Fyodor Dostoyevsky

**Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky** (11 November 1821 – 9 February 1881) was a Russian novelist. His most popular novels are _Crime and Punishment_, _The Idiot_ and _The Brothers Karamazov_. He is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time.

In his 20s he joined a group of radicals in St Petersburg. They were into French socialist ideas. A police agent reported the group to the authorities. On 22 April 1849, Dostoyevsky was arrested and imprisoned with the other members. After months of questioning and investigation they were tried. They were found guilty of planning to distribute subversive propaganda and condemned to death by firing squad.

The punishment was changed to a sentence of exile and hard labour, but not before they were forced to go through a mock execution.  In 1859 a new tsar allowed Dostoyevsky to end his Siberian exile. A year later he was back in St Petersburg. The experience had cost him ten years of his life. It is the root of all his writing.

- Dostoyevsky's experience had altered him profoundly... He was particularly scornful of the ideas he found in St Petersburg when he returned from his decade of Siberian exile. The new generation of Russian intellectuals was gripped by European theories and philosophies [which] were melded together into a peculiarly Russian combination that came to be called 'nihilism'.

## Religion

Raised in an educated and religious family, Dostoyevsky's beliefs changed through his life. In prison, he focused intensely on the figure of Christ and on the New Testament, the only book allowed in prison. In a letter to the woman who had sent him the _New Testament_, Dostoyevsky wrote that he was a "child of unbelief and doubt up to this moment, and I am certain that I shall remain so to the grave". He also wrote that "even if someone were to prove to me that the truth lay outside Christ, I should choose to remain with Christ rather than with the truth".

From an analysis of religious ideas in _Crime and Punishment_, _The Idiot_, _The Demons_ (_The Possessed_), and _The Brothers Karamazov_, James Townsend thinks Dostoyevsky held orthodox Christian beliefs except for his view of salvation from sin. According to Townsend, "Dostoevsky almost seemed to embrace an in-this-life purgatory", in which people suffer to pay for their sins, rather than the Christian doctrine of salvation through Christ. Malcolm Jones sees elements of Islam and Buddhism in Dostoyevsky's religious convictions. Colin Wilson in _The Outsider_ describes him as a "tormented half-atheist-half-Christian".

## His work

Many scholars see Dostoyevsky as one of the greatest psychologists in literature. His works have had a big effect on twentieth-century fiction. Very often, he wrote about characters who live in poor conditions. Those characters are sometimes in extreme states of mind. They might show both a strange grasp of human psychology as well as good analyses of the political, social and spiritual states of Russia of Dostoevsky's time. Many of his best-known works are prophetic. He is sometimes considered to be a founder of existentialism, most frequently for _Notes from Underground_, which has been described as "the best overture for existentialism ever written". He is also famous for writing _The Brothers Karamazov_, which many critics, such as Sigmund Freud, have said was one of the best novels ever written.

### _Demons_

His attack on nihilism is in his great novel _Demons_, or _The Possessed_. Published in 1872, it is a "dark comedy, cruelly funny in its depiction of high-minded intellectuals toying with revolutionary notions without understanding anything of what revolution means in practice".

The plot is a version of actual events at the time. A former teacher of divinity turned terrorist, Sergei Nechaev, had written a pamphlet, _The Catechism of a Revolutionary_, which argued that any means (including blackmail and murder) could be used to advance the cause of revolution. Nechaev planned to kill a student who questioned his ideas.

One of the characters in _Demons_ confesses: "I got entangled in my own data, and my conclusion contradicts the original idea from which I start. From unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism". This suggests that the result of abandoning morality for the sake of an idea will be tyranny more extreme than any in the past.

## List of works

English versions of titles come after the Russian title.

### Novels

- 1846 - _Bednye lyudi_ (Бедные люди); _Poor Folk_
- 1846 - _Dvojnik_ (Двойник. Петербургская поэма); _The Double: A Petersburg Poem_
- 1849 - _Netochka Nezvanova_ (Неточка Незванова); _Netochka Nezvanova_ (this is a feminine name)(Unfinished)
- 1859 - _Dyadushkin son_ (Дядюшкин сон); _The Uncle's Dream_
- 1859 - _Selo Steanchikovo i ego obitateli_ (Село Степанчиково и его обитатели); _The Village of Stepanchikovo_
- 1861 - _Unizhennye i oskorblennye_ (Униженные и оскорбленные); _The Insulted and Humiliated_
- 1862 - _Zapiski iz mertvogo doma_ (Записки из мертвого дома); _The House of the Dead_
- 1864 - _Zapiski iz podpolya_ (Записки из подполья); _Notes from Underground_
- 1866 - _Prestuplenie i nakazanie_ (Преступление и наказание); _Crime and Punishment_
- 1867 - _Igrok_ (Игрок); _The Gambler _
- 1869 - _Idiot_ (Идиот); _The Idiot_
- 1870 - _Vechnyj muzh_ (Вечный муж); _The Eternal Husband_
- 1872 - _Besy_ (Бесы); various English titles: _The Possessed_; _The Devils_; _Demons_
- 1875 - _Podrostok_ (Подросток); _The Raw Youth_
- 1881 - _Brat'ya Karamazovy_ (Братья Карамазовы); _The Brothers Karamazov_

### Novellas and short stories

- 1846 - _Gospodin Prokharchin_ (Господин Прохарчин); _Mr. Prokharchin_
- 1847 - _Roman v devyati pis'mah_ (Роман в девяти письмах); _Novel in Nine Letters_
- 1847 - _Hozyajka_ (Хозяйка); _The Landlady_
- 1848 - _Polzunkov_ (Ползунков); _Polzunkov_
- 1848 - _Slaboe serdze_ (Слабое сердце); _A Weak Heart_
- 1848 - _Chestnyj vor_ (Честный вор); _An Honest Thief_
- 1848 - _Elka i svad'ba_ (Елка и свадьба); _A Christmas Tree and a Wedding_
- 1848 - _Chuzhaya zhena i muzh pod krovat'yu_ (Чужая жена и муж под кроватью); _The Jealous Husband_
- 1848 - _Belye nochi_ (Белые ночи); _White nights_
- 1849 - _Malen'kij geroj_ (Маленький герой); _A Little Hero_
- 1862 - _Skvernyj anekdot_ (Скверный анекдот); _A Nasty Story_
- 1865 - _Krokodil_ (Крокодил); _The Crocodile_
- 1873 - _Bobok_ (Бобок); _Bobok_
- 1876 - _Krotkaja_ (Кроткая); _A Gentle Creature_
- 1876 - _Muzhik Marej_ (Мужик Марей); _The Peasant Marey_
- 1876 - _Mal'chik u Hrista na elke_ (Мальчик у Христа на ёлке); _The Heavenly Christmas Tree_
- 1877 - _Son smeshnogo cheloveka_ (Сон смешного человека); _The Dream of a Ridiculous Man_
The last five stories (1873-1877) are included in _A Writer's Diary_.

### Non-fiction

- _Winter Notes on Summer Impressions_ (1863)
- _A Writer's Diary_ (Дневник писателя) (1873–1881)
- Letters

## Related pages

- List of Russian-language novelists
- List of Russian novelists

## Infobox (writer)

- **name**: Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- **image**: Dostoevsky 1872.jpg
- **caption**: Portrait by Vasily Perov (1872)
- **birth name**: Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky
- **birth place**: Moscow, Russian Empire
- **death place**: Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Emphysema
- **occupation**: Novelist, short story writer, essayist
- **language**: Russian language, Russian
- **nationality**: Russians, Russian
- **period**: 1846–1881
- **notableworks**: _Notes from Underground_
_Crime and Punishment_
_The Idiot_
_The Brothers Karamazov_
- **spouse**: Mariya Dmitriyevna Isayeva (1857–64) [her death]
Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina (1867–1881) [his death]
- **children**: Sofiya (1868), Lyubov (1869–1926), Fyodor (1871–1922), Alexei (1875–1878)
- **signature**: Fyodor Dostoyevsky Signature.svg