Fyodor Dostoevsky: pages of the writer's life. The life and work of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Brief biography of Dostoevsky. F M Dostoevsky biography, interesting facts Birth and family

Fyodor Dostoevsky - writer, philosopher, thinker, publicist. Author of the novels “Poor People”, “Crime and Punishment”, “Idiot”, “Humiliated and Insulted”, “The Brothers Karamazov”.

During his lifetime, the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky did not find proper understanding among his contemporaries. And only after his death he was appreciated - he received the title of a classic of Russian literature and the best novelist on a global scale.

Childhood

Fyodor Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821 in Moscow, in the family of Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Nechaeva. The boy's father belonged to the Dostoevsky family of nobles, his place of work was the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor, where the future classic of Russian literature was born. Fedor's mother was from a family of capital merchants.

The Dostoevsky family had many children. At the time of Fyodor’s birth, Mikhail and Varvara were growing up in her, and after him Andrei, Nikolai, Vera and Alexandra were born. The future classic spent his childhood in Moscow. The family adhered to the routine established once and for all by their father. In the evenings, everyone got together, read a lot, and the nanny told the children many Russian folk tales. The Dostoevskys spent their summers on a small estate in the village of Darovoye near Tula. Subsequently, the writer said that it was the best time of his life, which left unforgettable impressions.

The Dostoevskys lived quite modestly, but they did not skimp on their children’s education. They studied Latin with their father and began reading under the guidance of their mother. Then they hired visiting teachers, with whom the children learned the basics of mathematics, learned to speak French and write in Russian.

The first serious blow of fate for Fedor was the death of his mother in 1837 from consumption. He had just turned 16 then, and he was having a hard time bearing the loss of a loved one. The father now decided the fate of the children himself, and could not come up with anything better than sending Fyodor and Mikhail to study in St. Petersburg. They became students at the Engineering School, although, as Dostoevsky later recalled, they dreamed of being poets and poetry.

He wrote that in the evenings they did not have a free minute, they did not even have the opportunity to consolidate the material covered in class. Young people were engaged in fencing, dancing and singing, and they had no right to refuse these activities.

In addition, each of them stood guard, and that’s how all the evenings at the school passed.

In 1843, Dostoevsky was awarded a college diploma. In the same year, he was assigned to the position of field engineer-second lieutenant in the St. Petersburg engineering team. However, a year later he submitted his resignation. Since then, his biography has been inextricably linked with literature, to which he devoted every minute of his life.

First steps

Fyodor was very fond of European literature, his idols were Homer and Pierre Corneille, Honore de Balzac and Jean Baptiste Racine, and Victor Hugo. In addition, he was attracted by the creativity of his compatriots, among whom the most revered were Lermontov and Derzhavin, Gogol and Karamzin. But Dostoevsky felt real awe of him; he read his poems from an early age, and knew many of them by heart.

It was Pushkin’s death that became the second blow (after his mother) for young Fedor. He even said that if he had not mourned for his beloved mother, he would have asked his father to allow him to mourn for Alexander Pushkin.

The beginning of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s creative biography was the novel “Poor People,” which he completed in May 1845. The fashionable writers of the time, Nikolai Nekrasov and Vissarion Belinsky, liked the work of the aspiring writer so much that the former awarded him the title of “new Gogol” and published his work on the pages of his almanac “Petersburg Collection”.

Belinsky noted that the author managed to reveal such details of life in Rus' and describe the characters of people that no one had ever even thought about. He called Dostoevsky's work the first social novel, moreover, written so brightly and talentedly that it is impossible to express in words.

Then Fyodor began work on the story “The Double,” and as he wrote, he read excerpts from this work at meetings of Belinsky’s literary circle. Everyone listened with undisguised interest, but when he finally finished his work, he greatly disappointed the audience. They remarked to him that his hero was somehow sluggish and boring, the plot was drawn out to incredible length, and discouraged anyone from reading. Dostoevsky began to rewrite the story, got rid of unnecessary descriptions, minor episodes, drawn out dialogues and reflections of the characters - everything that prevented him from concentrating on the plot.

In 1847, Dostoevsky was captivated by the ideas of socialism. He became a permanent participant in the Petrashevsky circle, where there was an active discussion of judicial reform, freedom of book publishing, and the abolition of serfdom. At one of the meetings of the circle, Dostoevsky introduced the public to Belinsky’s letter to Nikolai Gogol, which was considered forbidden. For this, in April 1849, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he stayed for eight months. By a court decision, he was recognized as the main criminal because he did not report Belinsky and distributed the text of a prohibited letter in which the author undermined the foundations of the church and government. He received the death penalty - execution, but literally before the execution, the emperor issued a decree mitigating the sentence for the Petrashevites. Instead of execution, Dostoevsky went to Omsk for four years to serve hard labor, after which he served as a private in Semipalatinsk. In 1856, after the coronation of Alexander II, Fyodor was granted amnesty.

Great Pentateuch

The writer’s years of stay in Omsk are reflected in his story “Notes from the House of the Dead.” The author was one of the first to describe hard labor, the existence of prisoners, the life and morals that reign in this gloomy place. The writer's contemporaries assessed his work differently. For some, the story became a revelation, while others simply did not recognize it. Turgenev compared “Notes” with “Hell” written by Dante; according to Alexander Herzen, the story is akin to the fresco “The Last Judgment” by Michelangelo. The genre of this story has not been determined to this day. Some say that it can be considered a memoir, because there are too many memories of Dostoevsky, others believe that the presence of a fictional character and non-observance of the accuracy of historical facts does not give it the right to be called autobiographical.

Dostoevsky does not stop working for a single day, and soon presented his new creation to the readers - the novel “The Humiliated and the Insulted.” Then he published a story called “A Bad Anecdote,” a story “Notes from the Underground,” and an essay “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.”

In 1861, Fyodor and Mikhail Dostoevsky began publishing their own literary and political magazine, Vremya. In 1863 it was closed, and the brothers switched to publishing a new magazine, called “Epoch”.

In those years, Fedor often traveled abroad. He visited France, Germany, Switzerland, England, Austria, Italy. It was there that he became addicted to roulette, which will be reflected in his new work “The Gambler.”

From 1860 to 1880, Dostoevsky worked hard to create novels that became famous as the “great pentateuch.” These were “Crime and Punishment”, “Demons”, “The Idiot”, “Teenager”, “The Brothers Karamazov”. All of them, with the exception of “The Teenager,” were included in the “100 Best Books of All Time” list compiled by the Norwegian Book Club and the Norwegian Nobel Institute. Dostoevsky completed work on The Brothers Karamazov in November 1880, literally a few months before his death. The novel became the last work of the classic.

Personal life

The first time the writer married Maria Isaeva, whom he met immediately after serving his sentence in hard labor. They lived for seven years; in 1864, Maria died suddenly.

On one of his voyages abroad in the 60s, Fyodor fell in love with Appolinaria Suslova, who was a fairly emancipated person. She became the prototype of Polina in the novel “The Player” and Nastasya Filippovna in “The Idiot”.

The writer’s age was approaching forty, and he never knew true happiness in his personal life until he met Anna Snitkina. In her person he found a faithful friend, the mother of his children and a wonderful assistant. She herself published her husband’s novels, dealt with all financial issues, and then published her memoirs about her beloved husband. The writer dedicated his last novel to her.

In this marriage, Dostoevsky had two daughters - Sophia and Lyubov, and two sons - Fyodor and Alexey. Sophia died in infancy, three survived, but only one child continued his father’s work - son Fedor.

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich is a brilliant representative of the literary style created by the urban philistinism in the conditions of the destruction of the class-serf system and the emergence of capitalism.

R. in Moscow in the family of a doctor, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, who came from a clergy background. This was a patriarchal-philistine family of a pre-reform intelligent worker. In an atmosphere of strict family subordination, very moderate material wealth, purchased by tireless work and prudence, amid eternal talk about poverty, from which the only salvation is in knowledge and work, the childhood years of the future writer passed. A hard worker-intellectual, Dostoevsky's father strives to raise the same intellectual workers in his children. From early childhood they are taught to read books and are instilled with love and respect for them. As a 14-year-old boy, Dostoevsky entered one of the best private educational institutions in Moscow, the Chermak boarding school, after which [in 1837] his father sent him to continue his education in St. Petersburg, to the Main Engineering School. Petersburg at that time was sharply different from Moscow, where D. spent his childhood. Moscow still retained the patriarchal way of life, to which D.’s family firmly adhered. Petersburg was already a real capitalist city, the arena of a fierce class struggle that destroyed class barriers, exciting the human psyche with the temptation of career and fortune. An alarming life began for young D. A poor student, chronically in need of a penny, is seized by a fever of ambition, dreams of wealth and fame in his sleep and in reality. He can't wait for the years of family and school tutelage to end and he, free, will rush into the struggle to realize his ambitious dreams. Graduated from the Engineering School in 1843, D. entered active service in the engineering corps. But the service of a minor official does not smile upon him; a year later D. retires. He rushes around with fantastic projects for enterprises, which, according to his calculations, promise quick enrichment; has high hopes for his literary endeavors. In a tiny St. Petersburg room, a petty, and even retired, official, surrounded by the capital's poor, rushes about in the fever of his dreams. Entrepreneurial projects turned out to be a rainbow of soap bubbles: wealth was not given into one’s hands. But the happiness of his success smiled on D. In 1845 he finished his novel “Poor People”, the manuscript of which, through Grigorovich, who was his friend, fell into the hands of Nekrasov. Admired by the work, D. Nekrasov passes the manuscript to Belinsky, from whom it finds an equally enthusiastic reception. In 1846, this first work of D. was published, and Belinsky wrote an article about it as the most outstanding work of his time. An unknown, poor official immediately becomes a star of the first magnitude. They write about him, they talk about him, they flatter him, they seek acquaintance with him, he is introduced into high society salons. But fate elevated the brilliant tradesman to the pinnacle of fame only to force him to endure the cracks of class inequality more painfully. Dostoevsky soon felt that his plebeian figure in high society salons was playing the role of a crow in peacock feathers, at which secular wits were secretly making fun of him. Having realized that he was a genius, the plebeian became acutely aware of himself as a member of a socially humiliated caste. He seethed with resentment and anger and abruptly broke with the aristocratic admirers of his talent. The feeling of social discontent that has matured in D.’s soul brings him closer to the circle of democratically and Protestant-minded intelligentsia who were closer to him, grouped around Petrashevsky. This rapprochement cost D. dearly. Arrested in 1849 along with all the Petrashevites, he was sent to hard labor in the Omsk prison by the brutal sentence of the tsarist court, having experienced on the scaffold all the horror of the death penalty that was about to take place. A short period of glory was followed by long years of final humiliation. For 9 whole years, from 1850 to 1859, D. went through the ordeals of Siberia, first serving 4 years of hard labor, then 5 years of disciplinary military service. At the end of hard labor, still in Siberia, D. returned to literary work. Here, under the fresh impression of his experience, he began “Notes from a Dead House.” Since 1859, D. has appeared in print again; this year’s “Russian Word” includes his long story “Uncle’s Dream,” and “Otechestvennye Zapiski” contains his novel “The Village of Stepanchikovo.” In 1860, after endless troubles, D. received permission to return to St. Petersburg. No longer a naive youth, but a man tempered by the harsh experience of life, a man matured in social sympathies and class hatred, he comes again to St. Petersburg to solve the problem of his youth, to fight for his dignity against poverty and humiliation and to say a new word, a new truth - the truth of poor people, the truth of the “humiliated and insulted.” His own magazine seems to him the surest means to achieve his goals. With feverish energy D. took on the task of organizing his organ, and from January 1861 the magazine “Time” was published under his editorship. (cm.). Over the two and a half years of its existence, this publication has gained wide sympathy in society, which D. himself greatly contributes to with his articles and novels. “The Humiliated and Insulted” and “Notes from the House of the Dead” were published here - works that once again promoted D. to the ranks of first-class writers. The success of the magazine freed D. from the need that had always weighed on him. He is now so well off that he can afford to rest. In 1862 D. made his first trip abroad. He expressed the impressions of this trip in the semi-fictional work “Winter Notes on Summer Impressions.” The year 1863, which began quite favorably, was cut short by an unexpected catastrophe, shattering the well-being created by the terrible tension of energy. In May, the magazine was closed by government order; efforts to renew it dragged on for 10 months. Only in March 1864 D. managed to publish the first issue of “Epoch”, which was a continuation of “Time”. During this time, he became completely entangled in debt. Moreover, "Epoch" was not a success. D.'s financial situation was so confused that in 1865 he literally fled from creditors abroad, depressed by the ruin and recent death of his wife. The only hope for a way out of difficulties remains literary work, and D. immerses himself in it. He writes with intensity and passion and by 1866 finishes his best novel, Crime and Punishment. In the same year, the first complete collection of his works was published in three volumes. The money earned from this makes it possible to somehow make ends meet so as not to end up in debtor's prison. In 1867, D. remarried and immediately went abroad, this time for a long time - for as much as 4 years. Life is not sweet for D. abroad. A chaotic nomadic life, longing for his homeland, where creditors do not allow him, and chronic lack of money have a most depressing effect on him. D's exceptional fertility does not change the situation for the better. Over the years, such major works as “The Idiot”, “The Eternal Husband” and “Demons” have been created. Seeing no way out of difficult circumstances and extremely tired of nomadism in foreign lands, D. returned to St. Petersburg in 1871. An extremely difficult situation awaited him here. Creditors surrounded on all sides, giving neither rest nor time. But now D. arrived in St. Petersburg with a firmly won place as a famous writer, who was attracted to participate in literary enterprises. In 1873, Meshchersky invited D. to take the place of editor of the newspaper “Grazhdanin” on extremely favorable terms. Dostoevsky's popularity at this time is so high that the press organs most opposed in their direction are looking for his cooperation. In 1874, Otechestvennye Zapiski bought the novel “The Teenager” from him for twice the previous fee. Since 1876, Dostoevsky again begins to publish his periodical, the “Diary of a Writer”, which he personally maintains, which generates large income. By the end of the 70s. D.'s financial situation becomes quite stable, and among writers he undoubtedly wins first place. “A Writer's Diary” was extremely popular and sold like hot cakes. D. became something of a prophet, apostle and mentor of life. From all over Russia he is bombarded with letters, expecting revelation and teaching from him. After the appearance of The Brothers Karamazov in 1880 and especially after Pushkin's Speech, the writer's fame reached its highest limit. But “Pushkin’s Speech” was Dostoevsky’s swan song - he died in January 1881.

The social basis of D.'s creativity is the philistinism, which is decaying under the conditions of capitalist development. The character of this social group was imprinted in the distinctive features of D.'s style. D.'s style bears the stamp of gloomy tragedy. And this is because the philistinism that gave birth to this style was in a truly tragic situation. With the development of capitalism, the philistinism found itself under double pressure. On the one hand, there was the pressure of class inferiority, the pressure of belonging to a socially humiliated caste. On the other hand, there was pressure from the capitalist press, which turned the philistines into the petty bourgeoisie, a group that was economically extremely unstable, balancing between the moneyed bourgeois elite and the urban bottom. Breaking out from under one pressure, throwing off the offensive oppression of class humiliation, the tradesman fell under another pressure, the pressure of capitalist competition, which only opened the door to the top of the social pyramid for the lucky few, while pushing the majority into the scum of society. To throw off the yoke of class humiliation in order to immediately put on the yoke of the humiliation of poverty is a truly tragic situation, forcing the philistines to frantically rush around in search of another, less offensive way out.

Feelings of resentment, humiliation, and insult bubble up in the soul of the decaying philistinism, being resolved by a hysterical struggle for honor, which takes on painful pathological forms due to the obvious futility and hopelessness of the struggle, and it most often ends in disaster. It is this catastrophic nature that puts the stamp of tragedy on all of D.’s work, makes his work so painful, gloomy, his talent - “cruel talent.”

The constant theme of D. is the hysterical, with a gloomy denouement, struggle for the honor of a tradesman humiliated in his human dignity. The motives of his work consist of diverse manifestations of the pathological struggle for honor. This struggle takes wild, absurd forms. In order to feel like a real full person, whom no one dares to offend, the hero D. must dare to offend someone himself. If I can, if I dare to offend, insult, torment, then I am a man; If I don’t dare to do this, I’m not a person, but a nonentity. I am a humiliated and insulted martyr, as long as I do not humiliate, insult, or torture myself - this is one of the pathological manifestations of the struggle for honor. But this is still only the beginning, the most innocent manifestation of a personality sick with a thirst for honor. It is not enough to be an offender, an insulter, in order not to be insulted and humiliated. He who only knows how to offend, to step on someone else's pride with a cheeky foot, is still a shallow swimmer. A person is independent in the full sense of the word, stands above all insults and humiliations, when he can do anything, dares to cross all laws, all legal barriers and moral norms. And so, in order to prove that everything is allowed to him, that he can do anything, the hero D. will commit a crime. True, crime inevitably entails punishment, torture inevitably entails suffering, but this suffering is already justified. This is legal retribution that does not offend human dignity. One must not run away from such suffering, but humbly bear it. You even need to look for it, love it, as a sign of the highest dignity of a person. Thus, the pathological desire to offend, torment, insult, and transgress coexists with the same painful desire to suffer, to endure offense. Humiliated and insulted, eager to humiliate and insult, a martyr eager to torment, a tormentor seeking suffering, an insulter and a criminal seeking insult and punishment - this is the core image around which all of Dostoevsky’s work revolves, the image of a tradesman writhing under the double pressure of class lawlessness and capitalist competition.

The fate of this tradesman, usually gloomy, resolved by psychopathology, crime, death, forms the content of his works, starting with “Poor People” and ending with “The Brothers Karamazov”.

Already from the first work, the ensemble of images characteristic of D. was determined. This is, firstly, Makar Devushkin, whose being is divided equally between outbursts of hysterical fervor and equally hysterical humility; Varenka Dobroselova, who corresponds with him, with a pronounced hysteria of humility, and the vaguely outlined Mr. Bykov, Varenka’s insulter, in whom the features of the offender clearly prevail. This ensemble of images moves from work to work, deepening psychologically and combining in different ways. The figure of the poor and dark Devushkin, hysterically rushing from enthusiasm to humility and back, evolving and becoming psychologically more complex, grows into Raskolnikov and Ivan Karamazov, these half-criminals, half-ascetics, with an extremely complex spiritual culture. This image, which occupies a central place in D.’s first work, “Poor People,” turns out to be central to most of the works he created. “The Double”, “The Village of Stepanchikovo”, “Notes from the Underground”, “The Gambler”, “Crime and Punishment”, “The Eternal Husband”, “Teenager”, “The Brothers Karamazov” have this double image as their central face. The obscure figure of the offender - Mr. Bykov - grows into the principled torturers and criminals, Valkovsky, Svidrigailov, Verkhovensky, and in a number of works he plays the role of the central image, the main character. This is exactly the case in the early story “The Mistress”, the novels “Humiliated and Insulted” and “Demons”, where the artist puts the criminal character in the spotlight. Finally, the humble Varenka reveals a whole string of passion-bearers, like Vasya Shumkov or Sonya Marmeladova, seekers of torment and ascetics, like Prince Myshkin or the elders Makar Dolgorukov and Zosima. In the story “A Weak Heart” and in the novel “The Idiot” D. put this image in central place.

In his work, D. reproduced all the ways typical of declining philistinism to react to a reality hostile to it, trying to bring to the fore one or the other as the right one, successfully solving the problem of life. The right one was not among them. Everyone was driven underground, from which the philistinism could not find a way out, dooming their brilliant artist to be an underground genius. If in a world of decaying, decadent philistinism

D. drew his own motives and images; if the social underground determined the themes of his work, then it also determined the nature of the composition and the very style of his works. Hysterical tension, convulsive fussiness, gloomy catastrophism, characteristic of the social springs that fed D.'s work, created that whirlwind development of the plot, which is so characteristic of his works. Dynamism, intense eventfulness and, moreover, chaotic, disorderly eventfulness, stunning with all kinds of surprises, are the most characteristic features of D.’s composition. This feature is expressed, first of all, in D.’s compositional use of time. The action of his works unfolds in exceptionally short periods of time, like no one else from other classics of the Russian novel. What drags on for years for them, for D. begins and resolves in a few days. Dynamism is emphasized by the intensification of events, the growth of events every day, and their catastrophic breakdown. The gloomy nature of the incidents is emphasized by their concentration in the twilight and night hours; the chaotic nature is aggravated by the manner of narrating the events not in chronological order, but at once, introducing the reader into the middle of the action, into the commotion of unmotivated incidents, seeming to be a heap of all kinds of accidents. D.'s intrigue is always complex, intricate, teasing curiosity and breathtaking in its speed of development. He doesn’t like anything that slows down or hinders this development: author’s digressions, detailed descriptions. Action, gestures, and dialogue prevail over everything. Of the descriptions, he least often uses landscape frames, since a landscape background does not fit at all with the bourgeois underground, the city bottom. More often there are genre descriptions, densely saturated with the unhealthy atmosphere of city back streets and brothels; spit-stained “rooms with furniture”, musty taverns, dirty alleys, mostly at dusk and at night, illuminated by the dim light of rare lanterns - these are Dostoevsky’s favorite genre sketches.

The chaotic dynamism that characterizes the composition of the works is also characteristic of their style. The speech of the narrators and heroes is hurried, feverishly fussy, words are hastily piled on top of each other, sometimes forming a discordant stream of sentences, sometimes falling in short, abrupt phrases. In D.’s fussy syntax one can feel the hysterical speech of a nervously unhinged urban underground man, confused in his words, tormented by life. The anxious and painful mood aroused by this fussy syntax is intensified by the gloomy nature of poetic semantics. D. draws the content of his epithets, metaphors, and comparisons from the gloomy, inhospitable world of city back streets. His lanterns “flicker gloomily, flash like torches at a funeral,” the clock wheezes “as if someone is strangling it,” “the closet looks like a closet or a chest,” the wind starts a song, “like an unobtrusive beggar begging for alms.” etc.

With this style D. entered Russian literature, and his significance in the history of Russian literature was enormous. D. began his creative career at a time when the landowner reigned supreme in our literature, when the tone for a variety of noble style was set in it. A new non-landlord word was emerging, but it still timidly huddled in the front of the “literary apartments”, not gaining access to the “ceremonial rooms”, where writers of the noble style freely settled down. In front of the “Pushkin galaxy” and the “Gogol school”, the inexperienced aspiring representatives of the non-landlord word, all these now forgotten Polevs, Grechs, Pavlovs, Veltmans and others, faded into insignificance, forming literary servants, a clattering bunch. In D.’s mouth, the new word acquired unprecedented power and entered into open competition with the old noble styles, demanding a place for itself “in the salons of Russian fiction.” D. reveals with his work that struggle between the landowners and the bourgeois-democratic word in elegant literature, which by the end of the 19th century ends in the decisive triumph of the second. D. played the main role in this celebration. With his ingenious creations, he predetermined the outcome of the struggle and became a classic of the new style. For D., the historical mission that fell to his lot was completely clear. He consciously fought against his class rival. “I write with zeal,” he tells his brother at the beginning of his creative career, “it still seems to me that I have started a process with all our literature.” And he knows that this is a process with the landowner's literature. “You know,” he wrote to Strakhov, “after all, this is all landowner literature, it said everything that it had to say, magnificently in Leo Tolstoy, but this extremely landowner word was the last. There has not yet been a new word replacing landowner, and there was no time. The Reshetnikovs didn’t say anything, but still the Reshetnikovs express the idea of ​​the need for something new in artistic expression, no longer the landowner’s, although they express it in an ugly way.” The author of these lines sought to say a new, non-landowner artistic word. And not only to say a new word, but also to show the dilapidation of the old. D. is a passionate polemicist; each of his works of art is not only an affirmation of a new style, but also an emphatic negation of the old. His works are filled with parodies of varieties of landowner style and pamphlets on noble writers. He boldly mocks the style of Lermontov and Gogol, he introduces Granovsky and Turgenev into his novels in caricatured roles.

Deeply democratic in form and content, saturated with social protest, imbued with a deep understanding of the socially humiliated, insulted person and deep sympathy for him, D.’s work carried a strong charge of socially progressive energy. No wonder the radical criticism of the 40s and 60s. in the person of Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, and Pisarev, she greeted D.’s works with warm sympathy as a strong ally in the fight against social inequality and oppression. “Honor and glory to the young poet, whose muse loves people in attics and basements,” Belinsky exclaimed in an article about “Poor People.” And Dobrolyubov highly regarded D. precisely because he “with all the energy and freshness of his young talent began to analyze the anomalies of our poor reality that struck him and in this analysis expressed his highly humane ideal.” But in the social democracy that permeates D.’s work, reactionary moments also coexisted alongside highly progressive aspects. The world of the humiliated and insulted, speaking through the mouth of Dostoevsky, burned with the fire of irritation and destruction, thereby undoubtedly playing a revolutionary role. But behind this destructive irritation of the humiliated and insulted there was no creative force. The destructive spirit of falling philistinism was not a creative spirit. And this greatly emptied revolutionary pathos, since fruitless protest was naturally resolved by prostration and humility. The pathos of social indignation turned into its antithesis - into the pathos of social humility, revolutionary excitement was replaced by reactionary inertia. The reactionary string in D.'s work is stretched to the same extreme tension as the revolutionary one, and gives the impression of painful, hysterical dissonance. This two-facedness and inconsistency of D.'s work was the reason for the ambivalent assessment of him by critics. In eras of social upsurge, radical critics - like Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Pisarev - highly valued D. as a kind of revolutionary high-voltage current, without noticing its inferiority. In the era of social depression, when this inferiority was sharply evident, when the reactionary string that rang in D.’s work sounded especially loud against the background of the reaction, as was the case, for example. in the 80s, radical critics - like Tkachev or Mikhailovsky - debunked D. as a catalyst of revolutionary energy, not noticing the eternal fraughtness of his spirit of indignation and revolutionary explosion.

Both groups of critics were equally right: each saw the face that D. really had. At the same time, both groups were equally wrong, because they saw only one face in him, noticing his two-facedness, not being able to accept and understand it in all its complexity and contradiction. Critical understanding of D. has completely gone through the path of dialectical development, the entire Hegelian triad. The thesis of this dialectical movement lies in the criticism of the 40s and 60s, for which D. was a “humane talent” and a factor of progress; the antithesis is in the criticism of the 80s, for which D. was a “cruel talent” and a factor of reaction. The synthesis is carried out in modern Marxist criticism, which sees in D. a rebel who gravitates towards humility, and a humble man who gravitates towards rebellion, a revolutionary who gravitates towards reaction, and a reactionary who gravitates towards revolution.

What D. brilliantly said was new, “not a landowner’s word”, and had a great resonance in Russian literature. By the end of the 19th century, it had turned into a huge polyphonic choir that drowned out the weakening voices of landowner literature. In addition to numerous echoes that weakly echoed Dostoevsky, such as Albov or Barantsevich, strong voices of a special timbre appear in this choir, such as A. Bely, Sologub, Andreev, Remizov and many others. others, in whose performance the main melody receives a new coloring and sounds with fresh, strong, original modulations. D. is a fundamental figure for the new Russian literature. He occupies the same central place in it that Pushkin occupied in the literature of the noble period. All writers of the noble period are more or less akin to Pushkin; all writers of the bourgeois period of Russian literature are more or less akin to D.

Bibliography: I. From the collection. composition Dostoevsky's best: Yubileiny (25 years since his death), ed. A. G. Dostoevskaya, in XIV vols., M., 1906; ed. “Enlightenment”, in 23 vols., P., 1914, the last two volumes edited by. L.P. Grossman: “Forgotten Pages of Dostoevsky” - critical articles, early works, variants, etc., P., 1916; Collection works., in 12 vols., ed. B.V. Tomashevsky, Guise, L., 1925-1929 (especially 2 vols. - letters). This edition is especially valuable for its critically revised text and appended variants. Not included in the collection. composition the following works by Dostoevsky: The Petersburg Chronicle (4 feuilletons of the 40s), with a preface. V. S. Nechaeva, Berlin, 1922; Confession of Stavrogin, 3 chapters from the novel “Demons”, M., 1922 (in the collection “Documents on the history of Russian literature and public”, v. I; 2nd version of “Confession” - in the magazine “Byloe”, book . XIX).

II. Biographical and memoir works: Biography, letters, notes from the notebook of F. M. Dostoevsky, Materials for a biography, collected Or. Miller, Posthumous ed. works., vol. I, St. Petersburg, 1883 (ibid. Strakhov M., Memoirs of F. M. Dostoevsky); Yanovsky, Memoirs of Dostoevsky, “Russian Messenger”, 1885, book. IV; Miliukov A., Memoirs of F. Dostoevsky, “Literary meetings and acquaintances”, St. Petersburg, 1890; Soloviev Sun., Memoirs of F. M. Dostoevsky, “Russian Review”, 1893, book. I; Wrangel A. E., Baron, Memoirs of F. M. Dostoevsky in Siberia, St. Petersburg, 1912; Horses A., On the path of life, vol. II, St. Petersburg, 1912; vol. IV, L., 1929; Dostoevskaya A. G., Diary 1867, M., 1923; Her own, Memoirs, ed. L.P. Grossman, M., 1925. The most significant memories of Dostoevsky, as well as some of his letters, are collected in the book by Ch. -Vetrinsky “Dostoevsky in the memoirs of his contemporaries, in letters and notes”, M., 1912 (ed. 2- e, in 2 vols., M., 1923). Critical literature about Dostoevsky: Belinsky V., Petersburg collection, ed. N. Nekrasov, regarding “Poor People”, Collection. composition Belinsky, ed. S. A. Vengerova, vol. XI; Dobrolyubov N., Downtrodden people, Collection. works., vol. IV, ed. M. Lemke, St. Petersburg, 1912; Pisarev D., Struggle for life, Collection. works, ed. Pavlenkova, vol. VI, vol. V - The Dead and the Perishing (“Notes from the Dead House”), St. Petersburg, 1913; Tkachev P.N., Selected articles, M., 1929; Mikhailovsky N., About Pisemsky and Dostoevsky, Cruel talent, Literary and journal notes (3 articles - originally in “Notes of the Fatherland”, 1882, IX-X and 1873, II); Chizh V., Dostoevsky as a psychopathologist, “Russian Bulletin”, 1884, V-VI and sec. ed., M., 1885; Miller Op., Russian writers after Gogol, St. Petersburg, 1886 several. ed.); Andreevsky S., Literary readings, 1891; Kirpichnikov A., Dostoevsky and Pisemsky, St. Petersburg, Experience of comparative characteristics, St. Petersburg, 1896; Uspensky Gl., Pushkin's Holiday, 2 letters. Collection composition Uspensky, ed. Marx, vol. VI, St. Petersburg, 1906 and other editions; Veresaev V., Living Life, T. I, M., 1922 (several ed.); Antsiferov N.P., Petersburg Dostoevsky, P., 1923; Gornfeld A.G., Combat responses to peaceful themes, L., 1924; Grossman L.P. and Polonsky Vyach., Dispute about Bakunin and Dostoevsky, L., 1926; Religious and philosophical movements in literature about Dostoevsky: Leontyev K., Our new Christians: F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy, M., 1882; Merezhkovsky D., Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, vol. I - Life, creativity, vol. II - Religion (several ed.); his, Prophet of the Russian Revolution, St. Petersburg, 1906 (several ed.); Volynsky A.L., The Book of Great Wrath, St. Petersburg, 1904 (several ed.); Rozanov V., The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, St. Petersburg, 1906 (several ed.); Shestov Lev, Beginnings and ends, Sat. articles, St. Petersburg, 1908; his, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, St. Petersburg, 1903; Zakrzhevsky L., Underground, Kyiv, 1911, Karamazovshchina, Kyiv, 1912, Religion, Kyiv, 1913; Astrov Vl., We did not find the way, P., 1914; Abramovich N. Ya., Christ of Dostoevsky, M., 1914; Ivanov Vyach., Furrows and boundaries, M., 1916; Berdyaev N., Dostoevsky's World Outlook, Prague, 1923. Research into Dostoevsky's poetics: Borshchevsky S., A new face in Dostoevsky’s “Demons”; “The Word about Culture”, Sat., M., 1918; Grossman L., “Suddenly” by Dostoevsky, “Book and Revolution”, 1921, book. XX; Tynyanov Yu., Dostoevsky and Gogol (towards the theory of parody), P., 1921 (reprinted in the collection of his articles “Archaists and Innovators”, L., 1929); Dolinin A., “Confession of Stavrogin” in connection with the composition “Demons”, Sat. I, P., 1922; Tseytlin A., The Tale of Dostoevsky’s Poor Official (to the history of one plot), M., 1923; Grossman L., Seminary on Dostoevsky, M., 1923; Vinogradov V.V., Evolution of Russian naturalism, Leningrad, 1928; Grossman L.P., two volumes in the Collection. sochin., M., 1928; besides these works cm. below the books of Pereverzev and above - the books of Merezhkovsky and Volynsky. Marxist literature about Dostoevsky: Pereverzev V.F., Dostoevsky’s works, ed. 1st, M., 1912, ed. 2nd, M., 1922 - the last with an introductory article “Dostoevsky and the Revolution”; Kranichfeld V.P., In the world of ideas and images, P., 1917; Bitter M., Articles 1905-1906, P., 1917; Lunacharsky A., Dostoevsky as an artist and thinker, M., 1923; Gorbachev G. E., Dostoevsky and his reactionary democracy, in collection. “Capitalism and Russian literature”, Leningrad, 1925; Pereverzev V. F., F. M. Dostoevsky, M. - L., 1925; Tseytlin A., Time in Dostoevsky’s novels (towards the sociology of compositional technique), “Native language at school”, 1927; book V; his, “Crime and Punishment” and “Les Mis?rables”, Sociological parallels, “Literature and Marxism”, 1928, book. V. The most important collections of articles about Dostoevsky: The Works of Dostoevsky, Sat. Art. and materials, ed. L. Grossman, Odessa, 1921; The creative path of Dostoevsky, Sat. art., ed. N. L. Brodsky, Leningrad, 1924; Dostoevsky, Articles and materials, ed. A. S. Dolinina, Sat. 1st, P., 1922, Sat. 2nd, L., 1925. Collections of critical literature: Zelinsky V., Critical commentary on the works of F. M. Dostoevsky, 4 parts. (several ed.); Zamotin I. I., F. M. Dostoevsky in Russian criticism, part 1, 1846-1881, Warsaw, 1913.

III. Bibliographic indexes of Dostoevsky's works and literature about him: Languages D. D., Review of the life and works of Russian writers and writers, v. I, M., 1903 (several editions); Dostoevskaya A. G., Bibliographic index of works and works of art related to the life and work of F. M. Dostoevsky, collected in the “Museum of Memory of F. M. Dostoevsky”, St. Petersburg, 1906. A continuation of this work, brought up to 1906, is the index : Sokolov N., Bibliography of Dostoevsky, collection. "Dostoevsky", collection. 2nd, L., 1925; cm. Also - Mézières A.V., Russian literature, part 2, St. Petersburg, 1902; Vladislavlev I.V., Russian writers, Leningrad, 1925; his, Literature of the Great Decade, M. - L., 1928; Mandelstam R. S., Fiction in the assessment of Russian Marxist criticism, M., 1929. About Dostoevsky cm. also in general histories of Russian literature of the 19th century. - A. Skabichevsky, K. Golovin, N. Engelhardt, editors. Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (vol. IV, article by F. D. Batyushkov), V. Lvov-Rogachevsky, L. Voitolovsky, Y. Nazarenko, etc.

V. Pereverzev

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich - famous writer. Born on October 30, 1821 in Moscow in the building of the Mariinsky Hospital, where his father served as a staff physician.

Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1789-1839), was a doctor (head doctor) at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, and in 1828 received the title of hereditary nobleman. In 1831 he acquired the village of Darovoye, Kashira district, Tula province, and in 1833 the neighboring village of Chermoshnya. In raising his children, the father was an independent, educated, caring family man, but had a quick-tempered and suspicious character. After the death of his wife in 1837, he retired and settled in Darovo. According to documents, he died of apoplexy; according to the recollections of relatives and oral traditions, he was killed by his peasants.

In contrast to him was his mother, Maria Feodorovna, who dearly loved all her seven children. His nanny, Alena Frolovna, had a great influence on the formation of Dostoevsky’s personality. It was she who told the children fairy tales about Russian heroes and the Firebird.

There were six more children in the Dostoevsky family, Fyodor was the second child. He grew up in a harsh environment, over which the gloomy spirit of his father hovered. Children were brought up in fear and obedience, which influenced the biography of Dostoevsky. Rarely leaving the walls of the hospital building, they communicated with the outside world only through the sick, with whom they sometimes spoke secretly from their father. Dostoevsky’s brightest childhood memories are associated with the village - the small estate of his parents in the Tula province. Since 1832, the family spent the summer months there every year, usually without a father, and the children had almost complete freedom there, which positively influenced the biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

In 1832, Dostoevsky and his older brother Mikhail began studying with teachers who came to the house, from 1833 they studied at the boarding house of N. I. Drashusov (Sushara), then at the boarding house of L. I. Chermak. The atmosphere of educational institutions and isolation from family caused a painful reaction in Dostoevsky (cf. the autobiographical traits of the hero of the novel “Teenager”, who experiences deep moral upheavals in the “Tushar boarding house”). At the same time, the years of study were marked by an awakened passion for reading.

1837 is an important date for Dostoevsky. This is the year of his mother’s death, the year of Pushkin’s death, which he and his brother have read since childhood, the year of moving to St. Petersburg and entering the military engineering school, which Dostoevsky will graduate in 1843. In 1839, he receives news of the massacre of his father. A year before leaving his military career, Dostoevsky first translated and published Balzac’s “Eugenie Grande” (1843).

He began his creative career with the story “Poor People” (1846), which was commendably received by N. Nekrasov and V. Belinsky, they liked the tragedy of the little man depicted in it. The story brought popularity to the author; he was compared to Gogol. There was an acquaintance with I. Turgenev. But his following works: the psychological story “The Double” (1846), the fantastic story “The Mistress” (1847), the lyrical story “White Nights” (1848), the dramatic story “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849), were coolly received by critics who did not accepted his innovations and desire to penetrate the secrets of human character. Dostoevsky experienced negative reviews very painfully and began to move away from I. Turgenev and N. Nekrasov.

Shortly after the publication of White Nights, the writer was arrested (1849) in connection with the “Petrashevsky case.” Although Dostoevsky denied the charges against him, the court recognized him as “one of the most important criminals.” The trial and harsh sentence to death (December 22, 1849) on the Semenovsky parade ground was framed as a mock execution. At the last moment, the convicts were given a pardon and sentenced to hard labor. One of those sentenced to execution, Grigoriev, went crazy. Dostoevsky conveyed the feelings that he might experience before his execution in the words of Prince Myshkin in one of the monologues in the novel “The Idiot.”

Dostoevsky spent the next 4 years in hard labor in Omsk. In 1854, for good behavior, he was released from hard labor and sent as a private to the seventh linear Siberian battalion. He served in the fortress in Semipalatinsk and rose to the rank of lieutenant. Here he began an affair with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of a former official on special assignments, who at the time of their acquaintance was an unemployed drunkard. In 1857, shortly after her husband's death, he married a 33-year-old widow. It was the period of imprisonment and military service that was a turning point in Dostoevsky’s life: from a still undecided “seeker of truth in man” in life, he turned into a deeply religious person, whose only ideal for the rest of his life was Christ.

In 1859 he received permission to live in Tver, then in St. Petersburg. At this time, he published the stories “Uncle’s Dream”, “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” (1859), and the novel “The Humiliated and Insulted” (1861). Nearly ten years of physical and moral suffering sharpened Dostoevsky's sensitivity to human suffering, intensifying his intense quest for social justice. These years became for him years of spiritual turning point, the collapse of socialist illusions, and growing contradictions in his worldview.

In 1861, Dostoevsky, together with his brother Mikhail, began publishing the magazine "Time". In 1863, the magazine was banned, and in 1864 they created a new publication, “Epoch,” which existed until 1865. This period of Dostoevsky's biography is relatively calm, except for persecution by censorship. He managed to travel - in 1862 he visited France, Great Britain, and Switzerland.

Back in 1862, Dostoevsky fell in love with Appolinaria Suslova, who reciprocated the feelings of the former political exile. She was an ardent and active nature, who managed to awaken in Dostoevsky feelings that he considered long dead. Dostoevsky proposes to Suslova, but she runs abroad with someone else. Dostoevsky rushes after her, catches up with his beloved in Paris and travels with Appolinaria throughout Europe for two months. But Dostoevsky’s irrepressible passion for roulette destroyed this connection - once the writer managed to lose even Suslova’s jewelry.

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 the images of Katerina Ivanovna - “Crime and Punishment” and Nastasya Filippovna - “Idiot”) On June 10, M.M. died. Dostoevsky.

In 1864, “Notes from the Underground” was written, an important work for understanding the writer’s changed worldview. In 1865, while abroad, in the resort of Wiesbaden, to improve his health, the writer began work on the novel Crime and Punishment (1866), which reflected the entire complex path of his inner quest.

In January 1866, the novel “Crime and Punishment” began to be published in the Russian Messenger. This was the long-awaited world fame and recognition. During this period, the writer invited a stenographer to work - a young girl, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, who in 1867 became his wife, becoming his close and devoted friend. But due to large debts and pressure from creditors, Dostoevsky was forced to leave Russia and go to Europe, where he stayed from 1867 to 1871. During this period the novel “The Idiot” was written.

Dostoevsky spent the last years of his life in the city of Staraya Russa, Novgorod province. These eight years became the most fruitful in the writer's life: 1872 - "Demons", 1873 - the beginning of the "Diary of a Writer" (a series of feuilletons, essays, polemical notes and passionate journalistic notes on the topic of the day), 1875 "Teenager", 1876 - "Meek ", 1879-1880 - "The Brothers Karamazov". At the same time, two events became significant for Dostoevsky. In 1878, Emperor Alexander II invited the writer to introduce him to his family, and in 1880, just a year before his death, Dostoevsky gave a famous speech at the unveiling of a monument to Pushkin in Moscow.

Beginning of 1881 - the writer talks about his plans for the future: he is going to resume “The Diary”, and in a few years write the second part of “The Karamazovs”. But these plans were not destined to come true. The writer’s health deteriorated, and on January 28 (February 9, n.s.) 1881, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg. He was buried in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

He created several dozen great works. The cycle of the five most ambitious of them, written by him one after another - “Crime and Punishment”, “Idiot”, “Demons”, “Teenager” and “The Brothers Karamazov”, is called the “great pentateuch”. This definition goes back to the “Pentateuch of Moses” (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy), allegedly dictated to him by God himself. Like this work of the prophet, the above-mentioned novels of the writer, which became the pinnacle of psychological prose, also seemed unable to be created by a simple person. All of them, except for "The Teenager", were included in the list of "100 best books of all time", compiled in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club together with the Norwegian Institute. Nobel.

Childhood and family

The Ukrainian mother, Maria Feodorovna, came from the strata of the Moscow merchant class, was of a religious nature, and took her children (there were seven of them) on pilgrimages. The family followed ancient traditions of education in the spirit of unconditional obedience. The writer's warmest childhood memories were associated with their estate in the Tula province, where they spent the summer months (usually without their father).

Fyodor and other children were taught the alphabet by their mother, their father taught them Latin, but even then the boy especially liked literature lessons. From the age of 13, the future literary genius underwent three years of training at the boarding school of Karl Chermak, where the best professors in Moscow taught.

In 1837, having lost his mother, the young man, by decision of his father, went to the Northern capital, where he entered the military engineering school. It was to the city on the Neva and its inhabitants that he subsequently dedicated a number of his masterpiece works.

During that period, in addition to educational literature, he devoted a lot of time to fiction: he read Pierre Corneille, Homer, Friedrich Schiller, Honore de Balzac, William Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin, Gabriel Derzhavin, Nikolai Gogol, Karamzin and other authors. On Fyodor’s initiative, a literary circle was formed at the school. Its members included such famous personalities as Nikolai Beketov, Dmitry Grigorovich, Nikolai Vitkovsky and his comrade Ivan Berezhetsky.

In 1839, his father died - he was killed by an artel of peasants, to whom he was rude while drunk. This news shocked his 18-year-old son and had a detrimental effect on his mental health - it provoked a nervous attack, a harbinger of future epilepsy. Although, according to a number of researchers, it also became an impetus for thinking about “what is a crime.”

Upon completion of the course in 1843, the young specialist in the field of military engineering was seconded to serve in the drafting room of the Engineering Department of the War Ministry. However, a year later, considering this activity uninteresting, he retired and decided to devote himself to writing.

Attempt at writing

However, the critic and members of his circle considered his second work, “The Double,” to be unjustifiably drawn out. The author has shortened some long dialogues, descriptions and reflections of the heroes of his story. But later, the innovation, exclusivity and profound psychologism of this and his subsequent works (“The Mistress”, “White Nights”, “Netochka Nezvanova”, etc.) were understood by admirers of his talent and appreciated.

Hard labor

In 1849, for involvement in illegal activities, the writer, along with other Petrashevites, was arrested, stripped of his ranks and fortune, and sentenced to death. At the last moment (when the condemned were already on the scaffold), by royal decree it was replaced with four years of hard labor in the mines.

Dostoevsky served his punishment in the Omsk prison "House of the Dead", and in 1854 he was enlisted as a private in the 7th line battalion in Semipalatinsk. A year later he was promoted to non-commissioned officer, then to ensign, and his hereditary nobility was returned, as well as the right to publish.

In 1859, already with the rank of second lieutenant, Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote a resignation letter to Alexander II, enclosing a medical certificate stating that he had a chronic illness - epilepsy, and was dismissed from military service due to illness. So 10 years later he got the opportunity to return to St. Petersburg and literature.

Development of writing activity

During the same period, his story “Uncle's Dream”, the novel “Humiliated and Insulted”, “Bad Anecdote”, “Notes from the Underground” were published. In the 1860s, he also published the magazines “Time” and “Epoch”, where he promoted the idea of ​​“pochvennichestvo”, akin to the current of Slavophilism.

In 1862, Dostoevsky was able to travel abroad for the first time and visited Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, England, and Italy. There he became interested in playing roulette, testing his luck again and again. In 1866, he transferred everything he experienced because of this addiction to the pages of the novel “The Gambler.”

A year earlier, while in Wiesbaden, Germany to improve his health, he began work on the novel Crime and Punishment, which reflected the entire complex path of his internal considerations and research. It was followed by four more greatest works of the writer-thinker: “The Idiot” (1868-69), “Demons” (1871-72), “The Teenager” (1875) and “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879-80), later called “the great the Pentateuch."

In 1873, he took over the editorship of the magazine “Citizen”, where he began to publish “The Diary of a Writer”, bringing to life his long-standing idea of ​​direct communication with readers and discussing with them various topical topics.

In 1877 Dostoevsky was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Two years later he became an honorary member of the International Literary Association. In 1880, at the opening ceremony of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow, he gave a famous speech that aroused universal admiration, expressing his cherished thoughts about literature and, in general, about life.

Personal life of Fyodor Dostoevsky

His first life partner was Maria Isaeva. They met when Fedor arrived in Semipalatinsk. The woman was already married to a bitter drunkard and was raising her son Pavel. After the death of her husband, the writer made her an offer, which she accepted only after Dostoevsky was promoted to officer and the return of the hereditary nobility. They married in February 1857, but the marriage was not a happy one. On their very first wedding night, Fyodor had an epileptic seizure, which turned his wife away from him forever.

In the early 1860s, the writer had a complex romantic relationship with the young (20 years younger than him) Apollinaria Suslova. He became her first man. After Isaeva’s death from consumption in 1864, the writer asked her to marry him, but by that time the girl had already started an affair with a new lover.

In 1866, unable to write a novel on time, which threatened him with the loss of copyright to his own works, Dostoevsky hired a stenographer, 20-year-old Netochka Snitkina. She helped him submit his new work on time - “The Player” - and became a faithful wife and the love of his life. They married in 1867 and lived together for 14 years. The wife gave birth to four children to the writer. Two of them died in childhood. Survived by a daughter and son - Lyubov Fedorovna and Fyodor Fedorovich Dostoevsky.

The daughter (she was 11 when her father died) was a difficult person to communicate with. Posthumous interest in Dostoevsky's books provided the family with financial stability, so she did not need anything, tried to get into secular society, wrote plays, which, however, were not highly appreciated by literary critics. Lyubov inherited poor health from her father, was sick a lot, and was treated at European resorts. On the eve of the First World War, she emigrated from Russia and never returned. Abroad, she published a book of memoirs about her father. The writer's heiress did not have a husband or children. She died in 1926 from anemia.

The life of Fyodor Fedorovich Dostoevsky can also hardly be called happy. Since childhood, he admired horses and connected his life with horse breeding, receiving two higher educations: he studied biology and law. In everyday life, like his sister, he was a heavy, hot-tempered and unsmiling person. As he grew up, he became addicted to gambling and jeopardized the financial well-being of his family. Fyodor tried to write, but he understood that he could not avoid unflattering comparisons with his father, so he wrote “on the table.” Only his articles on horse breeding saw the light of day. After the October Revolution, Fyodor Mikhailovich’s son went broke and somehow made ends meet by giving lectures. In 1920, he died, according to some sources, of hunger.

The wife gave birth to two children for the writer’s son. One was traditionally named Fedor. At the age of 16, the teenager died of typhoid fever. The youngest son Andrei survived and lived to a great age.

The Dostoevsky family line continues. The descendants of the great writer still live in St. Petersburg. Great-grandson Dmitry worked as a tram driver, like his son Alexey, who later went to serve on the ship of the Valaam Monastery. Alexey raised two daughters, Vera and Maria, and a son, Fyodor.

Death

Hundreds of people came to say goodbye to the greatest writers. He was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery in the northern capital.

Fyodor Dostoevsky as a mirror of the Russian soul

World fame came to the genius of the pen after his death. His work, which became an epoch-making event, a revolution in the development of world literature, was compared with the discoveries in science of Albert Einstein. In The Brothers Karamazov, he expressed the idea that understanding the secret of universal harmony is possible only with feeling and faith, but not with reason. And the famous theoretical physicist argued that intuition is stronger than knowledge.

In October 1821, a second child was born into the family of nobleman Mikhail Dostoevsky, who worked in a hospital for the poor. The boy was named Fedor. This is how the future great writer was born, the author of the immortal works “The Idiot”, “The Brothers Karamazov”, “Crime and Punishment”.

They say that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s father was distinguished by a very hot-tempered character, which to some extent was passed on to the future writer. The children’s nanny, Alena Frolovna, skillfully extinguished their emotional nature. Otherwise, the children were forced to grow up in an atmosphere of total fear and obedience, which, however, also had some impact on the future of the writer.

Studying in St. Petersburg and the beginning of a creative path

1837 turned out to be a difficult year for the Dostoevsky family. Mom passes away. The father, who has seven children left in his care, decides to send his eldest sons to a boarding school in St. Petersburg. So Fedor, together with his older brother, ends up in the northern capital. Here he goes to study at a military engineering school. A year before graduation, he begins translating. And in 1843 he published his own translation of Balzac’s work “Eugenie Grande”.

The writer’s own creative path begins with the story “Poor People.” The described tragedy of the little man found worthy praise from the critic Belinsky and the already popular poet Nekrasov at that time. Dostoevsky enters the circle of writers and meets Turgenev.

Over the next three years, Fyodor Dostoevsky published the works “The Double,” “The Mistress,” “White Nights,” and “Netochka Nezvanova.” In all of them, he made an attempt to penetrate into the human soul, describing in detail the subtleties of the characters’ character. But these works were received very coolly by critics. Nekrasov and Turgenev, both revered by Dostoevsky, did not accept the innovation. This forced the writer to move away from his friends.

In exile

In 1849, the writer was sentenced to death. This was connected with the “Petrashevsky case”, for which sufficient evidence was collected. The writer prepared for the worst, but just before his execution his sentence was changed. At the last moment, the condemned are read a decree according to which they must go to hard labor. All the time that Dostoevsky spent awaiting execution, he tried to portray all his emotions and experiences in the image of the hero of the novel “The Idiot,” Prince Myshkin.

The writer spent four years in hard labor. Then he was pardoned for good behavior and sent to serve in the military battalion of Semipalatinsk. Immediately he found his destiny: in 1857 he married the widow of the official Isaev. It should be noted that during the same period, Fyodor Dostoevsky turned to religion, deeply idealizing the image of Christ.

In 1859, the writer moved to Tver, and then to St. Petersburg. Ten years of wandering through hard labor and military service made him very sensitive to human suffering. The writer experienced a real revolution in his worldview.

European period

The beginning of the 60s was marked by stormy events in the writer’s personal life: he fell in love with Appolinaria Suslova, who fled abroad with someone else. Fyodor Dostoevsky followed his beloved to Europe and traveled with her to different countries for two months. At the same time, he became addicted to playing roulette.

The year 1865 was marked by the writing of Crime and Punishment. After its publication, fame came to the writer. At the same time, a new love appears in his life. She was the young stenographer Anna Snitkina, who became his faithful friend until her death. With her, he fled from Russia, hiding from large debts. Already in Europe he wrote the novel “The Idiot”.