№ 1, 2025 year

The article is a continuation of the textual study of the draft autograph of the F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Demons.” It examines the role that a coherent draft text of a novel plays in establishing the main text of a work. The draft autograph was usually followed by final and typeset manuscripts; based on the latter, the first printed publication of the work was created. The novel “Demons” is not represented by final manuscripts: they have not been preserved. During Dostoevsky’s lifetime, it was published twice — in 1871–1872 in the “Russkiy Vestnik” (“Russian Bulletin”) journal and in a separate (book) edition in 1873. In a case of this sort (the absence of final handwritten sources) the draft coherent text is of particular importance because it partially (and sometimes significantly) coincides with the final one and allows uncreative changes (distortions) that have arisen during the preparation of the work for publication. The specified manuscript is considered as a source of information about the author’s punctuation. In many cases, the draft reveals the reasons for a particular punctuation form of the text and shows the nature of the changes made by the author in the process of further developing the novel’s idea. There are cases when a draft manuscript contains certain discrepancies with the lifetime editions that raise the question of the degree of authorization of changes to the text in print. A comparison of sources reveals numerous examples confirming that punctuation is important for interpreting the semantic context of notes. In connection with the study of a draft autograph containing information about the author’s punctuation, both about its individual features and the situational choice of punctuation marks in a particular context, the article examines the problem of the author’s punctuation in theoretical and practical aspects, as well as the principles of reproducing the punctuation of sources in the preparation of Dostoevsky’s texts for print. The changes in the text of the lifetime editions of the novel “Demons” in the publication of the first academic Complete Works of Dostoevsky are analyzed in detail, using, when necessary and possible, these handwritten sources.Dostoevsky, Demons, textual criticism, handwritten text, printed text, author’s punctuation, author’s style, author’s language

Judicial figure A. F. Koni was a collector of literary relics — manuscripts, books, portraits of prominent personas of the second half of the 19th century, with whom he maintained relations. The owner bequeathed his collection to the Pushkin House, but its documents were dispersed among various archives in Russia, and some of them were lost. The article systematizes and describes F. M. Dostoevsky’s autographs from the A. F. Koni collection, a small number of which have been preserved to date, specifically, a gift inscription on a copy of the “A Writer’s Diary” from 1876, one letter from Dostoevsky to A. F. Koni and one to A. N. Pleshcheyev, and three letters to N. A. Nekrasov. The study suggests versions of their entry into various funds and archives after the death of the collector. Attention is heeded to Dostoevsky’s letters to Nekrasov that were preserved by A. F. Koni, and in whose fate literary critics V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov and K. I. Chukovsky were involved. Whether A. F. Koni was a manuscript donor for the collection of autographs of artists and scientists collected by A. G. Dostoevskaya cannot be definitively confirmed. However, as their correspondence shows, he promised to supply the widow with books for the Museum of the Memory of F. M. Dostoevsky, as well as to introduce her to the letters of A. P. Bergeman about Marfusha, the girl in whose fate the writer and lawyer took an active part in 1877 The article introduces for the first time into scientific circulation the letters of A. P. Bergeman to A. F. Koni written in January — July 1877 They present unknown information about Marfusha and formulate the foundations of that “active love” by A. P. Bergeman, which Dostoevsky mentioned in a note in his drafts of the “А Writer’s Diary.” There may have been other Dostoevsky manuscripts in A. F. Koni’s collection, most notably the missing letters to Nekrasov. A subsequent search for them in archives and private collections is necessary.F. M. Dostoevsky, N. A. Nekrasov, A. F. Koni, A. G. Dostoevskaya, A. P. Bergeman, E. V. Ponomareva, K. I. Chukovsky, V. E. Evgeniev-Maksimov, B. L. Modzalevsky, manuscript, autograph, collection, letter, archive

Nikolai Alexandrovich Mombelli was one of the members of the Petrashevsky, Durov, and Speshnev circles closest to Dostoevsky in the late 1840s. December 22, 1849 they stood together on the scaffold on the Semenovsky parade ground. The article introduces new documentary data on the military service performed by former Petrashevite Mombelli in the North Caucasus in 1857–1884. An obituary notice about his death in St. Petersburg on December 14, 1891 from the Novoe Vremya newspaper was republished, naming Mombelli’s highest rank in his military career — Major General. The author traces the origin of the false information about the time and place of the death of the former Petrashevite (1902, Vladikavkaz), widely presented in dictionary-encyclopedic publications and biographical literature, as well as the erroneous indication that N. A. Mombelli “rose to the rank of major” in the military sphere. The stages of the former Petrashevite’s career have been restored according to Mombelli’s 1884 Service Record, discovered by the authors in the Russian State Military Historical Archive (RGVIA), as part of the case “On the dismissal of Major General Mombeli.” Such 19th-century printed sources as collections of the “Highest Orders on Military Ranks,” annual Lists of generals and officers (majors, lieutenant colonels, colonels) by seniority, and publications in the Russian Invalid newspaper, the official organ of the Ministry of War, are extensively utilized. In the light of new archival and printed sources, the memoirs of N. A. Mombelli and the few biographical studies about the Petrashevite have been critically revised.N. A. Mombelli, Petrashevets, North Caucasus, service career, major, major General, service record, obituary, code of supreme orders

Crimea played an important role in the fates of F. M. Dostoevsky’s closest relatives. For almost two years (July 1858 — May 1860), the writer’s brother Andrei Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was on duty on the peninsula (Simferopol, Feodosia, Yalta, Sevastopol, Balaklava). The novelist’s widow, Anna Grigoryevna Dostoevskaya, who died in 1918 in German-occupied Yalta (Hotel “France”) the owner of the dacha on the South Coast. An important milestone in the life of the son of the classic writer Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky is connected with Simferopol: not only did he realize his dream of his own stud farm, but also got married for the second time. At the first glance, the “Crimean pages” in the biography of Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky have been thoroughly studied. However, the “Simferopol chronicle” of his life requires revision and clarification. This article proposes corrections to the date and place of the wedding of F. F. Dostoevsky and E. P. Tsugalovskaya. Irrefutable documentary evidence of this event is provided by the corresponding entry in the register of births, marriages and deaths of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Simferopol, which is currently preserved in the State Archives of the Republic of Crimea. An important verification commentary to this entry was the “Simferopol letters” of F. F. Dostoevsky to his mother. The surviving March and May messages of 1903 not only confirmed the wedding date indicated in the metric (April 27, 1903), but also helped to establish an nontrivial place of the sacrament — the house church in the name of St. Andrew the First-Called at the Orphanage of Andrei Yakovlevich Fabre. The juxtaposition of data from the metric record and direct epistolary evidence of F. F. Dostoevsky also made it possible to determine the members of his immediate circle in Simferopol.Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky, Еkaterina Petrovna Tsugalovskaya, genealogy, wedding, Crimea, Simferopol, metric record, archive, biography

The article presents a critical analysis of a literary hoax — a text allegedly belonging to F. M. Dostoevsky with more than a century-long distribution history in the form of numerous translations in Japanese and Chinese. “The Priest and the Devil,” attributed to the Russian writer, has never existed in the Russian language. It was created in English by the anarchist Emma Goldman. Its spread in China was facilitated primarily by the mistaken identification of the story with the chapter “At Tikhon’s” from the novel “Demons” due to the similarity of their titles when translated into Chinese. In this language, the singular and plural have no morphological markers, and the same hieroglyphs (without an additional lexeme expressing the parameter of plurality) can refer to either one demon/devil or a group of demons. However, the text of “The Priest and the Devil” does not correspond to Dostoevsky’s artistic style either ideologically, or in terms of literary techniques, or stylistically, and the dialogue between the antagonistic characters is an outright falsification of the ideological confrontation between Christ and the Grand Inquisitor from “The Brothers Karamazov” or Elder Tikhon and Nikolai Stavrogin from the novel “Demons”.Dostoevsky, literary hoax, falsification, The Priest and the Devil, Demons, error, translation