writer and did business with publishers and printing houses, she herself published his works. dedicated to her last novel writer "The Brothers Karamazov" (1879-1880).

In the year of Dostoevsky's death (1881), Anna Grigorievna turned 35 years old. She did not remarry. After the writer's death, she collected his manuscripts, letters, documents, photographs. Organized in 1906 a room dedicated to Fyodor Mikhailovich in the Historical Museum in Moscow. Since 1929, her collection moved to the F. M. Dostoevsky Museum-Apartment in Moscow.

Anna Grigorievna compiled and published in 1906 the "Bibliographic index of works and works of art related to the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky" and the catalog "Museum in memory of F. M. Dostoevsky in the Imperial Russian historical museum named after Alexander III in Moscow, 1846-1903. Her books The Diary of A. G. Dostoevskaya 1867 (published in 1923) and Memoirs of A. G. Dostoevskaya (published in 1925) are an important source for the biography of the writer.

Anna Grigorievna died in Yalta in the hungry military year of 1918. After 50 years, in 1968, her ashes were transferred to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and buried next to her husband's grave.

Bibliography

"Diary of A.G. Dostoevskaya 1867" (1923)
"Memoirs of A.G. Dostoevskaya" (1925).

Memory

Movies

• 1980 - Soviet Feature Film"Twenty-six Days in the Life of Dostoevsky". Stage director - Alexander Zarkhi. In the role of A. G. Dostoevskaya - the famous Soviet and Russian actress Evgenia Simonova.
• 2010 - documentary film "Anna Dostoevskaya. Letter to husband. Stage director - Igor Nurislamov. In the role of A. G. Dostoevskaya - Olga Kirsanova-Miropolskaya. Produced by the producer center "ATK-Studio".

Literature

• Grossman L.P.A.G. Dostoevskaya and her “Memoirs” [Introduction. Art.] // Memoirs of A. G. Dostoevskaya. - M.-L., 1925.
• Dostoevsky A.F. Anna Dostoevskaya // Women of the world. - 1963. - No. 10.
• Brief literary encyclopedia in 9 volumes. - M .: " Soviet Encyclopedia", 1964. - T. 2.
• Kissin B. M. Country of Philately. - M.: Communication, 1980. - S. 182.
• Mazur P. Who was the first philatelist? // Philately of the USSR. - 1974. - No. 9. - S. 11.
• Strygin A. Women's theme in philately. Some thoughts about collecting stamps // NG - Collection. - 2001. - No. 3 (52). - 7 March.

Is one of the first famous women Russia, fond of philately. The beginning of her collection was laid in 1867, in Dresden. The reason for this was the dispute between Anna Grigoryevna and Fyodor Mikhailovich about female character:
“I was very indignant in my husband that he rejected in the women of my generation any restraint of character, any persistent and prolonged striving to achieve the intended goal.<...>
For some reason, this argument provoked me, and I announced to my husband that I would prove to him by my personal example that a woman could pursue the idea that attracted her attention for years. And since at the present moment<...>I don’t see any big task before me, then I’ll start at least with the lesson you just indicated, and with today I will collect stamps.
No sooner said than done. I dragged Fyodor Mikhailovich to the first stationery shop I came across and bought (“with my own money”) a cheap album for sticking stamps on. At home, I immediately made stamps from the received three or four letters from Russia and thus laid the foundation for the collection. Our hostess, learning of my intention, rummaged through the letters and gave me some old Thurn-Taxis and the Saxon Kingdom. Thus began my collection postage stamps, and it has been going on for forty-nine years ... From time to time, I boasted to my husband about the number of added marks, and he sometimes laughed at this weakness of mine. (From the book “Memoirs of A. G. Dostoevskaya.”)”

To speak of a great writer, a world-class classic, one of the greatest masters of thoughts as a lover, a husband and a man "with sexual oddities", to put it mildly, is not easy. Firstly, it is incredibly difficult to overcome piety. And secondly, the topic itself is painfully "dangerous" - when you call a spade a spade, the words become heavy and rude, and it is difficult to keep the measure when it comes to such a brilliant and sick individual like Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

A singer of monstrous erotica?
Many traits of his character and life events continue to remain mysterious and inexplicable. Only a few friends knew the real truth about him. In his novels and stories, he so excitedly spoke about the secrets, failures and madness of sex, so persistently brought out voluptuaries, molesters and debauchees, so penetratingly painted "infernal" (fatal) and sinful women, that the question naturally arises: where did the exceptional knowledge of the heavy, sometimes monstrous eroticism of his inflamed heroes and heroines? Did he create this whole world of passions, crimes and retribution, upsurges of the spirit and demonic flesh from observations, fantasies or his own experience? Who and how did he love, and what was Dostoevsky like as a husband and lover? Perhaps something in this story will seem implausible or unlikely to you, but Dostoevsky was much more complicated than any of his heroes. A brilliant epileptic who went through terrible trials of death, hard labor, want and loneliness, a pathological lover and a restless seeker of holiness, he lived a unique, fantastic life.

The first love
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky grew up in a family dominated by his despot father. Hot-tempered, sullen and suspicious, he reached pathological exaggerations in his grievances and fantasies. Mikhail Andreevich was able to accuse his wife of infidelity in the seventh month of pregnancy, and then painfully experience his doubts. Almost as painful were his outbursts of anger. In Dr. Dostoevsky, all the signs of duality and neurosis are clearly visible, which later appeared in his son. It is likely that they caused terrible disease- epilepsy. Mother died when Fedor was not yet sixteen years old. In the same year, he and his older brother were sent to the St. Petersburg Engineering Military School. The teenager Dostoevsky was withdrawn and timid, he had neither "manners", nor money, nor a noble name. If peers boasted of the knowledge of the secrets of love, obtained in the arms of serf girls and St. Petersburg prostitutes, then Fedor could only keep quiet. After with grief in half finished educational institution Dostoevsky immediately resigned and took up writing. This was the only way earn a living: at eighteen, he was left an orphan with a bunch of younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 24, with the success of the story "Poor People", the doors of St. Petersburg salons opened before Dostoevsky. At the writer Ivan Panaev, he meets his wife, Avdotya Yakovlevna, and falls head over heels in love. Three months later, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother: "I am seriously in love with Panaeva ... I am sick with nerves and I am afraid of fever or nervous fever." The first love was painful, but ended humiliatingly. The 22-year-old beauty brunette Panaeva did not pay any attention to the thin, blond, nervous young man with a sickly complexion, but became the mistress of Nikolai Nekrasov, who was both more persistent and richer, and more famous. Well, you can understand her ... Nevertheless, you should not think that the unfortunate lover was a perfect virgin. By his own admission, Fyodor did not refuse to participate in comradely revels, and noisy evenings usually ended at brothels. At the age of 24, Dostoevsky wrote: “I am so dissolute that I can no longer live normally, I am afraid of typhus or fever, and my nerves are sick,” and also: “Minushki, Klarushki, Marianna, etc. have become utterly prettier, but they cost terrible money . The other day Turgenev and Belinsky scolded me to dust for a disorderly life."

But literary success very quickly turned into a failure. Next piece"Double" did not like either the public or the critics. Dostoevsky "went to the bottom". Nikolai Strakhov, biographer and close friend Dostoevsky, said that the description of the youth of the hero of "Notes from the Underground" is very autobiographical: "At that time I was only 24 years old. My life was gloomy, chaotic and wildly lonely ... ... I wanted to move, and I suddenly plunged into a dark, underground, disgusting, not debauchery, but debauchery ... There were hysterical outbursts, with tears and convulsions ... I debauched alone, at night, secretly, timidly, with shame, not who left me in the most disgusting moments ... I was terribly afraid that they would somehow not see me, would not recognize me ... I went to the darkest places ... "

By the age of 28, Dostoevsky was carried away by utopian socialism, got into Petrashevsky's circle, and from there, after a terrible torture by an imaginary execution, he went to hard labor, where he met his first wife.