Travel and travel writing
Journal: Cambridge University Press eBooks
Year: 2015

Western Europe was the leisure travel destination of choice for Russians of means. In the Romantic era, Caucasian spas and the Crimea began attracting domestic vacationers, and by the late 1870s Volga River cruises joined the list. But for Russians keen to expand their cultural horizons, a trip to the West remained an obligatory rite of passage. Dostoevsky fit the pattern. In a letter of July 31, 1861 to the poet Yakov Polonsky, Dostoevsky remarked that while he had yearned to see Italy since ch