𝓓𝓸𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓮𝓿𝓼𝓴𝔂 𝓕𝓮𝓭𝓸𝓻 𝓜𝓲𝓱𝓪𝓲𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓲𝓬𝓱~

October 30 (November 11), 1821

Moscow, Russian Empire

February 9, 1881 (lived 59 years)

Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire

Russian Empire

Military Engineering and Technical University Nikolaev Engineering School

prose writer, translator, philosopher

1844-1880

realism

Russian

Corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences since 1877[4]. A classic of world literature, according to UNESCO, he is one of the most widely read writers in the world. Dostoevsky's collected works consist of 12 novels, four novellas, 16 short stories, and numerous other works.

The writer’s early works, like the story “Notes from the House of the Dead,” contributed to the emergence of the genre of psychological prose[5].

He was sentenced in the Petrashevites' case to four years of hard labor and served his sentence in the military city of Omsk[6].

After his death, Dostoevsky was recognized as a classic of Russian literature and one of the world's finest novelists. He is considered the first representative of personalism in Russia. The Russian writer's work influenced world literature, particularly the work of several Nobel Prize laureates in literature, philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre, as well as the development of various psychological theories[7] and existentialism. His 1864 novella "Notes from Underground" is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature.

The writer's most significant works include the novels of the "great Pentateuch" - "Crime and Punishment" (1866), "The Idiot" (1869), "The Demons" (1872), "The Adolescent" (1875), "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880) [8]. Many of Dostoevsky's famous works have been repeatedly adapted for film and theater, and ballet and opera productions have been staged.

The first Dostoevsky about whom there is reliable data is the writer's father, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky[21]. According to discovered documents, Mikhail Dostoevsky was born in 1789 in the village of Voitovtsy[22], and in 1802 he entered the theological seminary at the Shargorod Nikolaevsky Monastery[23]. In August 1809, Alexander I issued a decree on the appointment of an additional 120 people from theological academies and seminaries to the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy[24]. Mikhail Dostoevsky successfully passed the exams and on October 14, 1809, he joined the state-funded medical students at the Moscow branch of the academy[25]. During the Patriotic War of 1812, a fourth-grade student, Dostoevsky was first sent "for the care of the sick and wounded"[26], and later fought the typhus epidemic.[27] On August 5, 1813, he was promoted to physician of the 1st section of the Borodino Infantry Regiment[27], and on August 5, 1816, he was awarded the title of staff physician[28].

In April 1818, Mikhail Dostoevsky was transferred as a resident to a military hospital in Moscow[28], where, through a colleague, he soon met Maria Nechaeva, the daughter of a 3rd-guild merchant, Fyodor Timofeevich Nechaev, who came from the old townspeople of Borovsk in Kaluga province.[29] Nechaev's trade in the cloth row flourished until Napoleon's invasion, after which the merchant lost almost his entire fortune.[30] Maria's older sister, Alexandra, who was married to a wealthy first-class merchant of the 1st guild, Alexander Kumanin, subsequently played a role in the writer's fate.[31]

On January 14, 1820, Mikhail Dostoevsky and Maria Nechaeva were married in the church of the Moscow Military Hospital.[32] At the end of 1820, after the birth of his first son, Mikhail, Dostoevsky resigned from military service and from 1821 transferred to work at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor.[33] Despite its modest salaries, which even according to official admissions “do not sufficiently reward their labors and do not correspond to the necessary needs of each person in supporting himself and his family.”[34] The main rule of the institution was that “poverty has the first right” to receive assistance at any time of the day.[35] When they moved to Bozhedomka, the Dostoevskys were already expecting an addition to their family by the end of autumn.[36]

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30, 1821, in Moscow on Novaya Bozhedomka Street in the right wing of the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor of the Moscow Orphanage. The following entry remained in the "Birth Register..." of the Church of Sts. Peter and Paul at the hospital: "A baby was born in the house of the hospital for the poor, to staff doctor Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky—a son, Fyodor. Priest Vasily Ilyin officiated."[36][37] The name Fyodor was chosen, according to biographers, after his maternal grandfather, the merchant Fyodor Timofeevich Nechayev.[36][38] Dostoevsky was baptized on November 4. The godparents were the staff physician and court councilor Grigory Pavlovich Maslovich and Princess Praskovya Trofimovna Kozlovskaya, grandfather Fyodor Timofeevich Nechayev and Alexandra Feodorovna Kumanina[36][38]. “I came from a Russian and pious family. Ever since I can remember, I remember my parents’ love for me…”, Fyodor Mikhailovich recalled half a century later[36]. In the Dostoevsky family, patriarchal customs were strictly observed[36]. The household routine was subordinated to the father’s service. At six o’clock Mikhail Dostoevsky woke up, made his morning rounds at the hospital, and visited patients at their homes. After twelve there was lunch with the family, rest, and another reception at the hospital. “At 9 o’clock in the evening, no earlier and no later, the dinner table was usually set, and after dinner, we boys would stand before the icon; "They read prayers and, having said goodbye to their parents, went to bed. This kind of pastime was repeated daily," recalled Fyodor Mikhailovich[39]. The writer's earliest recollections date back to 1823-1824. According to the testimony of Dostoevsky's first biographer, Orest Fyodorovich Miller, such a memory was precisely the prayer before bed in front of the icons in the living room when guests were present[40][41]. After the birth of his sister Varvara at the end of 1822, Alyona Frolovna became the nanny in the Dostoevsky family, and the future writer retained the best memories of her: "She raised and nursed all of us children. She was then about forty-five years old, with a clear, cheerful disposition.

According to Andrei's memoirs, as children, the Dostoevskys listened to fairy tales about the "Firebird," "Alyosha Popovich," "Bluebeard," tales from "A Thousand and One Nights," and others.[44][45] At Easter, they watched the Podnovinsky booths with "clowns, clowns, strongmen, Petrushkas, and comedians." In the summer, they organized family evening walks to Maryina Roshcha. On Sundays and holidays, the Dostoevskys attended mass at the hospital church, and in the summer, their mother and children went to the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.[46][47] During their childhood, the Dostoevsky home was visited by their mother's sister, Alexandra Kumanina, and her husband, their grandfather, Fyodor Timofeevich Nechayev, and his second wife, Olga Yakovlevna, and their uncle, Mikhail Fyodorovich Nechayev.[48][49] Friends of the family were primarily my father's colleagues and their families: the steward of the Mariinsky Hospital, Fyodor Antonovich Markus, the families of the senior physician, Kuzma Alekseevich Shchirovsky, and the hospital resident, Arkady Alekseevich Alfonsky. Many of them later appeared in the writer's works and were mentioned in his unfulfilled plans.[49]

The Dostoevsky family's lifestyle encouraged the development of imagination and curiosity.[50] Later, in his memoirs, the writer called his parents, who strove to escape the mundane and ordinary, "the best, most progressive people."[51] At family gatherings in the living room, they read aloud Karamzin, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, Pushkin, Polevoy, and Radcliffe. Fyodor Mikhailovich later particularly emphasized his father's reading of The History of the Russian State: "I was only ten years old when I already knew almost all the main episodes of Russian history."[52][53] Maria Feodorovna taught the children to read.[54] According to his memoirs, they began teaching the children early: "at the age of four, they would sit them down with a book and repeat: 'Study!'"[50]. They began with cheap, popular fairy tales about Bova Korolevich and Yeruslan Lazarevich, tales of the Battle of Kulikovo, and stories about Balakirev the Jester and Yermak.[54] The first serious book from which children learned to read was "One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments." Half a century later, Dostoevsky managed to find a childhood edition, which he subsequently "cherished <…> as a sacred relic," saying that this book was "one of the first that struck me in life; I was still almost a baby!"[54][55].

Along with the rank of collegiate assessor, in the spring of 1827, Mikhail Andreevich received the right to hereditary nobility[51]; on June 28, 1828, the Dostoevskys became a noble family, recorded in Part III of the genealogical book of the nobility of the Moscow province[51][56], which allowed them to acquire their own estate, where the large family could spend the summer months.[57] In the summer of 1831, Mikhail Andreevich, having paid about 30 thousand rubles in banknotes from accumulated and borrowed funds, acquired the village of Darovoe in the Kashira district of the Tula province, 150 km from Moscow. The lands in this area were poor, his eleven peasant households were poor, and the manor house was a small, wicker, clay-bound outbuilding with three rooms.

Due to the remaining six farmsteads in the village, belonging to a neighbor, a dispute broke out almost immediately, escalating into litigation.[58][59] Moreover, in the spring of 1832, due to the fault of one of the peasants, a fire broke out in Darovoye, the total losses from which amounted to about 9 thousand rubles. Later, the writer recalled: “it turned out that everything had burned down, everything to the ground <…> At first, fear had imagined complete ruin”[60][61]. The distribution of money to the affected peasants contributed to the fact that by the end of the summer “the village <…> was built up to the nines”, but it was only in 1833 that the disputed Cheremoshnya was acquired, with the mortgage of Darovoye.[60][62] In the summer of 1832, the children first became acquainted with rural Russia. The Dostoevskys' house was located in a large, shady linden grove adjacent to the Brykovo birch grove, "very dense and with a rather gloomy and wild landscape." Andrei Mikhailovich recalled that "brother Fedya loved the Brykovo grove from the very beginning," and "the peasants, especially the women, loved them very much." The impressions of this trip were later reflected, in particular, in the novels Poor Folk, Demons, and A Writer's Diary.[60][63]

After returning to Moscow, Mikhail and Fyodor began their years of education. Initially, their father intended to send his older sons to the Moscow University Noble Boarding School, but changed his mind due to its transformation into a gymnasium, which practiced corporal punishment.[64] Despite Mikhail Andreevich's impatient, hot-tempered, and demanding nature, in the Dostoevsky family "it was customary to treat children very humanely <…> they never punished anyone corporally."[65] The older children studied with teachers. The Law of God, Russian language, literature, arithmetic, and geography were taught by I. V. Khinkovsky, a visiting deacon from the Catherine Institute.[65][66] They went daily to half-board with N. I. Drashusov, a teacher from the Alexander and Catherine Institutes, who taught the brothers French.

In September 1834, Fyodor and Mikhail Dostoevsky entered the Chermak Boarding School on Novaya Basmannaya Street, considered one of the best private educational institutions in Moscow.[67][72] Tuition was expensive, but the Kumanins provided assistance. The daily routine at the school was strict. Students on full board only came home on weekends. They were woken by the bell at six in the morning, or at seven in the winter; after prayers and breakfast, they studied until twelve; after lunch, they studied again from two to six; from seven to ten they repeated their lessons, after which they had dinner and went to bed. The full course consisted of three classes, each lasting 11 months. They taught mathematics, rhetoric, geography, history, physics, logic, Russian, Greek, Latin, German, English, French, calligraphy, drawing, and even dancing. Leonty Chermak tried to create the illusion of family life: “he ate at the same table with his students and treated them kindly, like his own sons,” he was attentive to all the needs of the children, and looked after their health[73][74].

According to the memoirs of those who studied at the time, Fyodor Dostoevsky was "a serious, thoughtful boy, fair-haired, with a pale face. He was little interested in games: during recreational periods, he hardly put down his books, spending the rest of his free time in conversation with older students."[74] In the winter of 1835, Dostoevsky supposedly suffered his first attack of epilepsy. Among the teachers at the boarding school, Fyodor and Mikhail particularly singled out the Russian language teacher Nikolai Ivanovich Bilevich, who "simply became their idol, since they remembered him at every step." Bilevich studied at the same time as Gogol, attended literary gatherings, wrote poetry, and translated Schiller. According to Dostoevsky's biographers, the teacher could draw the students' attention to current literary events and the work of Gogol, and Bilevich, a writer, contributed to Dostoevsky beginning to think about literature as a profession.

In May 1837, their father took their brothers Mikhail and Fyodor to St. Petersburg and enrolled them in K. F. Kostomarov's preparatory boarding school to prepare them for admission to the Main Engineering School.[85] Mikhail and Fyodor Dostoevsky desired to pursue literature, but their father believed that writing would not provide a future for his older sons and insisted that they enroll in the engineering school, where service upon graduation would guarantee financial well-being. In A Writer's Diary, Dostoevsky recalled how, on the way to St. Petersburg, he and his brother "dreamed only of poetry and poets," and "while I was constantly composing a novel about Venetian life in my mind."[86] The elder brother was not accepted into the school. The younger brother studied with difficulty, feeling no vocation for future service. That same year, their father, with the rank of collegiate councillor, left the service (during which he was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir, 4th degree – 1829 and St. Anne, 2nd degree – 1832[87]) and settled in Darovoye, where in 1839, under circumstances that are still not fully clarified, he died.

Dostoevsky devoted all his free time to reading the works of Homer, Corneille, Racine, Balzac, Hugo, Goethe, Hoffmann, Schiller, Shakespeare, Byron, and, among Russian authors, Derzhavin, Lermontov, Gogol, and he knew almost all of Pushkin's works by heart. According to the memoirs of the Russian geographer Semenov-Tyan-Shansky[88], Dostoevsky was "more educated than many Russian writers of his time, such as Nekrasov, Panaev, Grigorovich, Pleshcheyev, and even Gogol himself."[89]

Inspired by what he had read, the young man took his first steps in literary creativity at night. In the autumn of 1838, his fellow students at the Engineering School, influenced by Dostoevsky, organized a literary circle, which included I. I. Berezhetsky[90], N. I. Vitkovsky, A. N. Beketov, and D. V. Grigorovich. In June 1839, Fyodor received the tragic news of his father's sudden death, caused by a stroke provoked by a conflict with his own peasants.

After graduating from college in 1843, Dostoevsky was enlisted as a field engineer-second lieutenant in the St. Petersburg engineering team, but already at the beginning of the summer of the following year, having decided to devote himself entirely to literature, he resigned and on October 19, 1844, was discharged from military service with the rank of lieutenant.

While still studying at the school, from 1840 to 1842 Dostoevsky worked on the dramas Mary Stuart and Boris Godunov, excerpts from which he read to his brother in 1841.[94] In January 1844, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother that he had completed the drama The Jew Yankel.[95] These first youthful works have not survived. In late 1843 and early 1844, Dostoevsky translated Eugène Sue's novel Matilda and, a little later, George Sand's novel The Last of the Aldini, simultaneously beginning work on his own novel Poor Folk.[96] Both translations were unfinished. At the same time, Dostoevsky wrote short stories that were never finished. Less than a year before his dismissal from military service, in January 1844, Dostoevsky completed his first translation into Russian of Balzac's novel Eugénie Grandet[97], published in the magazine Repertoire and Pantheon in 1844 without indicating the translator's name.[98] At the end of May 1845, the aspiring writer completed his first novel, Poor Folk.[4] Through the mediation of D. V. Grigorovich[99], N. A. Nekrasov and V. G. Belinsky[94] became familiar with the manuscript. "Furious Vissarion" initially praised this work highly.[100] Dostoevsky was warmly welcomed into Belinsky's circle[101] and became famous before the publication of the novel by N. A. Nekrasov in January 1846. Everyone started talking about the "new Gogol." However, his next work, The Double[102], was met with incomprehension. According to D. V. Grigorovich, the enthusiastic recognition and elevation of Dostoevsky "almost to the level of genius" gave way to disappointment and discontent. Belinsky reversed his initial favorable attitude toward the aspiring writer. Critics of the "natural school"[103] wrote sarcastically of Dostoevsky as a newly discovered and unrecognized genius. Belinsky failed to appreciate the innovation of "The Double," which M. M. Bakhtin wrote about only many years later. Besides "the furious Vissarion," only the up-and-coming and promising critic V. N. Maikov gave a positive assessment of Dostoevsky's first two works.

Dostoevsky’s close relations with Belinsky’s circle ended in a rupture after a clash with I. S. Turgenev[106] at the end of 1846. At the same time, Dostoevsky finally fell out with the editors of Sovremennik, represented by N. A. Nekrasov[4], and began publishing in A. A. Kraevsky’s Otechestvennye Zapiski[107].

Dostoevsky's resounding fame allowed him to significantly expand his circle of acquaintances. Many of his acquaintances became prototypes for the characters in his future works, while others formed long-standing friendships, shared ideological views, and shared literary and journalism connections. In January–February 1846, Dostoevsky, at the invitation of the critic V. N. Maikov, attended N. A. Maikov's literary salon,[108] where he met I. A. Goncharov.[109] Aleksei Nikolaevich Beketov, with whom Dostoevsky had studied at the Engineering School, introduced the writer to his brothers.[110] From the end of winter to the beginning of spring 1846, Dostoevsky became a member of the literary and philosophical circle of the Beketov brothers (Alexei, Andrei[111] and Nikolai), which included the poet A. N. Maikov, the critic V. N. Maikov, A. N. Pleshcheyev[112], the writer’s friend and doctor S. D. Yanovsky, D. V. Grigorovich and others. In the autumn of the same year, the members of this circle set up an “association” with a common household, which existed until February 1847. In the circle of new acquaintances, Dostoevsky found true friends who helped the writer to rediscover himself after a falling out with the members of Belinsky’s circle. On November 26, 1846, Dostoevsky wrote to his brother Mikhail that his good friends the Beketovs and others "cured me with their company." In the spring of 1846, A. N. Pleshcheyev introduced Dostoevsky to M. V. Petrashevsky, an admirer of Charles Fourier.[114][115] However, Dostoevsky began attending Petrashevsky's "Fridays" from the end of January 1847, where the main issues discussed were freedom of printing, changes in legal proceedings, and the emancipation of the serfs. Several independent circles existed among the Petrashevsky group.

In the spring of 1849, Dostoevsky attended the literary and musical circle of S. F. Durov[116], which consisted of members of the "Fridays" who had differed from Petrashevsky on political views. In the autumn of 1848, Dostoevsky met N. A. Speshnev, who called himself a communist, around whom seven of the most radical Petrashevskyites soon rallied, forming a special secret society. Dostoevsky became a member of this society, the goal of which was to create an illegal printing house and carry out a revolution in Russia[117]. In S. F. Durov's circle, Dostoevsky read the banned "Letter from Belinsky to Gogol"[94] several times. Soon after the publication of White Nights[118], early in the morning of April 23, 1849, the writer, along with many Petrashevskyites, was arrested[117] and spent 8 months in prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress[4]. The Petrashevsky investigation remained unaware of the existence of Speshnev's Seven. This became known many years later from the memoirs of the poet A. N. Maikov, after Dostoevsky's death.[119] During interrogations, Dostoevsky provided investigators with a minimum of incriminating information.

At the beginning of his literary work, the young Dostoevsky suffered more from an excess of ideas and plots than from a lack of material.

Although Dostoevsky denied the charges brought against him, the court found him "one of the most serious criminals"[131][132] for reading and "for failing to report the distribution of a criminal letter about religion and the government by the writer Belinsky."[133] On November 13, 1849, the Military Judicial Commission sentenced F. M. Dostoevsky to the deprivation of all property rights and "the death penalty by firing squad."[134] On November 19, Dostoevsky's death sentence was overturned by the conclusion of the General Auditorate "due to the inconsistency of the sentence with the guilt of the convicted person," and he was sentenced to eight years of hard labor.[135] At the end of November, Emperor Nicholas I, while approving the sentence prepared by the General Auditorate for the Petrashevsky group, replaced Dostoevsky's eight-year term of hard labor with four years, followed by military service as a private.[136]

On December 22, 1849 (January 3, 1850), the sentence of "death by firing squad" with a sword broken over the head was read to the Petrashevsky Guards on Semyonovsky Square, followed by a stay of execution and a pardon.[137] During the mock execution, the pardon and the imposition of a sentence of hard labor were announced at the last moment. One of those sentenced to death, Nikolai Grigoriev, went mad. The feelings that Dostoevsky may have experienced before his execution are reflected in one of Prince Myshkin's monologues in the novel The Idiot.[137] Most likely, the writer's political views began to change while still in the Peter and Paul Fortress, while his religious views were based on the worldview of Orthodoxy. During a short stay in Tobolsk from January 9 to 20, 1850, on the way to the place of penal servitude, the wives of the exiled Decembrists Zh. A. Muravyov[141], P. E. Annenkov[142] and N. D. Fonvizin[143] arranged a meeting between the writer and other members of the Petrashevsky group being transported and, through Captain Smolkov[144], gave each of them a Gospel[145] with money[146] (10 rubles) discreetly glued into the binding. Dostoevsky kept his copy of the Gospel throughout his life as a relic.

Dostoevsky spent the next four years in penal servitude in Omsk.[131] Apart from Dostoevsky, only one other Russian writer of the 19th century, N. G. Chernyshevsky, went through the harsh school of penal servitude. Prisoners were deprived of the right to correspondence, but while in the infirmary, the writer was able to secretly write in the so-called "Siberian Notebook" ("my penal notebook"[4]). The impressions of his time in prison were later reflected in the story "Notes from the House of the Dead". It took Dostoevsky years to overcome the hostile alienation towards himself as a nobleman, after which the prisoners began to accept him as one of their own. The writer's first biographer, O. F. Miller[148], believed that penal servitude became "a lesson in popular truth for Dostoevsky". In 1850, excerpts from the novel "Poor Folk" and a positive review of it were published in the Polish journal "Warsaw Library".[149] The first medical diagnosis of his illness as epilepsy [150][151] dates back to the writer’s time in penal servitude, which is evident from the attached testimony of the physician Ermakov to Dostoevsky’s 1858 petition for resignation addressed to Alexander II [152].

After his release from prison, Dostoevsky spent about a month in Omsk, where he met and became friends with Shokan Valikhanov[153], the future famous Kazakh traveler and ethnographer. At the end of February 1854, Dostoevsky was sent as a private to the 7th Siberian Line Battalion in Semipalatinsk[94]. There, in the spring of that year, he began an affair with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, who was married to a local official, Alexander Ivanovich Isaev, a hardened drunkard. After some time, Isaev was transferred to the position of tavern keeper in Kuznetsk[155]. On August 14, 1855, Fyodor Mikhailovich received a letter from Kuznetsk: M. D. Isaeva's husband had died after a long illness.[156]

After the death of Emperor Nicholas I on February 18, 1855, Dostoevsky wrote a loyal poem[157] dedicated to his widow, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.

Thanks to the petition of the commander of the separate Siberian corps, General of Infantry G. Kh. Gasfort[158][159], Dostoevsky was promoted to non-commissioned officer in accordance with the clause of the order of the Minister of War in connection with the manifesto of March 27, 1855, marking the beginning of the reign of Alexander II and the granting of privileges and favors to a number of convicted criminals.[160] Hoping for a pardon from the new Emperor Alexander II, Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote a letter to his old acquaintance, the hero of the Sevastopol defense, Adjutant General Eduard Ivanovich Totleben[161], asking him to intercede on his behalf with the Emperor. This letter was delivered to St. Petersburg by the writer's friend, Baron Alexander Yegorovich Wrangel[162], who published his memoirs after Dostoevsky's death.[163] E. I. Totleben obtained a certain pardon at a personal audience with the Emperor.[164] On the day of the coronation of Alexander II, August 26, 1856, a pardon was announced for the former Petrashevskyites.[165] However, Alexander II ordered that the writer be placed under secret surveillance until he was fully convinced of his reliability.[155] On October 20, 1856, Dostoevsky was promoted to ensign.[156]

On February 6, 1857, Dostoevsky married Maria Isaeva in a Russian Orthodox church in Kuznetsk.[166][167] A week after the wedding, the newlyweds set off for Semipalatinsk and stayed for four days in Barnaul with P. P. Semyonov, where Dostoevsky suffered an epileptic seizure.[168] Contrary to Dostoevsky's expectations, this marriage was not a happy one. Dostoevsky was pardoned[169] (that is, a full amnesty and permission to publish) by imperial decree on April 17, 1857, according to which the rights of nobility were returned to both the Decembrists and all the Petrashevskyites. The period of imprisonment and military service was a turning point in Dostoevsky's life: from a still uncertain "seeker of truth in man," he turned into a deeply religious man, whose only ideal for the rest of his life was Jesus Christ.

On June 30, 1859, Dostoevsky was issued a temporary ticket[174] permitting him to travel to Tver, and on July 2, the writer left Semipalatinsk.[175] At the end of December 1859, Dostoevsky, his wife, and his adopted son Pavel returned to St. Petersburg.[176] However, secret surveillance of the writer continued until the mid-1870s. Dostoevsky was released from police surveillance on July 9, 1875.[177]

In 1860, a two-volume collection of Dostoevsky's works was published.[178] However, since his contemporaries were unable to adequately evaluate the stories "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants," Dostoevsky needed a second high-profile literary debut, which was the publication of "Notes from the House of the Dead"[179] (first published in full in the magazine "Time," 1861-1862). This innovative work, the precise definition of whose genre literary scholars have still not been able to achieve, stunned readers in Russia. For his contemporaries, "Notes" was a revelation. Before Dostoevsky, no one had touched on the theme of depicting the life of convicts.[180] This work alone was enough for the writer to take his rightful place in both Russian and world literature. According to A. I. Herzen[181], in "Notes from the House of the Dead," Dostoevsky appeared as a Russian Dante descending into hell. A. I. Herzen compared "Notes" to Michelangelo's fresco "The Last Judgment"[180] and attempted to translate the writer's work into English, but due to the complexity of the translation, the publication was not carried out. In the summer of 1862, Dostoevsky undertook his first trip abroad, visiting Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Italy, and Austria. Despite the fact that the main purpose of the trip was treatment at German resorts, in Baden-Baden the writer became engrossed in the ruinous game of roulette[190] and experienced a constant need for money. Dostoevsky spent part of his second trip to Europe in the summer of 1863 with the young emancipated woman Apollinaria Suslova[191] (“an infernal woman” according to the writer[192]), whom he also met in 1865 in Wiesbaden.

The writer was the second child in a large family.

In his youth, Dostoevsky was educated at an elite private boarding school in Moscow, then enrolled in the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg. The writer later claimed that this education ruined his future.

Young Dostoevsky was deeply affected by Pushkin's death, which occurred several months after the death of his mother.

Dostoevsky's literary debut was the novel "Eugénie Grandet." He was the first to translate Balzac's novel into Russian.

Dostoevsky was often short of money, which is why he created Crime and Punishment. He wrote a letter to Katkov, the editor of the magazine Russky Vestnik, outlining the plot of his future novel and receiving a 300-ruble advance.

Dostoevsky was a member of the Petrashevsky circle, for which he was sentenced to death. Before the execution, when it seemed certain death awaited all the circle members, the writer was pardoned and sent to hard labor.

Dostoevsky was a gambler and could easily lose his wife's clothes and belongings at roulette.

The writer was a great tea lover. He preferred a strong and sweet drink.

Dostoevsky did not invent the bloody plots that occur in his novels; he took information from real crime reports.

Fyodor Dostoevsky knew several languages: French, German, English, Italian, as well as Latin and ancient Greek, and he read books in these languages ​​fluently.

The attacks of epilepsy greatly weakened Fyodor Mikhailovich's memory, especially his memory for names and faces. He made many enemies because he couldn't recognize people by sight, and when someone called his name, he was completely unable to identify them without detailed questions. This offended people, who, forgetting or unaware of his illness, considered him arrogant, and his forgetfulness deliberate, intended to insult him.

Fyodor Mikhailovich's forgetfulness of even the most ordinary and familiar names and surnames sometimes put him in awkward situations: I recall how my husband once went to our Dresden consulate to witness my signature on some power of attorney (I myself was unable to go due to illness). Seeing from the window that Fyodor Mikhailovich was hastily returning home, I went to meet him. He entered, agitated, and asked me angrily:

• Anya, what's your name? What's your last name?

“Dostoevskaya,” I answered embarrassedly, surprised by such a strange question.

"I know it's Dostoevskaya, but what's your maiden name? They asked me at the consulate what your birth name was, and I forgot, so I have to go there a second time. The officials, I think, laughed at me for forgetting my wife's last name. Write it down on your card for me, or I'll forget it again on the way!"

Such cases were not uncommon in the life of Fyodor Mikhailovich and, unfortunately, brought him many enemies.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was not known for his bad habits, but his life did include epilepsy, gambling addiction, smoking, and excessive tea consumption. Epilepsy: Epilepsy (called "falling sickness" at the time) was not a harmful habit, but it affected the writer's life and work. Some manifestations: Convulsions, which were observed frequently. After the attacks, Dostoevsky became capricious, irritable, and demanding. The disease was reflected in his work: almost every novel contains a character suffering from epilepsy. Gambling addiction: Dostoevsky was obsessed with gambling, especially roulette. Some manifestations: Sometimes luck smiled on him, and he won decent sums, but more often than not he left the casino with nothing. His passion for gambling was so strong that Dostoevsky could spend all his money down to the last ruble. Because of this, the writer constantly fell into debt. To pay it off, he had to sell everything: wedding rings, antiques, and once even his wife's wedding dress and dowry. Gambling addiction influenced his creativity: Dostoevsky wrote the novel The Gambler, drawing on his own experience as a gambler, in six weeks to pay off his gambling debts. Smoking: Dostoevsky was a heavy smoker. Some features: The cigarette was an invariable attribute and stimulus for creativity for the writer. Dostoevsky lit another cigarette without even having time to put out the previous one. The writer filled his cigarettes with tobacco himself and used a pen insert for this purpose. Dostoevsky quit smoking only in 1880, shortly before his death from emphysema.

Excessive tea consumption: Dostoevsky loved strong, sweet black tea. According to contemporaries, he could sip cup after cup throughout the day, especially when he was working on manuscripts in full swing. Each time, the writer poured himself a new glass of tea, since he could not entrust this important task to anyone else. Dostoevsky was so demanding about the preparation of tea that even his wife Anna Grigoryevna eventually gave up trying to please him.

The illness was not only inspiration but also suffering. Dostoevsky complained that the attacks impaired his memory, preventing him from recognizing familiar faces and retaining details of the past. Work became more difficult: the illness required rest and periods of weakness; a nocturnal lifestyle and lack of sleep exacerbated the condition. Thus, it can be said that the illness left its mark on the way the writer wrote, but Dostoevsky was a brilliant writer “not thanks to, but in spite of” the illness.