№ 1, 2019 year

The role of Italy in the work and biography of Fedor Dostoevsky is indisputably great, independently of the not so long time that he passed in this country. The writer visited Italy three times (in 1862, 1863 and 1868–69) and each journey took on a specific importance and peculiar meaning in his work and biography. Moreover, since his youth Dostoevsky cultivated ties with Italy: he loved Renaissance painting and the Italian opera, he read about the main figures of the Italian history, the country’s political situation and its relation to the religious stances connected with the “holy city” of Rome and the Catholicism. Nonetheless, the links between Dostoevsky and Italy have not yet become a subject of research for a monographic work and therefore his three sojourns in the country hide lots of undetermined aspects. First of all, the present annotations open up a series of questions about the situation of the biographical researches that pertain the Italian period of the writer’s life. Secondly, they are an introduction to the subsequent article by Valentina Supino who has discovered new interesting facts about the last writer’s stay in Florence.Dostoevsky in Italy, Florence, Catholicism and Orthodoxy, Dostoevsky Studies in Italy

The article presents a new series of newly discovered facts about the last period that F. M. Dostoevsky spent in Florence, Italy (1868–1869). The search and study of the archives has unfolded a series of documents and maps that shed light on important and never published facts concerning the writer’s life and his literary activity, putting forwards new assumptions about the period in which his plan of a novel “Atheism” arose. To begin with, we know that the house in Guicciardini Street, where Dostoevsky lived during the first months of his last stay in Florence, has not been demolished completely, leaving its facade intact up to nowadays. Secondly, a certificate has been found: in it there is the address of another florentine house, that has never been mentioned before. Thanks to another archive discovery, the precise identification of the writer’s last address at the Mercato del Porcellino has been possible. From two parish archives, the personal notes of two Catholic priests also came to light and in them the request of a certain Russian Orthodox believer for a Mass and a Benediction is reported: in both of these cases, the addresses given by the enquiring Russian, coincide with the houses in which Dostoevsky lived at the time.Dostoevsky, Florence, Orthodoxy and Catholicism, “Atheism” (Plan)

The memoirs of A. E. Riesenkampf about the young years of F. M. Dostoevsky written in 1881 have not been completely published up to now. The article presents the history and analysis of the existent publications and gives the excerpts having been excised for different reasons by the first publishers but containing numerous unknown details and facts. They describe the life circumstances, character and the peculiarities of the behaviour, preferences and interests of Dostoevsky, his contacts and acquaintances in 1838–1843, and result in updating the knowledge of the emerging author’s life. The article also introduces the facts related to the biography of the writer’s elder brother M. M. Dostoevsky. An opinion about the formation of the artistic method of Dostoevsky in the period of his development as a writer is put forward in the article as well as a supposition that two episodes of Riesenkampf’s memoirs were written on the basis of Dostoevsky’s stories.A. E. Riesenkampf, F. M. Dostoevsky, M. M. Dostoevsky, biography, memoirs, O. F. Miller, G. F. Kogan

This article follows the previous publication «“The Kumanin Heritage Case” in life and works of F. M. Dostoevsky» (“The Unknown Dostoevsky” journal, 2018, no. 1, pp. 32–43), and studies moral and legal aspects of the writer’s biography, related to the “Kumanin heritage case”. It means his tense relations with co-inheritors, particularly with his siblings and blood relatives on his mother’s side of the family as well as with the lawyers and will executors of A. F. Kumanina. Disputes and conflicts among them were caused by both the particularities of the inheritance law of that time resulting in the testament revision, and ethical aspects. In this regard, the attitude of Dostoevsky in a long-lasting lawsuit is exposed to a detailed examination based on documentary and archival sources. Despite the fact of his participation in it, he followed the principle of high morals but not of “profits” or “law”.F. M. Dostoevsky, A. F. Kumanina, testament, lawsuit, “fateful heritage”, ethics, world of law, parish-expense books

The research is the continuation of the previous investigations devoted to the attribution of an anonymous author of the publication “Pictures from officer life” in issue no. 41 of “Grazhdanin” in 1873. He was one of Dostoevsky’s correspondents Nikolay Aleksandrovich Shakhov, the officer of the 1st Labe Guard of the Ekaterinoslav Regiment of His Majesty. In course of further researches in Russian archives new materials for the biography of the author who attracted attention of the editors of “Grazhdanin” Fedor Dostoevsky were found. The revealed sources of an epistolary and official character supplement Nikolay Shakhov’s biography. This article expands the idea of him as about one of Dostoevsky’s correspondents, the author of the daily, as well as about a remarkable individual who achieved wide popularity thanks to his active public work as a philanthropist.Daily “Grazhdanin”, Fedor Dostoevsky, Nikolay Shakhov, correspondent, anonymous author, pseudonym, genealogy, family tree, nobility, philanthropist

The article analyses the foreign correspondence of the Polish scientist and writer A.-H. Kirkor, published anonymously in 1874 in “Grazhdanin” under the heading “Slavic lands”: a complete corpus of letters of 1873–1875 by V. F. Putsykovich, Editorial Secretary of “Grazhdanin” (who became later its editor) addressed to A.-H. Kirkor and discovered in the Manuscript Fund of the Krakow Jagiellonski Library (Biblioteka Jagiellońska w Krakowie), was introduced into scientific use and published. The article studies the circumstances of the cooperation of A.-H. Kirkor in 1874 with the editors of the weekly journal “Grazhdanin”. Based on the analysis of the already known and first published epistolary sources, it is established that A.-H. Kirkor was concealing his real name from the editorial office of “Grazhdanin”, appearing in letters by the name of Ivan Alekseevich Slivov. The article makes attempts to analyze possible motives of this hoax.“Grazhdanin”, anonymous author, A.-H. Kirkor, V. F. Putsykovich, Slavic question, correspondence, epistolary, hoax

The article describes the notebooks of A. G. Dostoevskaya kept in the Manuscript Department of the State Literary Museum Fund. These notebooks contain the articles and reviews about the work of F. M. Dostoevsky from the periodicals since 1846. A Part of these materials were copied by Anna Dostoevskaya with her own hand, the other materials, prepared mainly after 1881, are stationery books with some clippings pasted in them. The article makes comparison of the articles included in the notebook with those recorded in the bibliographic indexes of A. G. Dostoevskaya and S. V. Belov, and as a result, reveals some undocumented publications. Despite the fragmentary extracts from newspapers, A. G. Dostoevskaya was guided by certain principles of collecting material and its compositional design, sought the breadth of the geographical coverage of critical reviews on the writer and created rahter a complete and objective picture of newspaper comments on the artistic and journalistic work of F. M. Dostoevsky. The preserved materials reveal one of A. G. Dostoevskaya’s unknown plans to create in the “Museum of memory” a section with the code of criticism devoted to the analysis of creativity of the great writer.F. M. Dostoevsky, A. G. Dostoevskaya, source studies, newspaper criticism, notebooks, archivistics

The article deals with the unique materials kept in the Dostoevsky archive, namely the documents containing shorthand notes of the writer’s wife. There is a description of the transcripts deciphered by Ceciliya Poshemanskaya as well as of those that are not deciphered yet. It is defined that the famous Leningrad stenographer had an unknown predecessor who had deciphered the letter of Anna Dostoevskaya addressed to S. A. Kashina. The main subject of the study became the unknown shorthand records on the back of draft letters of Anna Dostoevskaya to V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. For the first time they have been deciphered and proved to be two draft letters of Anna Dostoevskaya. The study involved the third transcript, deciphered by C. Poshemanskaya, but left non-attributed. All three transcripts date back to May 1911 and have a common theme of the return of Leo Tolstoy’s letter ended up in the hands of Dostoevsky shortly before his death and kept in the Dostoevsky archive for 30 years. In her verbatim draft Anna Dostoevskaya indicates the number of pages of the returned letter by Tolstoy. It coincides with the number of pages of the letter dated back to February 2-3, 1880 and confirms the hypothesis of the researchers about what kind of Tolstoy’s letter shocked Dostoevsky. In this letter Tolstoy expressed his “confession of faith” and new mindsets that aroused the interest of the author of “The Brothers Karamazov”. The letter was given to Dostoevsky by Countess A. A. Tolstaya who was Leo Tolstoy’s opponent in the matter of faith. On May 6, 1911 Dostoevsky’s widow gave back the letter to the publishers of Tolstoy’s legacy. Their addressees are M. N. Galkin-Vraskoy, executor of the estate of A. A. Tolstaya, and Vs. I. Sreznevsky, scientific Secretary of the Manuscripts Department of the Library of the Academy of Sciences and publisher of Tosltoy’s legacy. This study presents the first decipherment of Anna Dostoevskaya’s transcripts after a half-century break. The established facts reveal the history of Tolstoy’s letter read by Dostoevsky, and contribute to the systematization and the most detailed description of the materials of the Dostoevsky archive.F. M. Dostoevsky, Anna Dostoevskaya, shorthand, transcript, archive, writing, confession of faith, Leo Tolstoy, M. N. Galkin-Vraskoy, S. A. Stakhovich, A. A. Shakhmatov, Vs. I. Sreznevsky, A. G. Zenkovich

The article studies the paternal and maternal relatives of Anna Grigorievna, Dostoevsky’s wife (the Snitkins and the Miltopeus correspondingly). In the Funds of the Central State Historical Archive of Saint Petersburg there were found church books and funeral lists concerning 68 representatives of the dynasty. Based on these data the genealogical table of six generations of the Snitkin family and of three generations of the Miltopeus family was composed. The revealed facts allow specifying, rectifying and updating some biographical data of Dostoevsky’s relatives and the dates of some events. They may be used while describing Dostoevsky’s acquaintances and his family’s manuscripts, commenting on their correspondence, diaries and memoirs for a scientific purpose. The collected data are systematized in a documented genealogical table and create an integral image of one family, the Snitkins, whose representatives were in an immediate surrounding of the writer. Anna Grigorievna, F. M. Dostoevsky’s loyal life partner, assistant and keeper of his memory, belonged to the same family.source studies, archives, collection of letters, genealogy, commenting, the Dostoevskys, the Snitkins, the Miltopeus, the Svatkovskys

The article studies the problem of attribution of the known quotation that is considered to belong to I. A. Bunin: "By Dostoevsky Christ has a finger in every pie". It is thought that V. V. Nabokov came up with the quotation in his American lectures on Russian literature referring to Bunin. The analysis of sources allows specifying the circumstances of the origins of that spontaneous hoax that became a result of inevitable distortions and errors while interpreting the text and translating it from Russian into English and from English into Russian. In his lectures Nabokov attributed the main character’s words to Bunin and gave their free interpretation in English. The idiomatic expression "spilling Jesus all over the place", used by Nabokov in its turn, caused certain difficulties in translation into the Russian language and had two variants one of which created the hoax. Neither Bunin nor Nabokov said the words attributed to them now. They criticized Dostoevsky but with other words and expressions. The so called “shocking” translation of the idiom of V. V. Nabokov, which was later corrected, did the trick in the creation of the hoax. It is advisable to reject the citation of that doubtful statement.V. V. Nabokov, I. A. Bunin, F. M. Dostoevsky, quotation, idiomatic expression, translation, hoax, attribution