№ 4, 2024 year

The researchers of F. M. Dostoevsky’s epistolary heritage recognize the historical value of correspondence as a reliable source that helps build a genuine biography of the writer. Dostoevsky’s letters are not only a biographical source, especially since the writer did not keep a diary and did not leave memoirs, but also a part of the writer’s literary heritage. The tradition of publishing Dostoevsky’s letters has a long, 140-year history. Since the 1880s different types of letter publications have been implemented: individual publications, as part of collections and complete works, and in scientific articles. Currently, the researchers have published and commented on all known Dostoevsky’s letters preserved in autographs. Over time, scientists also realized the value of letters from correspondents addressed to the writer. Commented publications of individual letters, thematic groups and epistolary cycles of correspondence appeared. The researchers faced the task of systematizing all letters and preparing a commented publication of a unified set of Dostoevsky’s correspondence. In Russian editional practice, a tradition has developed of publishing the correspondence of the 19th-century classics, an example is the correspondence of A. S. Pushkin, which has been reprinted more than once. Despite the experience with this kind of publication, the epistolary heritage of such an outstanding 19th-century classic as Dostoevsky has not been published in the form of a complete set of correspondence, including letters from correspondents. Its preparation poses various many questions for researchers. The article identifies the editional tasks that arise in the process of publishing correspondence, and proposes possible ways to solve them. The work on the publication of Dostoevsky’s entire creative heritage in the language of the 19th century is carried out as part of the publication of his Complete Works in the author’s spelling and punctuation. In part, these tasks were implemented through electronic publication of letters from Dostoevsky and his correspondents on the website of Petrozavodsk State University Philolog.ru. At the moment, it contains most of the letters, which are verified by handwritten autographs. In the future, a scientifically commented set of correspondence is slated for publication. Electronic publication allows to offer a variable and multi-level representation of Dostoevsky’s epistolary, thereby solving many editional problems.F. M. Dostoevsky, textual criticism, epistolary heritage, letter, correspondence, correspondent, dialogue, epistolary cycle, attribution, editional practice

The article is a continuation of the textual work on the study of the draft autograph of the novel “Demons” by F. M. Dostoevsky, which began in previous years. It analyzes the specified manuscript in two ways: 1) as an independent handwritten source, which has not yet been published in full and has not received a detailed textual commentary; 2) as a source of the text of the novel “Demons.” The study of the draft autograph is of great interest, as it allows comparing it with the printed sources of the text, analyze the features of the author’s work on the novel’s idea, establish both creative and non-creative (not the author’s) changes in the text, get new information about the creative history of the novel. The draft autograph of the novel “Demons” is one of the most difficult texts in the writer’s creative legacy in terms of handwriting. Separate fragments of this manuscript were published by A. S. Dolinin in 1924 and B. V. Tomashevsky in 1935, and its main part is presented in the form of variants of the novel’s printed text in the first academic Complete Collection of Dostoevsky’s Works. The appeal to the draft autograph made it possible to formulate the main textual problems that arise at this stage of Dostoevsky’s creative process. During the study of the manuscript, inaccuracies of its reading by the publishers were established, including errors affecting the meaning of the author’s text. In addition, the draft autograph is considered in the article as a source of printed text and in relation to the material of lifetime editions of “Demons,” which made it possible to identify the most problematic places in the textual analysis of the novel’s handwritten and printed sources.Dostoevsky, Demons, teхtual criticism, handwritten and printed text

The publication introduces into scientific circulation 233 address entries made by the hand of Anna Dostoevskaya in her notebook, which is stored in the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (F. 100, No. 30707), and dated 1877–1882. The address records are provided in chronological order and internally split into two blocks: 1877–1880 and 1881–1882. The first block includes the addresses recorded during Dostoevsky's lifetime, and this part of the publication can be considered a kind of family address book, since it contains a significant number of addresses of people from the writer's entourage. The address records included in the second block were made after Dostoevsky's death, however, many of them reflect the widow's activities to perpetuate his memory and promote the writer's creative legacy. These include the addresses of Orest Miller, who worked on the first posthumous biography of Dostoevsky in 1881–1883, the sculptor L. Bernstam, who casted the death mask of the deceased, the A. Morand bronze foundry, where the mask and bust of the writer were cast, etc. The abstract accompanying each address entry includes a local history commentary and biographical information. Based on the reference literature of the 1870s-1880s, the full form of historical addresses, which were mostly recorded by Anna Dostoevskaya in an abbreviated form is restored, and modern addresses are also placed on the current maps of St. Petersburg and Moscow (taking into account the renaming of streets and the renumbering of buildings). The biographical part of the annotations includes brief information about the addressees, accompanied by links to printed and archival sources. The abstract also includes detailed information (including archival ciphers) about the surviving correspondence of these persons with the writer and his wife.A. G. Dostoevskaya, F. M. Dostoevsky, St. Petersburg, Moscow, notebook, address record, addressee, report card of houses, local history, comment, correspondence

The historical realities of the town of Zaraysk, Ryazan province, which is associated with the childhood and adolescence of F. M. Dostoevsky, have not received due attention from researchers to date. The article, based on a large array of previously unknown archival documents, provides a general description of the town’s socio-economic development in the 1830s, which allows to clarify a number of facts of the writer’s early biography and explain his enthusiastic appraisal of Zaraysk in personal correspondence in 1868 The author of the article puts forward several hypotheses regarding the presence of the Zaraysk context in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky. The first hypothesis correlates the cultural landscape of the western outskirts of Zaraysk with the description of the childhood town in Raskolnikov’s first dream. In the second, a version is set forth about the possible Zaraysk roots of the literary toponym Skotoprigonevsk. Thanks to archival finds, the history of the Bakhrushin merchant family from Zaraysk was analyzed in detail, and their connection with the Kumanin family, which is related to the writer, was established. This ultimately allowed us to put forward an assumption about the prototypes of episodic characters in the novels “Crime and Punishment” (merchant Afanasy Ivanovich Vakhrushin) and “The Idiot” (merchant Papushin). Special attention in the context of the literary biography of the dyer Mikolka in the novel “Crime and Punishment” is paid to documentary evidence of the spread of Old Believers and mystical sectarianism in the Zaraysk district. For the first time, the history of theatrical life in Zaraysk is considered, also revealing a connection with Dostoevsky’s work. A report on the state of the town of Zaraysk for 1836 and a petition from the mayor of Zaraysk F. E. Tepitsyn for the preservation of the Astrakhan tract are published for the first time in the Appendices to the article. The documents contain important information for understanding the socio-economic, historical and cultural environment surrounding the future writer here.Fyodor Dostoevsky, biography, Darovoe Village, Zaraysk Town, Astrakhan tract, novel, Bakhrushins, Kumanins, Papyshevs, prototypes, provincial theater, Old Believers

The article introduces into scientific circulation a fragment of F. M. Dostoevsky’s workbook, incorrectly read in the writer’s academic edition. It is a kind of diary of Dostoevsky’s visit to his parental estate Darovoye on July 20–21, 1877. The “personal” draft entry includes a number of ideas for subsequent contemplation; they reflect childhood memories and topics of conversations with Darovoye peasants. All of them will be expanded in the “A Writer's Diary” (July–August 1877 and January 1881) and in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov.” Here, Dostoevsky formulated the problematic issues of the reform era, on which, in his opinion, the fate of the country depended: the family issue, the disorganization of landowners’ estates, the weak position of the nobility, the peasants’ bad habits, chaos in agriculture and land ownership, etc. The places familiar since childhood and the landlords and peasants who received him affectionately — all this made it possible to see the causes and motifs of crisis phenomena hidden from outsiders’ eyes. In the end, the writer came out on the topic of preserving the people and the fundamental Christian values that are redemptive for them. It is suggested and argued that Dostoevsky heard the legend of the “onion,” later included in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov,” during this trip, a fact that was recorded in a draft entry indicating the “Russian” specifics of the legend. The trip to Darovoye, therefore, was the realization of the writer’s soil program, his call to the educated class to hear the voice of the people.F. M. Dostoevsky, Darovoye estate, teхtual criticism, childhood memory, land ownership crisis, nobility, Russian people, the legend of the onion

Pushkin’s presence was inevitable in Vladimir Meshchersky and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Grazhdanin” (“The Citizen”) (1872–1874). In addition to media news, the weekly published articles that were of exceptional importance in the literary concerns of the editor and publisher Dostoevsky. In the articles of 1873–1874, the critics of “Grazhdanin” expressed the general position of the editors. In assessing current events in art and literature, they proceeded from the fact that Pushkin’s artistic discoveries were a measure of the talent and creativity of contemporary authors. Dostoevsky insisted on Pushkin’s national and global significance. Of great importance in the development of the Pushkin theme was Mikhail Pogodin’s article “On the Question of the Slavophiles,” in which the critic gave an original answer to the question of who the Slavophiles were and what their achievements consisted of. Slavophilism was not a doctrinaire teaching; the Slavophiles did not demand unanimity in their judgments. Sometimes they argued, but this did not negate the general direction. Slavophile Pogodin called many outstanding poets, critics, philosophers and publicists Slavophiles: not only Khomyakov, the Kireevsky brothers and Aksakov, but also Pushkin and his associates, Gogol, Dahl, Fet, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy and others. From his point of view, they all shaped Slavophilism as an ideology and a literary and philosophical school. Over the course of his life, Dostoevsky had different attitudes towards the Slavophiles. In the 1840s, he looked at the Moscow Slavophiles through the eyes of Belinsky. In penal servitude, his convictions were transformed. He developed his own ideology — pochvennichestvo. In the magazine polemics of the early 1860s, Dostoevsky sharply argued with the Westernizers and Slavophiles. A decisive change in his attitude towards the Slavophiles occurred in the 1870s. In "The Citizen" and later in “The Writer’s Diary,” Dostoevsky admitted that he shared Slavophile beliefs. In order to admit that he was a Slavophile, he had to identify himself with Khomyakov and the Aksakovs. In his notebooks for “The Writer’s Diary” for 1876, Dostoevsky summarized Pogodin’s polemics about the Slavophiles with the judgment that Pushkin was “Russia’s most important Slavophile.” He later developed this judgment in his Pushkin speech, presenting the poet and prophet as “the universal man.” Dostoevsky emphasized that the ideas of the new word in his speech belonged not to him, but to all Slavophilism. At the moment of his and Pushkin’s triumph, the Slavophiles themselves recognized him and Pushkin as Slavophiles.Slavophiles, Westerners, pochvenniki, Pushkin, Pogodin, Dostoevsky, Strakhov, new categories, panhuman, vsechelovek, panhumanity, vsechelovechnost’, vsemirnost’

In his reflections on death, A. S. Pushkin did not appreciate man-made monuments and copper idols, he was inspired by the idea of a "non-man-made" monument that would be eternal, resurrecting time and time again in every reader’s soul. The first man-made monument to Pushkin was the well-known tombstone monument in the necropolis of the Svyatogorsk Monastery (1841). In the 1850s and 1860s, there were constant public pleas to erect a national monument to the poet in Russia. In the course of the discussion, the site near the Holy Monastery in Moscow was chosen for the moment. The veneration of the poet's memory and the discussion of the projects of his monument were reflected in the pages of the weekly "Grazhdanin" ("The Citizen"), edited by F. Dostoevsky. In April 1873, two reviews of the first exhibition of Pushkin monument models were published in the weekly. 15 projects were submitted for the competition. The authors of the published articles presented a critical analysis of all the projects, noting their advantages and disadvantages. Critics were ruthless towards unsuccessful projects. They didn't like boilerplate solutions. The models received a generally negative assessment. The review of the second exhibition of Pushkin's monument projects, which was published in the 19th issue of The Citizen in 1874, ended with the same verdict. Both contests were actually a no-choice choice. It was only in the third competition in 1875 that the winner ― A. Opekushin’s monument to Pushkin ― was determined, and it subsequently was opened on June 6, 1880. Reviews of models and their criticism constituted an important portion of the Pushkin-themed content of the weekly "The Citizen". They not only characterized the media aspect of Pushkin's reception in Russia, but also had great political and social significance. The citizens of Russia and the readers of "Citizen" collected people's money for the construction of the monument. During the unveiling of the monument, ideas were expressed that still determine the future of Russia. The opinions of the authors of the articles and editors of The Citizen V. Meshchersky and F. Dostoevsky raised the status of polemics and ultimately contributed to the triumph of the Pushkin Holiday in 1880. This is how the concept of the holiday as a historical event and the concept of Pushkin as a poet, prophet and "vsechelovek" (“panhuman”) developed.Pushkin, monument, sculpture, exhibition, Grazhdanin, The Citizen, F. M. Dostoevsky, art criticism, memory

The article examines the evolution of Akim Volynsky’s perception and critical assessment of Dostoevsky’s work. The famous literary critic, thinker, art critic Akim Lvovich Volynsky (1863–1926) began studying Dostoevsky’s work in the late 1890s and continued to examine it up to 1923 During this time, the literary canon of Dostoevsky had formed. Volynsky was attracted to the writer’s artistic anthropology, which he discovered in the latter’s novels. In them, the critic found confirmation of his religious and philosophical intuitions. However, in his interpretation of some images, Volynsky deviated from the meanings entrenched in them by the author. His criticism became harsher and more belligerent when Volynsky evaluated the ideas and characters of the novel “Demons.” Volynsky accused Dostoevsky of subjective hostility to the radical “young Russia.” The critic’s last speech about Dostoevsky was given in 1923 In it, the critic reproached the novelist for the latter’s dualistic view of the world and man. At that time, Volynsky himself became a zealous supporter of the monistic worldview. From this viewpoint, he found duality and schematism in the writer’s imagery. His concluded that scholasticism prevails in Dostoevsky’s work, and that it does not contain a full-fledged artistic depiction of life. Such Dostoevsky, according to Volynsky, is outdated, irrelevant for the present, does not belong among literary classics and should remain in the domain of literary legend.Dostoevsky, Volynsky, literary canon, anthropology, religious and philosophical intuition, nihilism

A. G. Dostoevskaya planned to publish her husband’s works until the end of her life and hoped to transfer the book business to her children. This is evidenced by the entries in her testamentary notebook of 19020–1911, which contains detailed instructions on publishing issues for the heirs. In 19040–1906, on the 25th anniversary of her husband’s death, Anna Grigoryevna printed the sixth (jubilee) and seventh (cheaper) editions of the Complete works of Dostoevsky. However, the release of these books, the pinnacle in her publishing practice, coincided with tragic events in Russian history — the Russo-Japanese War and the First Russian Revolution, as a result of which A. G. Dostoevskaya had to end her 38-year publishing career. Based on unpublished archival materials of the publisher (notebooks, notebooks and correspondence), the article analyzes a set of reasons that contributed to this decision. At the beginning of the 20th century, A. G. Dostoevskaya and the writer’s children found themselves deeply in debt for a number of reasons: due to their lack of working capital after a deal with the publisher of the Niva magazine A. F. Marx in 18940–1896, the rise in price of paper and printing works, a change in reader interest from collections of works to political pamphlet publications and a decline in sales in the book market. The situation was aggravated by the discussion in the government regarding a reduction in the period of ownership of literary property by the heirs of famous authors, the deteriorating health of the publisher and the categorical demands of her daughter to sell literary rights and stop book-related activities. The rights to publish Dostoevsky’s works were sold in 1910 to the Enlightenment Association. Another stage of the traditional history of the great writer’s legacy has begun, but without the participation of his family.A. G. Dostoevskaya, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. F. Dostoevskaya, F. F. Dostoevsky, Complete works, notebook, anniversary edition, printing house, P. F. Panteleev, G. F. Panteleev