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

Dostoevsky is a whole world with all its real and imaginary contradictions, possibilities, trends, past, present and future. His work aroused and still arouses great interest among both readers and literary scholars. A huge number of articles, monographs, and scientific works have been written about Dostoevsky.

Against the background of this rich research material, it seems somewhat strange that the topic of children, childhood, childhood has not been studied so widely. This topic is still rather poorly developed, although there is still literature on some aspects of the topic.

In 1907, R. A. Yantareva published the work “Children’s types in the works of Dostoevsky,” in which the child characters of the writer’s novels are classified as three main types: nervous children (Liza Khokhlakova, Princess Katya), humiliated and insulted (Nelly, Ilyushechka), children -phenomena (Kolya Krasotkin, hero of the story “Little Hero”). The work is of great interest, but its bias is still psychological and pedagogical. Subsequently, until the second half of the 20th century, the issue of children and childhood in Dostoevsky’s work was not specifically studied.

Of the articles on this topic that appeared in the 70s, the most interesting are the small but informative article by E. Semenov “The Theme of Children in the Literary and Philosophical Concept of F.M. Dostoevsky”, the article by Yu. Karyakin “Everything is a Child”, a whole series publications by V. S. Pushkareva: “The theme of childhood suffering in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky” (1970), “Childhood in the concept of the “golden age” of F. M. Dostoevsky” (1971), etc. The leitmotif of all articles is the humiliated, suffering children who have become a mirror of social and class contradictions. For the first time, an attempt is made to correlate the theme of childhood with the idea of ​​the harmony of the world and the philosophical views of the writer.

The work of B. Tarasov, “The Future of Humanity...”, published in the 90s, deserves attention, where he touches on the problems of depicting childhood in the works of F. Dostoevsky. The author notes that Dostoevsky is characterized by a tendency to “grow up” children’s characters, noticeably change the originality of their perception through the introduction of adult consciousness and its problems into it, and make children full participants in dialogic novels.

Thus, the gap that has formed in the study of the theme of childhood and childishness is gradually being filled, although the existing literature only outlines some aspects of the study of the theme of childhood in Dostoevsky’s work, but does not exhaust it.

So, Dostoevsky’s “children”. There are many of them in the writer’s works. They are different, but similar in one thing: there are practically no happy ones among them. “The modern Russian family is becoming more and more random,” writes Fyodor Mikhailovich. It is a random family that is the definition of a modern Russian family. She somehow suddenly lost her old appearance...” According to Dostoevsky, never in previous periods of Russian history has the family “been more shaken, disintegrated, no longer sorted, no longer organized, as it is now.”

Children in “random families” do not retain spiritual and moral ties with their fathers and enter into life with nothing connected with the past, with family, with childhood. The situation of children in poor families is especially tragic: “the need and care of their fathers are reflected in their hearts from childhood with gloomy pictures, memories sometimes of the most poisonous nature. A child from such a family takes with him into life a “hardened heart” and “only the dirt of memories.”

The absence of a higher idea that unites everyone in the “random family” leads to the fact that parents do not know how to raise children, preferring to hire teachers, which means, according to Dostoevsky, paying off the child (“lazy family”), or raising them in connection with some new, fashionable idea, not deeply assimilated by either the father, much less the child, which leads to distortions in personality development. Without a higher idea, parents cannot be a living example for a child, which, according to the writer, is of greater importance than the abstract truths and concepts taught by parents.

“The Brothers Karamazov” is “a novel about present-day Russian children, and of course about their present-day fathers, in their present mutual relationship.” Paradoxically, it is mutual understanding, the “current mutual relationship” of “their present-day Russian children” and “their present-day fathers” that becomes the basis of the conflict. They see family vices in each other too well, they feel family dependence in evil too keenly. The “Karamazovism” that binds them together by their common sinfulness irritates and encourages protest. The sons rebel against their father as the evil principle uniting them.

Finally, “simplified” upbringing often leads to exorbitant ambitions, indiscriminate acceptance of ideas (usually European), and misunderstanding of one’s own national foundations (Dostoevsky also included revolutionary ideas in the category of shallowly assimilated Western theories). Through joining them, people from random families realize their childhood hatred and “take revenge” for their “accident”.

Such heroes, little sufferers, already appear in Poor People. These are the “thoughtful children” of the official Gorshkov, a beggar boy on the street. The barely outlined children's images are not just part of the overall picture of the life of “poor people”, they are the perception of world tragedy through the torment of innocent children, pure with angelic purity.

The misfortune that befell the Gorshkov family is conveyed through a special, eerie silence that enveloped the life of the entire family. Nobody hears anything about this family. Only at night, when there is silence in the house, you can sometimes hear sobbing, then a whisper, then sobbing again, as if they were crying, but so quietly, “so pitiful.” And the most painful thing for Makar Devushkin: “You can’t even hear the children. And it doesn’t happen that the children will ever frolic and play, and this is a bad sign.” This detail - the special sadness of the child, his irredeemable suffering - is repeated twice more in “Poor People” and each time more subtly and more painfully.

Already in Dostoevsky’s first major work, several “childish” themes emerge that will run through the writer’s entire work: the theme of orphanhood, which will subsequently find its highest embodiment in the story “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree”; the theme of the indifferent attitude of most people towards childhood suffering and as a response – hardness of the heart; the theme of innocent childhood suffering.

Starting from “Poor People,” Dostoevsky’s little beggars wander from work to work, the very children who “dream and imagine” and because of whom Ivan will rebel and Mitya will want to suffer. The child himself, his inner world, the peculiarities of his development remain outside the scope of Dostoevsky’s first novel, although this special world has always attracted his attention.

This world of a dreamy, painful, solitary and fantastically developing child is explored by Dostoevsky in “Netochka Nezvanova.” The story is told from the perspective of the main character. Her confession (one might say) is based not so much on the facts of the heroine’s life, but on their emotional perception and a completely childish analysis.

The characteristics of the heroine’s development are determined primarily by life circumstances. She grew up in a family where there were no toys, where there was never laughter, there was no sincerity, there was no happiness. This family finally falls apart with the death of the mother and flight, madness, and soon the death of the father. For Netochka, the time is coming for the transition from “first childhood” to the “emergence of correct consciousness”, the loss of the “angelic rank” given only by the thoughtlessness of existence.

Dostoevsky has an expression to denote this transition - “overwhelming with the truth”: “children learn the truth at nine years old,” that is, “prose” and the fact of reality,” and “this truth overwhelms them.” The truth lies in the cruelty of life, in the impunity of evil, in the injustice of the social system.

After losing consciousness on the street, Netochka finds herself in the house of the old prince, sees his eyes full of compassion, and feels that she has awakened to a new life. The prince's family surrounded Netochka with care, but she had a new feeling: “I am an orphan.” The fate of the heroine is more or less successful, but this does not reduce the drama of her development, although Netochka is “meek”, there is no hatred for the world in her soul.

Another version of a “grown-up” child is Nellie from “The Humiliated and Insulted.” If Netochka is the very essence of meekness, then Nellie is the embodiment of pride, she lives by hatred and rebellion. The heroine has a difficult, painful character, “strange, nervous and ardent, but suppressing her impulses, attractive, but withdrawn into pride and inaccessibility.” People have done Nelly a lot of harm, and she involuntarily, subconsciously wants to take revenge on them, provoke them into irritation, and piss them off. The old doctor's meekness is the only weapon she is not ready for, and this weapon defeats the girl.

Nelly’s “premature” development was not given in vain: it forever took away peace and tranquility from her heart, undermined her nervous system, and undermined her health. Nellie is dying. The image of Nellie evokes deep sympathy for all unfortunate, insulted and humiliated children.

The cross-cutting theme of orphanhood for Dostoevsky is continued by the images of Marmeladov’s children from the novel Crime and Punishment. We see them through the eyes of Raskolnikov, who brought home their drunken father. The Marmeladovs live in a narrow, cramped room, lit by the stub of a penny candle. Walk-through room. There is a holey sheet stretched through the back corner, and behind it there is a bed. In the room there are two chairs and a torn oilcloth sofa, an old kitchen table, unpainted and not covered with anything. A girl of about six years old is sleeping on the floor, “sort of hunched over and burying her head in the sofa.” A boy, a year older, is trembling in the corner and crying: he has just been “nailed.” The eldest girl, about nine years old, thin, wearing only a thin and torn shirt, stands in the corner next to her little brother, clasping his neck with her long hand, dry as a match. And the mother, sick, consumptive, with cheeks flushed to the point of blemishes, walks back and forth around the room, clasping her hands on her chest, with parched lips and breathing nervously and intermittently. This picture “in the last light of the burnt-out cinder” makes a terrible impression. There is poverty and ruin here.

The tragedy of the situation of the Marmeladov family is aggravated after the absurd death of the head of the family under the wheels of a dandy stroller. Katerina Ivanovna and her children find themselves on the street. Svidrigailov saves children from death. Such an ending is uncharacteristic of Dostoevsky's works.

In the same novel, the image of a child appears three times - a girl who was abused (the theme of abuse of a child is a cross-cutting theme in Dostoevsky’s work). The first image is of a drunk girl whom Raskolnikov accidentally meets on the boulevard. “Look, she’s completely drunk... Who knows what she’s from, it doesn’t look like she’s from her profession. Most likely, they got drunk somewhere and deceived... for the first time... you understand? And so they let him into the street,” Raskolnikov tells the policeman. The second is a suicidal girl from the life and dreams of Svidrigailov. And the third is the five-year-old girl from the dream, with the face of a camellia, with a fiery, shameless gaze, which made even Sidrigailov whisper in horror: “What! five-year-old!.. this,... what is this?”

The pages of the novel “Crime and Punishment” dedicated to children are covered with warmth, love, and sympathy, but still the images of children remain on the periphery of the plot, although they significantly enrich the picture of the “humiliated and insulted.”

Many plot devices related to children were outlined by Dostoevsky in the rough sketches for The Idiot, but in the final text of the novel the children remained only in Myshkin’s memoirs. But, nevertheless, the children's line in the novel is clearly expressed: Dostoevsky endows Prince Myshkin with love and affection for children. “You can tell a child everything; I was always amazed by the thought of how little big children, fathers and mothers even know their own children. There is no need to hide anything from children under the pretext that they are small and that it is too early for them to know. What a sad and unhappy thought! And how well the children themselves notice that their fathers consider them too small and not understanding anything, while they understand everything. Big people don’t know that a child, even in the most difficult matter, can give extremely important advice,” notes Prince Myshkin.

But the most important thing that Prince Myshkin revealed to his listeners is that children can be cruel and merciful at the same time; they were able to replace anger and contempt for the fallen unfortunate person with a feeling of love, friendship, affection; the children appreciated the sincerity of “Leon”, trusted him, and together brightened up Marie’s last days. Myshkin not only loves children and their company, but is also somewhat of a child himself. Childishness and adulthood are inherent in him in equal measure.

Dostoevsky's favorite childhood age is children under seven years old and children twelve to thirteen years old. He speaks about the first through the lips of his hero Ivan Karamazov like this: “Children, while children, up to seven years old, for example, are terribly distant from people: it’s like a completely different creature and with a different nature.” Twelve to thirteen years old is an age that still retains the most infantile, touching innocence and immaturity on the one hand, and on the other, has already acquired the greedy ability to perceive and quickly become familiar with such ideas and concepts, which, according to the conviction of very many parents and teachers , this age cannot even imagine anything.” This age is depicted in Nelly, in Kola Krasotkin and other Russian boys from “Karamazov”, in Kola Ivolgin, with their swift passion and the most noble and false ideas, with the ability for unselfish, sincere love, with all the heartaches, but without conscious sensuality , that is, like Liza Khokhlakova’s. They are already able to understand the idea mentally; and they are still able to accept it with all their pure, whole hearts.

The teenager is vulnerable and unstable. His pride, conceit, and suspicious scrupulosity stand out more sharply than an adult’s; they have already fully realized the mystery of sex. This is Arkady Dolgoruky, the main character of the novel “Teenager”. He belongs to the "random family". Almost from birth, Arkady was given into the hands of others and early on he felt “thrown out” from his family circle, from normal existence. Arkady hardly takes any bright memories from his childhood and does not inherit a guiding life idea from his father. He must independently find the answer to the question of what is good and what is evil. Through internal struggle, through victory over oneself, through self-mastery, the hero comes to goodness. “I took a sinless soul, but already polluted by the possibility of depravity, early hatred for its insignificance and “accidentality,” and with the broadness with which a still chaste soul already consciously allows vice into its thoughts, it already cherishes it in its heart, admiring it still in its bashful , but already in their daring and stormy dreams - all this is left solely to their own strength and understanding, and even to God. All these are “miscarriages” of society, “random” members of “random families” - this is how Dostoevsky characterizes his young hero in “A Writer’s Diary” for 1876.

Dostoevsky's teenager is mentally fragile and uneven, still maintaining a connection with childhood innocence and at the same time more open to the temptations of evil. The exit from childhood is marked by Dostoevsky with the stamp of tragedy. The shadow of the ugly, cruel side of life falls on the child’s bright soul. He learns something that he is not yet able to cope with internally, and it hurts his soul. Children's nature, according to Dostoevsky, can be affected by evil, can respond to evil, and evil has the power of temptation for it even if, as in the novel “The Teenager,” good principles take over..

The theme of childhood suffering, which worried Dostoevsky all his life, was also reflected in the story “The Boy at Christ’s Christmas Tree.” The story was written in the last years of his life and is associated with thinking about “Russian children today.” The work is based on the principle of contrast: a magnificent Christmas tree in the room outside the window - and a little tattered one, freezing outside just before Christmas. In his dying vision, the poor, unfortunate boy imagines that he is being brought to a heavenly holiday by Christ, the protector of the disadvantaged, humiliated and insulted. The story ends tragically: “And downstairs the next morning, the janitors found the small corpse of a boy who had run and froze to collect firewood; They also found his mother... She died before him.” The ending of the story is a verdict on the world in which children suffer and die. For Dostoevsky, the suffering of children is one of the main signs of an unfairly structured world. According to the writer, one child’s tear is not worth the happiness of humanity.

All of Dostoevsky’s work is permeated with love for the child, attention to his fate, and concern for his future. The writer places children, as well as his adult heroes, in critical situations, exceptional circumstances - children often find themselves in such situations when some terrible event, a shock, happens to them, and at the moment the child’s soul is torn, broken. Children in Dostoevsky's works, obeying the general atmosphere of his works, are drawn up to adult heroes through an early encounter with the imperfections of human life, through anguish and breakdown. It is “adult” children, aware of the “prose” and “fact” of reality, who become active participants in the plot conflicts of his works. “Thinking” children who accelerate the stage of childhood and begin to talk about good and evil, love and hate – these are the children’s characters in the writer’s works.

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

It would seem that fate did not foretell a happy family for the writer after his difficult childhood, after difficult studies at the Engineering School, life after hard labor and very complex personal stories. But, largely thanks to the character, love, and dedication of his last wife Anna Grigorievna, Fyodor Mikhailovich’s family life still worked out.

Anna Grigorievna and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

After getting married, the Dostoevskys went abroad. Their first daughter* was born and died there. Anna Grigorievna became pregnant again, about which one of his friends wittily writes to Dostoevsky: “I’m glad, first of all, that you finished the novel “The Idiot.” And the second is that Anna Grigorievna also began to think about the novel. And she herself cannot say which one, although she will think about it for 9 months. Where will Anna Grigorievna’s novel be born?”

Apparently, this “novel”, the first surviving child, was destined to be born in Florence. But nevertheless this did not happen. When his wife’s “romance” was approaching “completion,” Dostoevsky became worried. He didn’t know Italian, so he began to think: if his wife went into labor and lost consciousness, he would not be able to communicate with the doctors. And the Dostoevskys left for Germany - Dostoevsky spoke German well, even translated Schiller’s “The Robbers”.

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

Dostoevsky the teacher: “With love, buy the hearts of our children”

At that time, in the 70s of the 19th century, many parents and school teachers began to turn to Dostoevsky as a famous author of works about children (in particular, “Netochka Nezvanova”, “Little Hero”, etc.), which served as one of the impetus edition of the “Diary of a Writer”, where many pages are devoted to education. While creating the Diary, Dostoevsky was interested in the situation of children in factories, visited educational homes, colonies for minors, critically assessed the education system in them and made recommendations.

In Dostoevsky’s prose and journalism one can see what the author considered to be the main vices of upbringing. First of all, adults’ disdainful attitude towards the child’s inner world, which never goes unnoticed by the child. Next is the excessive importunity of adults that irritates children. Then comes bias, leading to erroneous conclusions about the child’s character. He condemns cruelty to children, the suppression of any originality in them. Dostoevsky especially condemns flirting with children, blind love for them and the desire to make everything easier for the child. And he concludes:

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

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

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

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

Therefore, education and upbringing according to Dostoevsky is not only science, but also “spiritual light that illuminates the soul, enlightens the heart, guides the mind and shows it the way.” Therefore, the writer especially sharply criticized contemporary pedagogy, which gives rise to atheists, “Svidrigailovs”, “Stavrogins” and “Nechaevs”.

Dostoevsky was also interested in public education. He believed that it should not go against religious beliefs, because “It is important to preserve tenderness and a heartfelt religious feeling in society”. In his “intuitive” pedagogy, Dostoevsky foresaw many important provisions for modern pedagogy. He spoke about the role of heredity in the formation of a person’s spiritual appearance, about the developmental and educational nature of education, about the influence of a child’s speech development on his thinking abilities.

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

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

Fyodor and Lyubov Dostoevsky

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

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

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

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

The writer’s family did not neglect the theater. In Russia at that time it was customary for parents to take their children to ballet. Dostoevsky was not a fan of ballet and never attended it. He preferred opera. He himself really loved Glinka’s opera “Ruslan and Lyudmila” and instilled this love in his children.

When his father left or his work did not allow him to do it himself, he asked his wife to read to the children the works of Walter Scott and Dickens - this “great Christian,” as he calls him in “The Diary of a Writer.” During lunch, he asked the children about their impressions and reconstructed entire episodes from these novels.

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

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

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

Daughter Lyubov lived with her father for 11 years, until his death. One day her father wrote her the following letter:

“My dear angel, I kiss you and bless you and love you very much. Thank you for writing me letters, I will read and kiss them. And I’ll think about you every time I receive it.”

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

Writer Markevich recalls the day of Dostoevsky’s funeral:

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

At Dostoevsky's grave. In the center: A.G. Dostoevskaya and the writer’s children - Fyodor and Lyubov

Lyubov Fedorovna Dostoevskaya: Find happiness...

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

She was often sick and never had a family. She left Russia before the revolution and was treated in Europe. Her only significant contribution to literature is a large book of memories about her father. These memories became the main work of her life. Certain excerpts of this book were published in the USSR in the 20s of the 20th century - but only biographical information about her father, Dostoevsky’s genealogy, and her thoughts on the revolution, naturally, were removed by Soviet censorship.

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

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

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

Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky: Save and continue

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

“Fechka asks to go for a walk too, but you can’t even think about it. He grieves and cries. I show him the horses through the window when they are riding, he is terribly interested and loves horses, shouts whoa.”

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

In 1918, after the death of his mother, who was kicked out of her dacha by a watchman and spent her last days in a Yalta hotel, Fyodor Fedorovich came to Crimea and, risking his life (he was almost shot by security officers, deciding that he was smuggling), took the archive to Moscow father.

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

Dostoevsky's children did not become geniuses and outstanding personalities: they say that nature rests on children. And world history does not know the duplication of geniuses in one family, from generation to generation. Geniuses are born once every century. It was the same with Tolstoy’s children - many of them wrote and left memoirs, but who remembers them today, except literary scholars and admirers of the great old man’s work? Lyuba and Fedya undoubtedly grew up to be decent and responsible people. And in such a “scattered” fate of Lyubov and Fyodor, of course, those storms and thunderstorms that swept over Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and which their father, the great writer-prophet, foresaw and predicted back in the 19th century were largely to blame.

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

Fyodor Fedorovich Dostoevsky, Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya, Lyubov Fedorovna Dostoevskaya

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

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky left behind not only a great literary heritage, but also posterity. In his marriage to his first wife, Maria Dmitrievna, the writer had no children, but his second wife, Anna Grigorievna, gave birth to four. How did their fate turn out? And what happened to the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Fyodor Mikhailovich?

Children

Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya in her maiden name bore the surname Snitkin and was the daughter of a minor official. Anna Grigorievna met the writer when she worked for him as a stenographer. The spouses had a large age difference (more than 20 years), but this did not interfere with family happiness and the birth of children.

Their first child, daughter Sophia, was born in 1868. However, that same year she caught a cold and died. The girl was buried in one of the cemeteries in Geneva, where the Dostoevsky couple were at that moment.

Already in the next 1869, Anna Grigorievna gave her husband a second daughter, Lyubov. This happened in Dresden, Germany. The girl was 12 years old when the writer himself passed away. Lyubov Fedorovna subsequently also took up the pen and wrote several stories and memoirs dedicated to her father, but neither one nor the other had much success. Even before the revolution, Dostoevskaya went abroad for treatment and never returned. She died in Italy at the age of 57 from a blood disease.

In 1871, a son, Fedor, appeared in St. Petersburg. In childhood and adolescence he also wrote, but after that he became more interested in horses. Fedor Fedorovich lived in Crimea, where he was engaged in horse breeding. Dostoevsky Jr. died at the age of 51.

Another son Alexey, born in 1875, died when he was not yet 3 years old. According to one version, the cause of death was epilepsy, which, as you know, his father also suffered from.

Grandchildren and great-grandchildren

Dostoevsky's first son Fyodor had three children. Fyodor Fedorovich's daughter died in infancy, and his son Fyodor also died at the age of 16. The latter wrote talented poetry and could well have become a famous poet. Only the writer’s second grandson, Andrei, born in 1908, continued the family line. Andrey Fedorovich became an engineer. He lived in Leningrad and taught at a technical school.

Andrei Fedorovich, in turn, became the father of Dmitry, Dostoevsky’s great-grandson. Dmitry Andreevich was born in 1945. His sister died in early childhood. The writer’s great-grandson worked all his life in blue-collar jobs: he was an electrician, a fitter, and even a tram driver. He is still alive today and lives in St. Petersburg. Dmitry Andreevich has a son, Alexey, and four grandchildren, Anna, Vera, Maria and Fedor.

Brothers and sisters

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky himself had three brothers and four sisters. The elder Mikhail not only wrote, but also did translations. He died at 43. One of the writer's younger brothers, Andrei, became an architect, and the other, Nikolai, became an engineer.

Fyodor Mikhailovich's sister Varvara married a wealthy man and became Karepina. She was extremely stingy and repeated the fate of the old pawnbroker from Crime and Punishment. Varvara Mikhailovna was killed by a janitor who coveted her savings.

Dostoevsky's two other sisters, Vera and Lyubov, turned out to be twins. Lyubov died in infancy, and Vera registered a relationship with a certain Ivanov. Judging by the memoirs of the writer’s contemporaries, Vera Mikhailovna’s marriage was happy.

The youngest in the family, Alexandra Mikhailovna, walked down the aisle twice and was first Golenovskaya, and after Shevyakova. Shevyakova, like Karepina, was not known for her generosity and even sued her siblings.

In Moscow.

He was the second child of six in the family of a doctor at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, the son of the Uniate priest Mikhail Dostoevsky, who in 1828 received the title of hereditary nobleman. The future writer's mother came from a merchant family.

Since 1832, Fyodor and his older brother Mikhail began studying with teachers who came to the house; from 1833 they studied at the boarding school of Nikolai Drashusov (Sushara), then at the boarding school of Leonty Chermak. After the death of their mother in 1837, their father took them and their brother to St. Petersburg to continue their education. In 1839, he died of apoplexy (according to family legends, he was killed by serfs).

In 1838, Fyodor Dostoevsky entered the Engineering School in St. Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1843.

After graduating from college, he served in the St. Petersburg engineering team and was assigned to the drawing room of the Engineering Department.

In 1844 he retired to devote himself to literature. In 1846 he published his first work - the story "Poor People", enthusiastically received by the critic Vissarion Belinsky.
In 1847-1849, Dostoevsky wrote the stories “The Mistress” (1847), “Weak Heart” and “White Nights” (both 1848), and “Netochka Nezvanova” (1849, unfinished).

During this period, the writer became close to the circle of the Beketov brothers (among the participants were Alexey Pleshcheev, Apollo and Valerian Maykov, Dmitry Grigorovich), in which not only literary, but also social problems were discussed. In the spring of 1847, Dostoevsky began to attend the “Fridays” of Mikhail Petrashevsky, and in the winter of 1848-1849 - the circle of the poet Sergei Durov, which also consisted mainly of Petrashevsky members. At the meetings, problems of the liberation of peasants, court reforms and censorship were discussed, treatises by French socialists and articles by Alexander Herzen were read. In 1848, Dostoevsky entered a special secret society organized by the most radical Petrashevist Nikolai Speshnev, which set as its goal “to carry out a revolution in Russia.”

In the spring of 1849, along with other Petrashevites, the writer was arrested and imprisoned in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress. After eight months of imprisonment, where Dostoevsky behaved courageously and even wrote the story “The Little Hero” (published in 1857), he was found guilty “of intent to overthrow ... the state order” and was initially sentenced to death. Already on the scaffold, he was told that the execution had been replaced by four years of hard labor with the deprivation of “all rights of fortune” and subsequent surrender as a soldier. Dostoevsky served his hard labor in the Omsk fortress, among criminals.

From January 1854 he served as a private in Semipalatinsk, in 1855 he was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and in 1856 to ensign. In 1857, his nobility and the right to publish were returned to him. At the same time, he married the widow Maria Isaeva, who took part in his fate even before marriage.

In Siberia, Dostoevsky wrote the stories “Uncle’s Dream” and “The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants” (both 1859).

In 1859 he retired and received permission to live in Tver. At the end of the year, the writer moved to St. Petersburg and, together with his brother Mikhail, began publishing the magazines “Time” and “Epoch”. On the pages of Vremya, in an effort to strengthen his reputation, Dostoevsky published his novel “Humiliated and Insulted” (1861).

In 1863, during his second trip abroad, the writer met Apollinaria Suslova; their complex relationship, as well as a gambling game of roulette in Baden-Baden, provided material for the future novel “The Gambler.”

After the death of his first wife in 1864, and then the death of his brother Mikhail, Dostoevsky assumed all the debts for publishing the Epoch magazine, but soon stopped it due to a drop in subscriptions. After traveling abroad, the writer spent the summer of 1866 in Moscow and at a dacha near Moscow, working on the novel Crime and Punishment. At the same time, Dostoevsky was working on the novel “The Gambler,” which he dictated to stenographer Anna Snitkina, who became the writer’s wife in the winter of 1867.

In 1867-1868, Dostoevsky wrote the novel “The Idiot,” the task of which he saw as “depicting a positively beautiful person.”

The next novel, “Demons” (1871-1872), was created by him under the impression of the terrorist activities of Sergei Nechaev and the secret society “People’s Retribution” organized by him. In 1875, the novel “The Teenager” was published, written in the form of a confession of a young man, whose consciousness is formed in an environment of “general decomposition.” The theme of the disintegration of family ties was continued in Dostoevsky’s final novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1879-1880), conceived as a depiction of “our intelligentsia Russia” and at the same time as a novel-life of the main character Alyosha Karamazov.

In 1873, Dostoevsky began editing the newspaper-magazine "Citizen". In 1874, he abandoned editing the magazine due to disagreements with the publisher and deteriorating health, and at the end of 1875 he resumed work on A Writer's Diary, which he began in 1873, which he continued intermittently until the end of his life.

On February 7 (January 26, old style), 1881, the writer began bleeding from the throat, and doctors diagnosed a ruptured pulmonary artery.

On February 9 (January 28, old style), 1881, Fyodor Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg. The writer was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

On November 11, 1928, on the occasion of the writer’s birthday, the world’s first Dostoevsky Museum was opened in Moscow in the northern wing of the former Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor.

On November 12, 1971, in St. Petersburg, in the house where the writer spent the last years of his life, the F.M. Literary Memorial Museum was opened. Dostoevsky.

In the same year, on the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birth, the Semipalatinsk Literary and Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky was opened in the house where he lived in 1857-1859 while serving in a line battalion.

Since 1974, the Dostoevsky estate Darovoye, Zaraisk district, Tula region, where the writer vacationed in the 1830s, acquired the status of a museum of republican significance.

In May 1980, in Novokuznetsk, in the house that the writer’s first wife Maria Isaeva rented in 1855-1857, the F.M. Literary and Memorial Museum was opened. Dostoevsky.

In May 1981, the Writer's House-Museum was opened in Staraya Russa, where the Dostoevsky family spent the summer.

In January 1983, the Literary Museum received its first visitors. F.M. Dostoevsky in Omsk.

Among the monuments to the writer, the most famous is the sculpture of Dostoevsky at the State Library named after V.I. Lenin on the corner of Mokhovaya and Vozdvizhenka in Moscow, a monument to Dostoevsky in the park of the Mariinsky Hospital near the writer’s memorial museum in the capital, a monument to Dostoevsky in St. Petersburg on Bolshaya Moskovskaya Street.

In October 2006, a monument to Fyodor Dostoevsky in Dresden, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel.

Streets are named after the writer in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as in other Russian cities. In December 1991, the Dostoevskaya metro station was opened in St. Petersburg, and in 2010 in Moscow.

After his death, the writer's widow Anna Dostoevskaya (1846-1918) devoted herself to republishing her husband's books and perpetuating his memory. She died in 1918 in Yalta; in 1968, her ashes, according to her last wish, were reburied in Dostoevsky’s grave.

The writer had no children from his first marriage to Maria Isaeva. In their second marriage, the Dostoevskys had four children, two of them - the eldest Sophia and the youngest Alexei - died in infancy. Daughter Lyubov Dostoevskaya (1869-1926) became a writer, author of the book “Dostoevsky in the Portrayal of His Daughter”; died in northern Italy. The writer's son, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1871-1921), having graduated from the law and natural faculties of Dorpat University, became a major expert in horse breeding. In the last years of his life, fulfilling the will of his mother, he continued to collect and store Dostoevsky’s archive.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

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

Children were brought up in fear and obedience, according to the traditions of antiquity, spending most of their time in front of their parents. Rarely leaving the walls of the hospital building, they communicated very little with the outside world, except through the patients, with whom Fyodor Mikhailovich, secretly from his father, sometimes spoke. There was also a nanny, hired from among Moscow bourgeois women, whose name was Alena Frolovna. Dostoevsky remembered her with the same tenderness as Pushkin remembered Arina Rodionovna. It was from her that he heard the first fairy tales: about the Firebird, Alyosha Popovich, the Blue Bird, etc.

Parents of Dostoevsky F.M. - father Mikhail Andreevich and mother Maria Fedorovna

Father, Mikhail Andreevich (1789-1839), the son of a Uniate priest, a doctor (head doctor, surgeon) at the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, received the title of hereditary nobleman in 1828. 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.

Mother, Maria Feodorovna (née Nechaeva; 1800-1837) - from a merchant family, a religious woman, annually took the children to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, taught them to read from the book “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments” (in the novel “” memories about this book are included in the story of Elder Zosima about his childhood). In the parents’ house they read aloud “The History of the Russian State” by N. M. Karamzin, the works of G. R. Derzhavin, V. A. Zhukovsky, A. S. Pushkin.

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

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

Dostoevsky's youth

Museum "The Estate of F.M. Dostoevsky in the Village of Darovoye"

Since 1832, the family annually spent the summer in the village of Darovoye (Tula province), purchased by their father. Meetings and conversations with men were forever etched in Dostoevsky’s memory and later served as creative material (the story “” from the “Diary of a Writer” for 1876).

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, where the astronomer D. M. Perevoshchikov and paleologist taught A. M. Kubarev. Russian language teacher N.I. Bilevich played a certain role in Dostoevsky’s spiritual development.

Memories of the boarding school served as material for many of the writer’s works. The atmosphere of educational institutions and isolation from the family caused a painful reaction in Dostoevsky (autobiographical traits of the hero of the novel "", experiencing deep moral upheavals in the "Tushara boarding house"). At the same time, the years of study were marked by an awakened passion for reading.

In 1837, the writer’s mother died, and soon his father took Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail to St. Petersburg to continue their education. The writer never met again with his father, who died in 1839 (according to official information, he died of apoplexy; according to family legends, he was killed by serfs). Dostoevsky's attitude towards his father, a suspicious and morbidly suspicious man, was ambivalent.

Having had a hard time surviving the death of her mother, which coincided with the news of the death of A.S. Pushkin (which he perceived as a personal loss), Dostoevsky in May 1837 traveled with his brother Mikhail to St. Petersburg and entered the preparatory boarding school of K. F. Kostomarov. At the same time, he met I. N. Shidlovsky, whose religious and romantic mood captivated Dostoevsky.

First literary publications

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

From January 1838, Dostoevsky studied at the Main Engineering School, where he described a typical day as follows: “... from early morning until evening, we in classes barely have time to follow the lectures. ...We are sent to military training, we are given lessons in fencing, dancing, singing...we are put on guard, and this is how the whole time passes...”

The difficult impression of the “hard labor years” of the training was partially brightened by friendly relations with V. Grigorovich, doctor A. E. Riesenkampf, duty officer A. I. Savelyev, and artist K. A. Trutovsky. Subsequently, Dostoevsky always believed that the choice of educational institution was wrong. He suffered from the military atmosphere and drill, from disciplines alien to his interests and from loneliness.

As his college friend, the artist K. A. Trutovsky, testified, Dostoevsky kept himself aloof, but amazed his comrades with his erudition, and a literary circle formed around him. The first literary ideas took shape at the school.

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

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

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

Dostoevsky informed his brother about his work on the drama “The Jew Yankel” in January 1844. The manuscripts of the dramas have not survived, but the literary hobbies of the aspiring writer emerge from their titles: Schiller, Pushkin, Gogol. After the death of his father, the relatives of the writer's mother took care of Dostoevsky's younger brothers and sisters, and Fyodor and Mikhail received a small inheritance.

After graduating from college (end of 1843), he was enlisted as a field engineer-second lieutenant in the St. Petersburg engineering team, but already in the early summer of 1844, having decided to devote himself entirely to literature, he resigned and was discharged with the rank of lieutenant.

Novel "Poor People"

In January 1844, Dostoevsky completed the translation of Balzac's story "Eugene Grande", which he was especially keen on at that time. The translation became Dostoevsky's first published literary work. In 1844 he began and in May 1845, after numerous alterations, he finished the novel ““.

The novel “Poor People,” the connection of which with Pushkin’s “The Station Agent” and Gogol’s “The Overcoat” was emphasized by Dostoevsky himself, was an exceptional success. Based on the traditions of the physiological essay, Dostoevsky creates a realistic picture of the life of the “downtrodden” inhabitants of the “St. Petersburg corners”, a gallery of social types from the street beggar to “His Excellency”.

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

Dostoevsky spent the summer of 1845 (as well as the next) in Reval with his brother Mikhail. In the fall of 1845, upon returning to St. Petersburg, he often met with Belinsky. In October, the writer, together with Nekrasov and Grigorovich, compiled an anonymous program announcement for the almanac “Zuboskal” (03, 1845, No. 11), and in early December, at an evening with Belinsky, he read the chapters “” (03, 1846, No. 2), in which for the first time gives a psychological analysis of split consciousness, “dualism.” The story "" (1846) and the story "" (1847), in which many of the motives, ideas and characters of Dostoevsky's works of the 1860-1870s were outlined, were not understood by modern criticism.

Belinsky also radically changed his attitude towards Dostoevsky, condemning the “fantastic” element, “pretentiousness”, “manneredness” of these works. In other works of the young Dostoevsky - in the stories "", "", the cycle of acute socio-psychological feuilletons "The Petersburg Chronicle" and the unfinished novel "" - the problems of the writer's creativity are expanded, psychologism is intensified with a characteristic emphasis on the analysis of the most complex, elusive internal phenomena.

At the end of 1846, there was a cooling in the relations between Dostoevsky and Belinsky. Later, he had a conflict with the editors of Sovremennik: Dostoevsky’s suspicious, proud character played a big role here. The ridicule of the writer by recent friends (especially Turgenev, Nekrasov), the harsh tone of Belinsky’s critical reviews of his works were acutely felt by the writer. Around this time, according to the testimony of Dr. S.D. Yanovsky, Dostoevsky showed the first symptoms of epilepsy.

The writer is burdened by exhausting work for “Notes of the Fatherland”. Poverty forced him to take on any literary work (in particular, he edited articles for the “Reference Encyclopedic Dictionary” by A. V. Starchevsky).

Arrest and exile

In 1846, Dostoevsky became close to the Maykov family, regularly visited the literary and philosophical circle of the Beketov brothers, in which V. Maykov dominated, and A.N. was the regular participants. Maikov and A.N. Pleshcheev are friends of Dostoevsky. From March-April 1847, Dostoevsky became a visitor to the “Fridays” of M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky. He also participates in the organization of a secret printing house for printing appeals to peasants and soldiers.

Dostoevsky's arrest occurred on April 23, 1849; his archive was taken away during his arrest and probably destroyed in the III department. Dostoevsky spent 8 months in the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress under investigation, during which he showed courage, hiding many facts and trying, if possible, to mitigate the guilt of his comrades. He was recognized by the investigation as “one of the most important” among the Petrashevites, guilty of “intent to overthrow existing domestic laws and public order.”

The initial verdict of the military judicial commission read: “... the retired engineer-lieutenant Dostoevsky, for failure to report the dissemination of a criminal letter about religion and government by the writer Belinsky and the malicious writing of lieutenant Grigoriev, will be deprived of his ranks, all rights of state and subjected to the death penalty by shooting.”

On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky, along with others, awaited the execution of the death sentence on the Semyonovsky parade ground. According to the resolution of Nicholas I, his execution was replaced by 4 years of hard labor with deprivation of “all rights of state” and subsequent surrender to the army.

On the night of December 24, Dostoevsky was sent from St. Petersburg in chains. On January 10, 1850 he arrived in Tobolsk, where in the caretaker’s apartment the writer met with the wives of the Decembrists - P.E. Annenkova, A.G. Muravyova and N.D. Fonvizina; they gave him the Gospel, which he kept all his life. From January 1850 to 1854, Dostoevsky, together with Durov, served hard labor as a “laborer” in the Omsk fortress.

In January 1854, he was enlisted as a private in the 7th Line Battalion (Semipalatinsk) and was able to resume correspondence with his brother Mikhail and A. Maikov. In November 1855, Dostoevsky was promoted to non-commissioned officer, and after much trouble from prosecutor Wrangel and other Siberian and St. Petersburg acquaintances (including E.I. Totleben) to warrant officer; in the spring of 1857, the writer was returned to hereditary nobility and the right to publish, but police surveillance over him remained until 1875.

In 1857 Dostoevsky married the widowed M.D. Isaeva, who, according to him, was “a woman of the most sublime and enthusiastic soul... An idealist in the full sense of the word... she was both pure and naive, and she was just like a child.” The marriage was not happy: Isaeva agreed after much hesitation that tormented Dostoevsky.

In Siberia, the writer began work on his memoirs about hard labor (the “Siberian” notebook, containing folklore, ethnographic and diary entries, served as a source for “” and many other books by Dostoevsky). In 1857, his brother published the story “The Little Hero,” written by Dostoevsky in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Having created two “provincial” comic stories - “” and “”, Dostoevsky entered into negotiations with M.N. through his brother Mikhail. Katkov, Nekrasov, A.A. Kraevsky. However, modern criticism did not appreciate and passed over these first works of the “new” Dostoevsky in almost complete silence.

On March 18, 1859, Dostoevsky, upon request, was dismissed “due to illness” with the rank of second lieutenant and received permission to live in Tver (with a ban on entry into the St. Petersburg and Moscow provinces). On July 2, 1859, he left Semipalatinsk with his wife and stepson. From 1859 - in Tver, where he renewed his previous literary acquaintances and made new ones. Later, the chief of gendarmes notified the Tver governor about permission for Dostoevsky to live in St. Petersburg, where he arrived in December 1859.

The flowering of Dostoevsky's creativity

Dostoevsky's intensive activity combined editorial work on “other people's” manuscripts with the publication of his own articles, polemical notes, notes, and most importantly works of art.

“- a transitional work, a peculiar return at a new stage of development to the motives of creativity of the 1840s, enriched by the experience of what was experienced and felt in the 1850s; it has very strong autobiographical motives. At the same time, the novel contained the features of the plots, style and characters of the works of the late Dostoevsky. ““ was a huge success.

In Siberia, according to Dostoevsky, his “convictions” changed “gradually and after a very, very long time.” The essence of these changes, Dostoevsky formulated in the most general form as “a return to the folk root, to the recognition of the Russian soul, to the recognition of the folk spirit.” In the magazines "Time" and "Epoch" the Dostoevsky brothers acted as ideologists of "pochvennichestvo" - a specific modification of the ideas of Slavophilism.

“Pochvennichestvo” was rather an attempt to outline the contours of a “general idea”, to find a platform that would reconcile Westerners and Slavophiles, “civilization” and the people’s principles. Skeptical about the revolutionary ways of transforming Russia and Europe, Dostoevsky expressed these doubts in works of art, articles and announcements of Vremya, in sharp polemics with the publications of Sovremennik.

The essence of Dostoevsky's objections is the possibility, after the reform, of a rapprochement between the government and the intelligentsia and the people, their peaceful cooperation. Dostoevsky continues this polemic in the story “” (“Epoch”, 1864) - a philosophical and artistic prelude to the “ideological” novels of the writer.

Dostoevsky wrote: “I am proud that for the first time I brought out the real man of the Russian majority and for the first time exposed his ugly and tragic side. Tragedy lies in the consciousness of ugliness. I alone brought out the tragedy of the underground, which consists in suffering, in self-punishment, in the consciousness of the best and in the impossibility of achieving it and, most importantly, in the vivid conviction of these unfortunates that everyone is like that, and therefore there is no need to improve!”

Novel "Idiot"

In June 1862, Dostoevsky traveled abroad for the first time; visited Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, England. In August 1863 the writer went abroad for the second time. In Paris he met with A.P. Suslova, whose dramatic relationship (1861-1866) was reflected in the novel ““, “” and other works.

In Baden-Baden, carried away by the gambling nature of his nature, playing roulette, he loses “all, completely to the ground”; This long-term hobby of Dostoevsky is one of the qualities of his passionate nature.

In October 1863 he returned to Russia. Until mid-November he lived with his sick wife in Vladimir, and at the end of 1863-April 1864 in Moscow, traveling to St. Petersburg on business. 1864 brought heavy losses to Dostoevsky. On April 15, his wife died of consumption. The personality of Maria Dmitrievna, as well as the circumstances of their “unhappy” love, were reflected in many of Dostoevsky’s works (in particular, in the images of Katerina Ivanovna - “ ” and Nastasya Filippovna - “ “).

On June 10, M.M. died. Dostoevsky. On September 26, Dostoevsky attends Grigoriev’s funeral. After the death of his brother, Dostoevsky took over the publication of the magazine “Epoch”, which was burdened with a large debt and lagged behind by 3 months; The magazine began to appear more regularly, but a sharp drop in subscriptions in 1865 forced the writer to stop publishing. He owed creditors about 15 thousand rubles, which he was able to pay only towards the end of his life. In an effort to provide working conditions, Dostoevsky entered into a contract with F.T. Stellovsky for the publication of collected works and undertook to write a new novel for him by November 1, 1866.

Novel "Crime and Punishment"

In the spring of 1865, Dostoevsky was a frequent guest of the family of General V.V. Korvin-Krukovsky, whose eldest daughter, A.V. Korvin-Krukovskaya, he was very infatuated with. In July he went to Wiesbaden, from where in the fall of 1865 he offered Katkov a story for the Russian Messenger, which later developed into a novel.

In the summer of 1866, Dostoevsky was in Moscow and at the dacha in the village of Lyublino, near the family of his sister Vera Mikhailovna, where he wrote the novel ““ at night. “A psychological report of a crime” became the plot outline of the novel, the main idea of ​​which Dostoevsky outlined as follows: “Unsolvable questions arise before the murderer, unsuspected and unexpected feelings torment his heart. God's truth, earthly law takes its toll, and he ends up being forced to denounce himself. Forced to die in hard labor, but to join the people again...”

The novel accurately and multifacetedly depicts Petersburg and “current reality,” a wealth of social characters, “a whole world of class and professional types,” but this is reality transformed and revealed by the artist, whose gaze penetrates to the very essence of things. Intense philosophical debates, prophetic dreams, confessions and nightmares, grotesque caricature scenes that naturally turn into tragic, symbolic meetings of heroes, an apocalyptic image of a ghostly city are organically linked in Dostoevsky’s novel. The novel, according to the author himself, was “extremely successful” and raised his “reputation as a writer.”

In 1866, the expiring contract with the publisher forced Dostoevsky to simultaneously work on two novels - "" and "". Dostoevsky resorts to an unusual way of working: on October 4, 1866, stenographer A.G. comes to him. Snitkina; he began to dictate to her the novel “The Gambler,” which reflected the writer’s impressions of his acquaintance with Western Europe.

At the center of the novel is the clash of a “multi-developed, but unfinished in everything, distrustful and not daring not to believe, rebelling against authority and fearing them” “foreign Russian” with “complete” European types. The main character is “a poet in his own way, but the fact is that he himself is ashamed of this poetry, for he deeply feels its baseness, although the need for risk ennobles him in his own eyes.”

In the winter of 1867, Snitkina became Dostoevsky's wife. The new marriage was more successful. From April 1867 to July 1871, Dostoevsky and his wife lived abroad (Berlin, Dresden, Baden-Baden, Geneva, Milan, Florence). There, on February 22, 1868, a daughter, Sophia, was born, whose sudden death (May of the same year) Dostoevsky took seriously. On September 14, 1869, daughter Lyubov was born; later in Russia July 16, 1871 - son Fedor; Aug 12 1875 - son Alexey, who died at the age of three from an epileptic fit.

In 1867-1868 Dostoevsky worked on the novel ““. “The idea of ​​the novel,” the author pointed out, “is my old and favorite one, but it is so difficult that I did not dare take on it for a long time. The main idea of ​​the novel is to portray a positively beautiful person. There is nothing more difficult in the world than this, and especially now...”

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

The activities of the secret society “People’s Retribution”, the murder by five members of the organization of a student of the Petrovsky Agricultural Academy I.I. Ivanov - these are the events that formed the basis of “Demons” and received a philosophical and psychological interpretation in the novel. The writer’s attention was drawn to the circumstances of the murder, the ideological and organizational principles of the terrorists (“Catechism of a Revolutionary”), the figures of the accomplices in the crime, the personality of the head of the society S.G. Nechaeva.

In the process of working on the novel, the concept was modified many times. Initially, it is a direct response to events. The scope of the pamphlet subsequently expanded significantly, not only Nechaevites, but also figures of the 1860s, liberals of the 1840s, T.N. Granovsky, Petrashevites, Belinsky, V.S. Pecherin, A.I. Herzen, even the Decembrists and P.Ya. The Chaadaevs find themselves in the grotesque-tragic space of the novel.

Gradually, the novel develops into a critical depiction of the common “disease” experienced by Russia and Europe, a clear symptom of which is the “demonism” of Nechaev and the Nechaevites. At the center of the novel, its philosophical and ideological focus is not the sinister “swindler” Pyotr Verkhovensky (Nechaev), but the mysterious and demonic figure of Nikolai Stavrogin, who “allowed everything.”

In July 1871, Dostoevsky with his wife and daughter returned to St. Petersburg. The writer and his family spent the summer of 1872 in Staraya Russa; this city became the family's permanent summer residence. In 1876 Dostoevsky purchased a house here.

In 1872, the writer visited the “Wednesdays” of Prince V.P. Meshchersky, a supporter of counter-reforms and publisher of the newspaper-magazine “Citizen”. At the request of the publisher, supported by A. Maikov and Tyutchev, Dostoevsky in December 1872 agreed to take over the editorship of “Citizen”, stipulating in advance that he would assume these responsibilities temporarily.

In “The Citizen” (1873), Dostoevsky carried out the long-conceived idea of ​​“A Writer’s Diary” (a cycle of essays of a political, literary and memoir nature, united by the idea of ​​direct, personal communication with the reader), published a number of articles and notes (including political reviews “Foreign Events ").

Soon Dostoevsky began to feel burdened by the editor. work, the clashes with Meshchersky also became increasingly harsh, and the impossibility of turning the weekly into “an organ of people with independent convictions” became more obvious. In the spring of 1874, the writer refused to be an editor, although he occasionally collaborated with The Citizen and later. Due to deteriorating health (increased emphysema), in June 1847 he left for treatment in Ems and repeated trips there in 1875, 1876 and 1879.

In the mid-1870s. Dostoevsky's relationship with Saltykov-Shchedrin, interrupted at the height of the controversy between "Epoch" and "Sovremennik", and with Nekrasov, was renewed, at whose suggestion (1874) the writer published his new novel "" - "a novel of education" in "Otechestvennye zapiski" kind of “Fathers and Sons” by Dostoevsky.

The hero’s personality and worldview are formed in an environment of “general decay” and the collapse of the foundations of society, in the fight against the temptations of the age. The confession of a teenager analyzes the complex, contradictory, chaotic process of personality formation in an “ugly” world that has lost its “moral center,” the slow maturation of a new “idea” under the powerful influence of the “great thought” of the wanderer Versilov and the philosophy of life of the “pretty” wanderer Makar Dolgoruky.

"A Writer's Diary"

In con. 1875 Dostoevsky again returns to journalistic work - the “mono-magazine” “” (1876 and 1877), which had great success and allowed the writer to enter into a direct dialogue with corresponding readers.

The author defined the nature of the publication in this way: “A Writer’s Diary will be similar to a feuilleton, but with the difference that a month’s feuilleton naturally cannot be similar to a week’s feuilleton. I am not a chronicler: on the contrary, this is a perfect diary in the full sense of the word, that is, a report on what interested me most personally.”

“Diary” 1876-1877 - a fusion of journalistic articles, essays, feuilletons, “anti-critique”, memoirs and works of art. The “Diary” refracted Dostoevsky’s immediate, hot on the heels, impressions and opinions about the most important phenomena of European and Russian socio-political and cultural life, which worried Dostoevsky about legal, social, ethical-pedagogical, aesthetic and political problems.

A large place in the “Diary” is occupied by the writer’s attempts to see in the modern chaos the contours of a “new creation”, the foundations of an “emerging” life, to predict the appearance of “the coming future Russia of honest people who need only one truth.”
Criticism of bourgeois Europe and a deep analysis of the state of post-reform Russia are paradoxically combined in the “Diary” with polemics against various trends of social thought of the 1870s, from conservative utopias to populist and socialist ideas.

In the last years of his life, Dostoevsky's popularity increased. In 1877 he was elected a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In May 1879, the writer was invited to the International Literary Congress in London, at the session of which he was elected a member of the honorary committee of the international literary association.

Dostoevsky actively participates in the activities of the St. Petersburg Frebel Society. He often performs at literary and musical evenings and matinees, reading excerpts from his works and poems by Pushkin. In January 1877, Dostoevsky, impressed by Nekrasov’s “Last Songs,” visits the dying poet, often seeing him in November; On December 30, he makes a speech at Nekrasov’s funeral.

Dostoevsky's activities required direct acquaintance with “living life.” He visits (with the assistance of A.F. Koni) colonies for juvenile delinquents (1875) and the Orphanage (1876). In 1878, after the death of his beloved son Alyosha, he made a trip to Optina Pustyn, where he talked with Elder Ambrose. The writer is especially concerned about events in Russia.

In March 1878, Dostoevsky was at the trial of Vera Zasulich in the St. Petersburg District Court, and in April he responded to a letter from students asking to speak out about the beating of student demonstration participants by shopkeepers; In February 1880, he was present at the execution of I. O. Mlodetsky, who shot M. T. Loris-Melikov.

Intensive, diverse contacts with the surrounding reality, active journalistic and social activities served as multifaceted preparation for a new stage in the writer’s work. In "A Writer's Diary" the ideas and plot of his latest novel matured and were tested. At the end of 1877, Dostoevsky announced the termination of the Diary in connection with his intention to engage in “one artistic work that took shape... during these two years of publication of the Diary, inconspicuously and involuntarily.”

Novel "The Brothers Karamazov"

“” is the final work of the writer, in which many of the ideas of his work received artistic embodiment. The history of the Karamazovs, as the author wrote, is not just a family chronicle, but a typified and generalized “image of our modern reality, our modern intelligentsia Russia.”

The philosophy and psychology of “crime and punishment”, the dilemma of “socialism and Christianity”, the eternal struggle between “God” and “the devil” in the souls of people, the traditional theme of “fathers and sons” in classical Russian literature - these are the problems of the novel. In "" the criminal offense is connected with the great world "questions" and eternal artistic and philosophical themes.

In January 1881, Dostoevsky speaks at a meeting of the council of the Slavic Benevolent Society, works on the first issue of the renewed “Diary of a Writer,” learns the role of a schema-monk in “The Death of Ivan the Terrible” by A. K. Tolstoy for a home performance in S. A. Tolstoy’s salon, makes the decision “ definitely take part in the Pushkin evening” on January 29. He was going to “publish the “Diary of a Writer”... for two years, and then dreamed of writing the second part ““, where almost all the previous heroes would appear...”. On the night of January 25-26, Dostoevsky’s throat began to bleed. On the afternoon of January 28, Dostoevsky said goodbye to the children at 8:38 a.m. evening he died.

Death and funeral of the writer

On January 31, 1881, the writer’s funeral took place in front of a huge crowd of people. He is buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg.

Books on the biography of Dostoevsky F.M.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich // Russian biographical dictionary: in 25 volumes. - St. Petersburg-M., 1896-1918.

Pereverzev V.F., Riza-Zade F. Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich // Literary encyclopedia. - M.: Publishing House Kom. Acad., 1930. - T. 3.

Friedlander G. M. Dostoevsky // History of Russian literature. - USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute rus. lit. (Pushkin. House). - M.; L.: USSR Academy of Sciences, 1956. - T. 9. - P. 7-118.

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

Friedlander G. M. F. M. Dostoevsky // History of Russian literature. - USSR Academy of Sciences. Institute rus. lit. (Pushkin. House). - L.: Nauka., 1982. - T. 3. - P. 695-760.

Ornatskaya T.I., Tunimanov V.A. Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich // Russian writers. 1800-1917.

Biographical Dictionary.. - M.: Great Russian Encyclopedia, 1992. - T. 2. - P. 165-177. - 624 s. - ISBN 5-85270-064-9.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saraskina L.I. Dostoevsky. 2nd edition. Publishing house "Young Guard", 2013 Series: Life of remarkable people. — ISBN: 978-5-235-03458-7.