№ 1, 2021 year

The year 2021 marks the 200th anniversary of Dostoevsky’s birth and the 140th anniversary of his immortality. Literary anniversaries became a part of the Russian culture relatively recently. The celebration is usually held in memory of those who had already found eternity. The attempt to celebrate the tercentenary of Shakespeare (1864) and the centenary of Pushkin’s birth in 1899 marked the beginning of a new cultural tradition. The dates of literary anniversaries in the 20th century reflect the struggle between these trends: birthdays are gradually replacing memorial days. Anniversaries tend to be an occasion not only for understanding a writer’s significance in the modern world, but also for analyzing the trends and prospects of studying their legacy. The article provides an overview of the past anniversaries of Dostoevsky in Russia and an analysis of several articles from the first issue of The Unknown Dostoevsky journal for 2021. The special feature of Dostoevsky’s bicentennial anniversary is the competition held by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR) “Sources and methods in the study of the legacy of F. M. Dostoevsky in Russian and world culture” (2018–2021), which resulted in the support of 28 projects by leading Russian scientists. They will result in the publication of an unprecedented corpus of studies on Dostoevsky’s biography, philosophy, creativity, textual criticism and poetics. In post-Soviet Russia, the gap between Dostoevsky studies and mass consciousness, science and education is apparent. Moreover, technologies to counteract Dostoevsky’s influence on the modern Russian person are still operating. Reading and studying Dostoevsky remains the privilege of philologists, whose number in Russian universities has been drastically reduced with no prospects of the development of continuous humanitarian education. Nevertheless, despite influential opponents, Dostoevsky represents Russia, the Karamazovs are the most famous Russian surname, and today, just like 150 years ago, the prophet and apostle Dostoevsky conveys the word of truth and veracity to the world.Dostoevsky, literary anniversary, Dostoevsky researcher, biography, textual criticism, attribution, panhuman, vsechelovek, Justin Popović, Leo Tolstoy, Russian Foundation for Basic Research

Identification of pseudonyms is one of the key tasks of attribution of many articles in the Vremya and Epokha magazines, and the Grazhdanin weekly. I. F. Masanov's article on Dostoevsky in the authoritative Dictionary of Pseudonyms contains errors and repetitions. Fyodor Dostoevsky signed his literary works with his personal name: Fyodor Dostoevsky, F. M. Dostoevsky, or, more often, F. Dostoevsky. On the contrary, the writer preferred to work as a journalist anonymously, more rarely — under pseudonyms. The range of Fyodor Dostoevsky's pseudonyms should be clarified. It is necessary to exclude “N. N.” from the list of pseudonyms, remove repeat “—y, M.” и “M. —y”, leave Dostoevsky's personal pseudonym “Zuboskalov” and add a new pseudonym “Ch. Komitetskiy”. The insert in the “Chronicler's notes” article is not the proper basis to make N. N. Strahov's pseudonym “Letopisets” (Epokha. 1865. № 1) a collective one or assign it to Dostoevsky. Most of Dostoevsky's pseudonyms are of an occasional nature, they are isolated and random. The names and surnames of real persons (M. Dostoevsky, A. Poretsky) in the role of his pseudonyms are accidental. As a result of critical analysis, it was established that in his literary and journalistic activities Dostoevsky used both regular (“F. D.”), (“D.”), (“Ed.”) and isolated pseudonyms “Zuboskal”, “Zuboskalov”, “N. N.”, “M. —y”, “Ch. Komitetskiy”, “Drug Kuzmy Prutkova” (“Friend of Kuzma Prutkov”). At this time, their range can be limited to this list. The appendix to the article contains an insert attributed to Dostoevsky in N. N. Strakhov's feuilleton «Notes of the Chronicler» from the January issue of the «Epoch» for 1865.Dostoevsky, pseudonym, anonymous, I. F. Masanov, “Vremya”, “Epokha”, weekly “Grazhdanin”, attribution

The subject of research in this article is a partially crossed out portion of a letter from Fyodor Dostoevsky to his brother Mikhail dated September 30, 1844. This letter communicates his decision to leave the military service and devote himself to professional literary work. The entry was first reproduced in the edition of Dostoevsky's correspondence prepared by A. S. Dolinin, and then in the academic Complete Works. However, this was done with distortions and without proper commentary. As a result, the entry was perceived by readers as a rude expletive, which included slang, obscene vocabulary, and insults to the guardian of the Dostoevskys, P. A. Karepin, who opposed the switch of his ward to a literary path and was in no hurry to provide him with financial assistance. Textual analysis of the record about Karepin demonstrated that the strikethrough was made twice — by Dostoevsky himself at the time of writing the letter, and almost 40 years later by his widow, who was preparing the letters for publication. Due to her shyness, A. G. Dostoevskaya could not tolerate obscene words contained in the body of the letter, and she removed them with a thick strikethrough, while encrypting their meaning using shorthand. The restoration of the complete record made it possible to determine the source of the quote, namely, the “indecent” poem “Luka Mudishchev,” written in the post-Pushkin period and attributed to Ivan Barkov, but not written by him. The fact that Dostoevsky knew this poem by 1844 narrows down the range of its dating. In the heat of his “struggle” with Karepin, who criticizes the “abstract laziness and bliss of Shakespeare's dreams,” the novice writer turns the obscene satirical language of Barkoviana against his guardian in a sharp pamphlet style. Continuing his observations on common people's speech in the Siberian Notebook and the Writer’s Diary, Dostoevsky came to a paradoxical conclusion about the combination of profanity and chastity in the Russian people. The writer’s viewpoint on this matter was not clear to his contemporaries and was ridiculed in journalism and caricature.Fyodor Dostoevsky, Mikhail Dostoevsky, Pavel Karepin, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, Ivan Barkov, barkoviana, barkovschina, “Luka Mudishchev”, textual criticism, satire, pun, irony, parody, obscene language, prude, pruderie

The history of the Dostoevsky estate Darovoe, which is an important period in the life of Fyodor Dostoevsky, still contains unresolved issues. The most ambiguous is the fate of the writer's father, who ended his days in Darovoe. The cause of the tragic death of M. A. Dostoevsky and the place of his burial are still controversial. The document from the State Archive of the Tula region, published for the first time, allows to dispel all doubts about the location of the grave of M. A. Dostoevsky. The article examines the history of the issue, including oral tradition, analyzes well-known documentary sources, and the entry in the metric book of the Holy Spirit Church of the village Monogarovо in 1839 confirms the testimony of A. M. Dostoevsky about the burial of his father in the churchyard. The fact of M. A. Dostoevsky's affair with the house serf Ekaterina Alexandrova is questioned, since it was based on rumors and undocumented. The author analyzes the oral tradition phenomenon and its influence on the formation of the image of M. A. Dostoevsky as a cruel landowner killed by peasants out of revenge. New archival documents allow us to revise the stereotypes that have become entrenched in Dostoevsky studies.F. M. Dostoevsky, M. A. Dostoevsky, biography, the estate of Darovoe, the Holy Spirit Church, the village of Monogarovo, archive, documents, metric books, oral tradition

In August 1831, the parents of Fyodor Dostoevsky purchased an estate in the Kashirsky district of the Tula Province, consisting of the hamlet of Darovoe and the village of Darovaya. In February 1833, they bought the neighboring village of Cheremoshnya. The entire property, including the above-named villages and hamlet, also included land plots in the wastelands: Nechaeva, Trypillya, Harina, Shelepova and Chertkova. Having become the owners of 58 peasant souls and more than 500 dessiatines of land, the Dostoevskys were considered average local landowners. However, Darovoe, well-known as the childhood place of the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, remains poorly studied from an economic point of view. One of the reasons is that today there are very few documents that could reliably indicate the economic condition of the estate for the memorial period. An exception is the monograph of V. S. Nechaeva “In the Dostoevsky family and estate,” published in 1939, where, based on the correspondence of M. F. Dostoevskaya and M. A. Dostoevsky, the author claims that the estate they acquired was not merely unprofitable, but also caused a family tragedy. The opinion of V. S. Nechaeva became fundamental for researchers of the writer's biography. However, this issue can be revised today, which is what the presented work is devoted to. The correspondence of Fyodor Dostoevsky's parents, the letters of his older brother M. M. Dostoevsky, who was the guardian over the estate and the Memoirs of the younger brother of A. M. Dostoevsky in the aggregate allow to take a fresh look at the estate and the income it brought. In the context of this problem, it is of interest to refer to the newly published “Report of the headman of the village of Darovoe Savin Makarov to Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky” dated October 8, 1850. The document was discovered in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art and complements the well-known sources on the economic condition of the Dostoevsky estate.M. F. Dostoevskaya, M. A. Dostoevsky, M. M. Dostoevsky, А. M. Dostoevsky, Savin Makarov, Darovoe, Cheremoshnya, landowner

This publication continues the author's research related to the Siberian exile period of the biography of F. M. Dostoevsky. Based on archival and memoir sources, the article reveals the identity of another medical doctor of the Omsk Military Hospital — resident Lev Petrovich Kryzhanovsky. It corrects the misconceptions and the erroneous conclusions about him and about the Siberian circle of the writer. The memoirs of Jozef Boguslavsky identify the namesake of the resident, an exiled Pole Karol Kryzhanovsky and his wife Natalia Stepanovna Kryzhanovskaya. She turned out to be Dostoevsky's Omsk acquaintance, who became the prototype for the poor widow Nastasya Ivanovna in The House of the Dead. These archival documents introduced into scientific discourse elucidate a profile of L. P. Kryzhanovsky. This allows us to compare it with the profile of the resident Ya. Ya. Lovchinsky provided in the author's previous publication and to draw conclusions about the identity of the prototype of the medical doctor in the book. In addition, the materials clarify certain details of the investigation into Kryzhanovsky's denunciation of the chief physician Troitsky for “great commutation and indulgence for the political prisoners,” identified in Martyanov's notes. They also describe the poor conditions in the Omsk Military Hospital, which were portrayed in The House of the Dead. All of the above provides an opportunity to fill in the gaps in the circumstances of the penal servitude of the Petrashevsky Circle members F. M. Dostoevsky and S. F. Durov.Fyodor Dostoevsky, L. P. Kryzhanovsky, Karol Kryzhanovsky, N. S. Kryzhanovskaya, Troitsky, Jozef Boguslavsky, Durov, “Notes from the Dead House”, penal servitude, Omsk Military Hospital, prototype

The article is devoted to the issue of the schism in the Vremya and Epokha journals published by the brothers Fyodor and Mikhail Dostoevskys. The content of the articles and reviews published in them is considered from the viewpoint of pochvennichestvo (native soil) position of the publications. The stance of their editorial board is formulated in the Announcement about the publication of the Vremya journal in 1861, which became a program document. The main concept of Vremya, as well as the Epokha journal that followed it, was the need to merge the educated part of society with the people. There was a spiritual, political and social gap, a split between them, which was caused not only by the church reform of the 17th-century, but also by subsequent state reforms that caused people’s rejection. The idea of the Dostoevskys' journals was to get to know the people, recognize their originality, appeal to the native principle, pochva (soil), the communal form of life, the synthesis of the ideas developed in Europe, which will find their development in the Russian narodnost’ (Russian people). These thoughts were absorbed by F. M. Dostoevsky’s idea of enhanced knowledge of Russia, which was reflected in his article “Two Camps of Theorists.” Using the publications in the Vremya and Epokha journals, it is demonstrated that the concept of split (schism) in the minds of the 19th-century authors was much broader than the historical phenomenon caused by the 17th-century church reform. They consider the split not only as a religious, but also as a social and political phenomenon that requires deep research and rectification, a synthesis of European and popular principles.Vremya” (“Time”), “Epokha” (“Epoch”), Fyodor Dostoevsky, pochvennichestvo (native soil), split (schism), Old Belief, sectarianism, zemstvo, commune

The article deals with the biographical, real and historical-literary aspects of the novel The Raw Youth that are related to the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vsevolod Dolgorukov. The latter was a “former prince,” who possessed literary talents and was a member of the “Jacks of hearts” gang, which was involved in the “case of the Kumanin inheritance.” He first became the prototype of the characters of the novel The Raw Youth, and then an epigone of its author. After sinking very low in his youth, he experienced a new life surge in Siberian exile, due to sincere repentance and moral purification. Correction and “restoration” of Vsevolod Dolgorukov is confirmed by his subsequent charitable and creative activities. Like Dostoevsky, he was the “Russian youth” type from a “random family,” which, along with the heroes of Dostoevsky’s novel Arkady Dolgoruky and Sergei Sokolsky, included the young Count Nagorov, the main character of the saga novel Literary Bohemia (1890) by Vs. Dolgorukov. The memoir notes of the “former prince,” who was twice stripped of his title, largely echo the notes of The Raw Youth in narrative and ideology due to the influence of Dostoevsky’s novel on Vs. Dolgorukov. It is also evidenced by his convict-themed short story Mishka the Flea, which is typologically similar to Notes from the Dead House and the Easter short story The Peasant Marey. Based on the above, the author concludes that Dostoevsky’s hope for an encounter of “Russian youths” with the Orthodox idea was embodied in the life and work of Vsevolod Dolgorukov.F. M. Dostoevsky, novel “The Raw Youth”, Vs. A. Dolgorukov, random family, hero, prototype, author-hero

The article deals with the history of the sale of the real estate property belonging to A. F. Kumanina, the Moscow aunt of F. M. Dostoevsky, in the Tula province. The division of the property received by her heirs after her death was to be carried out after their entry into the ownership of the estates: first Tula, then Smolensk and Ryazan, which were pledged. Lawyers played a criminal role in this process. They developed an illegal scheme during the division and sale of the house and land plot in Tula, which predetermined the fate of the Kumanin inheritance, most of which was spent on paying debts, arrears and attorney fees. In connection with the inheritance case, F. M. Dostoevsky sought legal assistance from V. P. Gaevsky, V. I. Veselovsky, B. B. Polyakov, V. I. Gubin, E. V. Korsh, A. V. Lokhvitsky, V. I. Lustikh. The facts testifying to the unseemly role of the attorneys, which ultimately led to the unexpected outcome of the “Kumanin story”, are presented in the memoirs and correspondence of the writer’s brother Andrey Mikhailovich. They are also indicated in the correspondence of the other heirs of A. F. Kumanina, including F. M. Dostoevsky and his closest relatives, who tried to regain the right to own hereditary estates, as well as the materials of the genealogic inventory of N. S. Lazarev-Stanishchev, who became one of the participants in the “Kumanin inheritance” scam. The Appendix contains a previously unpublished letter from D. A. Smirnov, assistant to attorney V. I. Veselovsky in the “case of the Kumanin inheritance”, to A. M. Dostoevsky dated February 10, 1874 about the sale of the Kumanin house in Tula.F. M. Dostoevsky, N. S. Lazarev-Stanishchev, A. T. Neofitov, G. F. Asafov, D. A. Smirnov, B. B. Polyakov, E. V. Korsh, V. I. Veselovsky, the case of the Kumanin inheritance

The article is devoted to two collections of works for children by F. M. Dostoevsky, compiled by his widow Anna Grigorievna: “A selection from the works of F. M. Dostoevsky for secondary school-age children (over 14 years of age),” edited by V. Ya. Stoyunin in 1887, and “Dostoevsky for school-age children,” published in 1897 under A. V. Kruglov’s editorship. Dostoevskaya’s collaboration with two professionals and experts in child psychology, Stoyunin and Kruglov, allowed her to overcome the failure of the 1883 volume “To Russian children” and consolidate the foundations of Dostoevsky’s “repertoire for children.” The article introduces new archival materials, which allow to reconstruct the history of the publication of these volumes, formulates the tasks Dostoevskaya assigned to them to disseminate her husband’s works, and describes their reception by pedagogical criticism and state institutions responsible for the regulation of children’s reading in Russia in the last two decades of the 19th century.F. M. Dostoevsky, Anna Dostoevskaya, children’s literature, literary adaptation, 19th century Russian pedagogical criticism, V. Ya. Stoyunin, A. V. Kruglov

The article analyzes newspaper and magazine materials about schools named after F. M. Dostoevsky (1881‒1917). Most of the publications concern the history of the parish school in Staraya Russa, but the authors found out that at the turn of the 20th century several more attempts were made to open an educational institution in memory of the writer, namely in Kiev and Kazan provinces. The article provides a brief overview of the history of other schools that ever bore the name of F. M. Dostoevsky (Shkid in Petrograd, a gymnasium in Harbin, a school in Dostoevo, school No. 2 in Staraya Russa, school No. 1148 in Moscow). During this period, the press began a broad discussion of the idea of perpetuating the writer’s memory by opening public schools named in his honor; thanks to the initiative of “Novoe Vremya” newspaper, a fundraising campaign was initiated to establish the first school in Staraya Russa. The accents and assessments of the Russian press are of particular value: they are an expression of both the public attitude towards F. M. Dostoevsky, and a means of preserving the nation's memory of him. The press materials allow to track the attitude of people to the heritage of F. M. Dostoevsky and to establish the motives that inspired representatives of various social strata to donate funds for the construction of schools in memory of the writer. The following sources are used as a foundation: chronicles, reports and other texts from the newspapers “Novoe Vremya,” “Moskovskie Vedomosti,” “Kazansky Telegraph,” “Nedelya,” “Volzhsky Vestnik,” “Starorusskaya Pravda,” “Volkhovsky Listok,” “Kazanskie Gubernskie Vedomosti”; articles from the magazines “Istorichesky Vestnik,” “Novgorodskiye eparhialnye Vedomosti,” and others.F. M. Dostoevsky, newspaper “Novoe Vremya”, Old Russian School, Anna Dostoevskaya, school named after Dostoevsky, pedagogical ideas, public education