№ 2, 2020 year

The least amount of documentary evidence has been preserved about the early period of F. M. Dostoevsky's life. Three documents discovered in the Russian state historical archive related to the 1837 resignation of Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, the writer's father, are published and examined in the article. These are the report of the Moscow Board of Trustees to Nicholas I, the report of the chief doctor of the Mariinsky hospital for the poor A. A. Richter and the service record of M. A. Dostoevsky. The last document that provides important information about the official career of the writer's father, is provided in full for the first time in the Appendix to the article. The authors of preceding publications about the childhood and youth of F. M. Dostoevsky only referenced the service record of M. A. Dostoevsky or quoted the previously published passages. These documents contain the information about the size of the pension due to retired physician Dostoevsky, his service characteristics, and a list of his awards. The article raises one of the most debated questions, namely, the date of birth of the writer's father. Together, the documents on the resignation of M. A. Dostoevsky reveal new facts and clarify those already known from his 1830s biography, and therefore elucidate the circumstances of the great Russian writer's youth.F. M. Dostoevsky, M. A. Dostoevsky, biography, writer's father, Mariinsky hospital for the poor, retirement, Darovoe manor, archive, documents, service record

The parents of F. M. Dostoevsky purchased an estate in the Kashirsky district of the Tula Province in 1831. It comprised the village of Darovoe and the hamlet of Darovaya. This purchase is known both from the memoirs of A. M. Dostoevsky, and from numerous indirect sources: metric books of the Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in the village of Monogarovo (parish church of the village of Darovoe), census records, family correspondence of the Dostoevskys and Ivanovs, etc. However, none of these sources provides sufficiently complete information about when and from whom Darovoe was bought, as well as what it was. In the proposed publication, previously unknown first official documents are introduced into scientific circulation. They allow to clarify the dates and conditions of the purchase of Darovoe by the Dostoevskys — bills of sale for the village of Darovoe and the hamlet of Darovaya, dated 1829 and 1831, that are stored in the reserves of the Central State Archive of Moscow.bill of sale, village of Darovoe, hamlet of Darovaya, Dostoevsky, I. P. Khotyaintsev, O. A. Glagolevskaya, M. F. Dostoevskaya, new archival documents

The publication is based on the documents discovered by the authors in the Russian State Historical Archive, which are preserved in the Repository of the Commandant’s Office of the St. Petersburg Fortress, in the case “Regarding the prisoners under investigation for malicious intent in 1849”. Most of the documents date back to the period between December 22, 1849 (the staging of the mock execution of the Petrashevites on the Semyonovsky parade ground) and January 9, 1850 (arrival of Dostoevsky, Durov and Yastrzhembsky in Tobolsk). The latest document is dated February 4, 1850. The article contains three parts, each of which sheds new light on the biography of the brothers Fedor M. and Mikhail M. Dostoevsky in the aforementioned period. The first section incorporates the documents that reveal the circumstances prior to the meeting of the brothers Dostoevsky on December 24, 1849, before Fedor was sent to Siberia, a meeting which was initially refused to them. Specifically, these documents are the request made by the Commandant of the Peter and Paul Fortress Nabokov and addressed to the War Minister, to allow relatives of the members of the Petrashevsky circle to meet with them before departure for the place of punishment, and the most gracious permission of Nicholas I on the matter, following the most humble report of the Minister. The second section introduces into scientific circulation the documents presenting the emperor's initiative to provide monetary assistance to the families of convicted Petrashevites, as well as to Petrashevites with families (including multi-child families), who were temporarily imprisoned in the fortress during the investigation. In the context of these documents, suspicions about the “immodest behavior” of M. M. Dostoevsky during the investigation that were previously expressed by certain researchers (Dolinin, Grossman), are removed. The third section introduces a receipt issued to “criminal Dostoevsky,” according to which 100 rubles of his money were appropriated during the prison transfer, and a document confirming the reception of this amount in the Tobolsk directive regarding convicts. The question of the origin and subsequent fate of this money is examined.F. M. Dostoevsky, M. M. Dostoevsky, Petrashevites, Russian State Historical Archive, Office of the Commandant of the Peter and Paul Fortress, prison transfer in Siberia, Tobolsk directive regarding convicts, monetary assistance to Petrashevites

The article is devoted to the unrealized idea of F. M. Dostoevsky called Socialism and Christianity, which the writer worked on in the early 1860s. The researcher examines the origin of the draft and its publications, and attempts to chronologically attribute them based on existing opinions on this issue. Research revealed that this idea could have encompassed other drafts contained in Dostoevsky's notebooks and diaries of the specified period. The formal thematic compilation of Dostoevsky's notes on socialism and Christianity, which were presented in the initial publications, only indirectly outlined the boundaries of the draft, overlooking certain contingent parts of the text. Focusing on the internal (related to the diaries and notebooks themselves) and external (related to the writer’s artistic and journalistic texts) contexts, the researcher tries both to expand the boundaries of the draft, and to analyze the emerging ties and interconnections. Certain controversial interpretations of Dostoevsky's handwritten text lead to a new level of its comprehension and deepen our understanding of Dostoevsky's polemics with his contemporaries, in particular with Chernyshevsky.Dostoevsky, diaries and notebooks, manuscript, socialism, Christianity, problems of publication, attribution, Chernyshevsky

The article presents the results of an archival search for information regarding Sergey P. Koloshin, a publicist and the publisher of the Zritel obschestvennoy zhizni, literatury i sporta (Spectator of public life, literature and sports) magazine, who went bankrupt in 1863. In the 1860s, he lived in Italy, attempted to collaborate with the Epokha (Epoch) magazine, corresponded with the brothers M. M. and F. M. Dostoevskys, and died on November 27, 1868 in Florence. The discovered documents allow to clarify the time and circumstances of his death. The Russian Empire’s Foreign Policy Archive contains a file regarding the assignment of the transportation the body of the deceased to Milan for burial in the columbarium to Mikhail Orlov, the Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Nativity of Christ and St. Nicholas in Florence, who already performed the rite of blessing S. Koloshin. The latter was also entrusted with fulfilling the last will of the deceased, completing his settlements on this Earth, including those with the owner of his rented residence. Her receipt for money received indicates the address of Koloshin's residence in Milan, which is significant in connection with the search for his archive, which probably includes the letters of Dostoevsky. The article also introduces the encrypted telegrams of the Russian mission to Turin into scientific circulation for the first time. These telegrams are signed by the name Koloshin (Kolochine), and the authors suggest that they belong either to Sergey’s brother, Dmitry Pavlovich, junior secretary of the Russian mission in Brussels, or to Ivan Petrovich Koloshin, Resident Master of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Empire, cousin of S. P. Koloshin. He could have also provided the documents from the personal archive of S. P. Koloshin, which likely included letters from Dostoevsky.S. P. Koloshin, F. M. Dostoevsky, archpriest Mikhail Orlov, Florence, Milan, Florence Mission, Turin Mission, The Archive of the Foreign Policy of Imperial Russia

The preparatory materials for the novel Demons, published in the first academic edition of Complete Works by Dostoevsky contain his notes stating that the image of one of his main characters, Pyotr Verkhovensky, was partly stylized after M. V. Petrashevsky. At the same time, commentators found a note in this publication indirectly confirming the hypothesis that Nikolai Speshnev was one of the main prototypes of Stavrogin. The paper analyzes the preparatory materials for Demons, in which the future Stavrogin was listed as “Prince”. They are compared with Dostoevsky’s personal impressions of communicating with Speshnev, not only in 1847—1849, but also in the 1860s, after his return from exile. In addition, they are juxtaposed with printed materials about Petrashevsky and Speshnev’s stay in Irkutsk in 1857—1860. These comparisons demonstrate that significant elements of Demons’ creative history are related to the fact that while Petrashevsky took a noticeable part in the incident around the so-called “Irkutsk duel” in 1860, which was directed against the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia N. N. Muravyov-Amursky, Speshnev, on the contrary, completely changed his beliefs by that time. Thus, the preparatory materials for the novel Demons fully confirm the assumption that Nikolai Speshnev (partly along with F. Dostoevsky himself) was the main prototype of Nikolai Stavrogin. At the same time, a reference to the behavior of M. V. Petrashevsky in his Irkutsk exile in 1859—1860 allows to understand why and how a socialist-revolutionary like Sergey Nechaev could be associated with M. Petrashevsky in the mind of Dostoevsky.prototype, main character, novel, Demons, creative history, preparatory materials, notebook, Dostoevsky, Petrashevsky circle

Two editors, namely editor-owner V. P. Meshchersky and editor-publisher F. M. Dostoevsky, wrote the editorials in the weekly "Grazhdanin" in 1873‒1874. The article is devoted to the attribution of the editorial article “Zhelanie” (“Desire”), published in the first issue of the weekly "Grazhdanin" in 1873. Researchers B. V. Tomashevsky, V. V. Vinogradov, V. A. Viktorovich attributed this article to F. M. Dostoevsky. The editorial board of the academic “Complete works in thirty volumes” argued that the note was penned by V. P. Meshchersky. I. Zohrab believes that “Desire” was written by V. P. Meshchersky and edited by F. M. Dostoevsky. The article conducts an examination based on stylistic and mathematical statistics methods. As a result of the comprehensive analysis of the text, both at the ideological (content) and linguistic level, the version of F. M. Dostoevsky’s authorship was rejected. A comparative analysis of “Desire” with the texts of Dostoevsky and Meshchersky and the conclusions made using statistical attribution methods allow us to recognize V. P. Meshchersky as the author.F. M. Dostoevsky, V. P. Meshchersky, attribution, editorial article, “Zhelanie”, “Desire”, weekly "Grazhdanin", “Decision Tree”

140 years ago, on June 8 (20), 1880, on the occasion of the celebrations associated with the opening of the monument to Alexander Pushkin, F. M. Dostoevsky gave a speech at the second meeting of the Society of Connoisseurs of Russian Literature at the Moscow Noble Assembly hall. It was immediately recognized as a social and cultural event. This episode in Dostoevsky's biography has repeatedly attracted the attention of researchers. The manuscript collection of The V. I. Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature contains a significant set of materials related to Dostoevsky’s participation in the Pushkin Celebration. In the process of collecting materials for the Memorial Museum of F. M. Dostoevsky, A. G. Dostoevskaya, the writer’s widow conducted thorough bibliographic work, tracing almost all available publications in the Russian press devoted to Pushkin speech. She made extensive extracts from newspapers, which allow you to see the event through the eyes of Russian reporters. As the analysis shows, only minor fragments of newspaper reports were of interest to Dostoevsky's biographers. The characteristic of the responses of the Russian press to Pushkin speech as a major public event, presented in this article, allows to expand the context of Dostoevsky's speech and offer a more detailed overview of the audience of Pushkin speech. An observation is made about the similarity of the event associated with Dostoevsky's speech with his optimistic anthropology, formulated in the article Golden age in the pocket (1876, A Writer’s Diary). The presented systematic corpus of publications rooted in the Pushkin speech, allows us to conclude that the speech itself became the most important information event of 1880 as a social and cultural event and literary and journalistic essay. The Appendix to the article contains photos of some materials from the Manuscript Fund of the Vladimir Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature.Dostoevsky, Pushkin celebration, 19th-century Russian press, Turgenev, A Writer’s Diary

Dostoevsky's main concern was to educate his children, Lyuba and Fedya. After the writer's death, this desire was realized by his widow Anna Grigoryevna. Little was known about the education of Dostoevsky’s children, primarily from memoirs (penned by Anna and Lyubov Dostoevsky, Anna Ostroumova). The article presents previously unknown documents from the Central State Historical Archive of Saint Petersburg (name books, personal statements, etc.), containing information about the education of F. M. Dostoevsky's children: Lyuba — at the Foundry Gymnasium, Fedya — at the F. F. Bychkov Gymnasium (purchased by Ya. Gurevich in 1883). Letters related to the education of Dostoevsky's children were introduced into scientific circulation: Lyuba’s and Fedya’s to their mother, teacher V. Ivanova’s to A. G. Dostoevskaya. In the course of commenting on archival documents, the author emphasizes the continuity between home education and the education of the writer and his children, and reveals the role of A. G. Dostoevskaya in fulfilling Fyodor Mikhailovich's dream: to provide them with a quality education. Home education, first and foremost, the established tradition of family reading, which the Dostoevskys always heeded great attention to, allowed Lyuba to enter the gymnasium at the age of thirteen, bypassing two primary classes, and successfully reach the second, pre-graduation, class. Her classmates were A. P. Ostroumova (Lebedeva) and N. Ya. Polonskaya (Yelachich), who later became famous figures in Russian history. The education received at the gymnasium helped the writer's daughter to prove herself in literature during the years in emigration, to become a Russian writer in Italy, to represent the legacy of Dostoevsky in Europe, and to successfully conduct educational and cultural activities in Italy. The writer’s son Fedya, who studied at the St. Petersburg F. F. Bychkov Gymnasium in 1882-1889, entered the law faculty of the St. Petersburg Imperial University in 1890, became interested in horse breeding, and in the latter years of his life paid great attention to the preservation of his father's handwritten heritage. Thus, the children of F. M. Dostoevsky fulfilled his legacy: “Do not forget to study, both of you”.F. M. Dostoevsky, Lyubov Dostoevskaya, Fyodor Dostoevsky, family reading, women

The reserves of the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russian Abroad in Moscow holds 84 large-format albums with clippings from emigrant newspapers from the 1940s and 1950s, selected according to various subjects (Necropolis, Icons, Church, Our achievements, etc.). These materials are a valuable source for researchers, since the collections of emigrant periodicals in Russian and foreign libraries are fragmented. All albums are predictably associated with the activities of the Russian emigrants. In 1996, A. I. and N. D. Solzhenitsyns transferred them to the collection of the House. The materials were initially received from the collector himself — Alexey Ivanovich Kalugin (1883-1982), a Russian emigrant who lived in Lithuania, Germany, Italy and Argentina. The article clarifies a number of biographical facts about Kalugin, presents a letter to him from A. I. Solzhenitsyn dated September 21, 1980, analyzes the content of the album "Dostoevsky" from the Russian Writers series. In it Kalugin included excerpts from Golos naroda, Novoe russkoe slovo, Russkaya mysl, Narodnaya pravda, Za pravdu, Nasha strana, Seyatel, and other newspapers that reported on new editions of the writer's books, performances, literary debates and lectures devoted to his work (professor V. N. Ilyin, writer Osip Dymov, etc.). They also contained information on the activities of the “Circle for the study of Dostoevsky” in Paris under the leadership of G. A. Meyer, and presented the commemoration program for the 70th anniversary of Dostoevsky's death in France. The album includes reviews of published books about the writer's work, articles about his life and work written by critics and emigrant researchers, the first publications of essays by I. S. Shmelev, B. K. Zaitsev and A. M. Remizov about Dostoevsky in Russian, etc. Among the little-known materials previously unpublished in Russia, the Kalugin album contains an article by Ekaterina Dostoevskaya about Fedyusha – the writer's grandson, a publication of the boy's poems, Professor V. N. Speransky's memoirs about Anna Dostoevskaya and an interview with her. These materials are published in the Appendix to the article.Dostoevsky, A. I. Kalugin, Solzhenitsyn, scrapbook, press of Russian emigration, Anna Dostoevskaya, Ekaterina Dostoevskaya, Fedya Dostoevsky, the writer’s grandson, Argentina