2. Parents
The distant ancestors of the
Dostoevskys belonged to an ancient
noble family. By the 18th century,
they had lost their privileges: the
writer's grandfather and uncle were
Orthodox priests.
Fyodor Dostoevsky's father, Mikhail
Andreevich, thanks to his abilities
and hard work, received a medical
education and in 1821 took the place
of a doctor at the Moscow Mariinsky
Hospital for the Poor. After 6 years,
he received the rank of collegiate
assessor, and with it the right to
hereditary nobility. In 1819, Mikhail
Andreevich married the merchant's
daughter Maria Feodorovna
Nechaeva.
3. Childhood
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on October 30, 1821
in Moscow on Bozhedomka. The name of this place is
associated with the cemetery where tramps, beggars and
suicides were buried. There was also a hospital for the insane
and the Moscow Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where the
Dostoevsky family lived in a separate wing. The boy was
named after his grandfather, merchant of the 3rd guild Fedor
Nechaev. During the War of 1812, he donated a large amount
of money to the militia. For this, his name was carved on the
marble plaques of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
Little is known about the writer's childhood years. The
Dostoevsky family loved to read. Parents subscribed to the
magazine "Library for Reading", which reported on the latest
foreign literature. Fyodor was fond of N.M. Karamzin, A.S.
Pushkin, V. Scott, F. Cooper. Sometimes, together with his
brother, they acted out scenes from their favorite works.
4. Study and service
From 1834 to 1837, F.M. Dostoevsky studied at the private Moscow
boarding school of L.I. Chermak. In 1838, at the request of his father, he
entered the Main Engineering School in St. Petersburg. After Moscow, the
capital seemed cold and gloomy to him, and studying was difficult: he
stayed in one of the classes for the second year. Nevertheless, F.M.
Dostoevsky lived a tense inner life. In 1839, he wrote to his brother Mikhail:
"Man is a mystery. It must be solved. If you're going to solve it all your life,
then don't say that you've lost time; I'm working on this mystery, because I
want to be human."
In 1837, F.M. Dostoevsky's mother died, and in 1839, under mysterious
circumstances, his father. The news of his father's death provoked a severe
nervous attack in the future writer - a harbinger of future epilepsy, to which
he had a hereditary predisposition. In 1843, F.M. Dostoevsky graduated
from college and was enlisted in the Engineering Department.
Contemporaries say that his drawings were often returned "with a
reprimand." A year later, he retired and took up literary work.
5.
6. Art of 1840
In 1845, F.M. Dostoevsky wrote the novel "Poor
People" - about the fate of a "little man", a resident of
St. Petersburg. N.A. Nekrasov and V.D. Grigorovich,
after reading the manuscript, were delighted and
handed it to V.G. Belinsky. The critic, after reviewing
the novel, proclaimed "the appearance of ... an
extraordinary talent." "Poor People" was published in
1846 in the St. Petersburg Collection by N.A.
Nekrasov. In the late 1840s, F.M. Dostoevsky also
wrote several short stories and novellas: "The Double"
(1846), "Mr. Prokharchin" (1846), "The Hostess"
(1847), "White Nights" (1848), "Netochka Nezvanova"
(1849), etc.
8. Hard labor
In 1846, F.M. Dostoevsky met a former employee of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, M.V. Butashevich-Petrashevsky, and
in the spring of 1847 became a regular visitor to his "Fridays".
On the night of April 22-23, 1849, all members of the
Petrashevsky circle were arrested by order of Nicholas I and
imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. A military court
sentenced them to be shot. On December 22, a rite of
preparation for the death penalty was performed on the
Petrashevites, and only at the last minute they were announced
the real sentence: hard labor and soldiering. After the death of
Nicholas I, the fate of F.M. Dostoevsky, like many political
criminals, was softened. Nevertheless, the writer spent four
years (from January 1850 to January 1854) in Omsk prison,
and then served in Semipalatinsk for five years. It was only in
1859 that he received permission to live in Tver, and after a
while returned to St. Petersburg.
9. Art of year 1860
Since 1861, F.M. Dostoevsky, together with his brother Mikhail,
published the magazine "Time", and after its closure - the
magazine "Epoch". On the pages of the magazines, the
brothers outlined the program of soil science, a new direction in
Russian social thought. Together with the well-known critics of
that time A.A. Grigoriev and N.N. Strakhov, they called for
restoring the connection of the upper classes with the lower
ones (folk principles, "soil"), which, in their opinion, was
interrupted as a result of Peter I's reforms. If before hard labor
F.M. Dostoevsky was attracted by the ideas of utopian
socialism, now he turned to Christianity.
In 1860-61, F.M. Dostoevsky wrote the novel "Humiliated and
insulted" (about people who do not have the strength to fight
evil), in 1860-62 - a book of essays "Notes from the Dead
House" (about the terrible days spent in the Omsk prison), in
1864 - the story "Notes from the underground" (about the deep
consciousness of the "underground man").
10. Путешествие за границу
F.M. Dostoevsky spent the summer
months of 1862 and 1863 abroad. He
visited Germany, Italy, France,
Switzerland, and England. During the
trip, the writer came to the
conclusion that Europe has no future,
because people here are deprived of
the desire for brotherhood, and
therefore Russia must follow a
special, original path. He described
his impressions of the trip in a series
of essays "Winter notes on summer
impressions" (1863).
Ф.М. Достоевский.
Фотография М.Б. Тулинова.
11. Family
In 1866, F.M. Dostoevsky, trying to get out of financial
difficulties, concluded a bonded contract with a book
publisher. On the advice of friends, he turned to the
stenographer Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, and a month
later the novel "The Gambler" was written. Some time
later, F.M. Dostoevsky proposed to Anna Grigoryevna.
They lived together for more than ten years: first
abroad, then in Russia. They had two children: Lyuba
and Fedya. At the end of 1879, doctors found F.M.
Dostoevsky with progressive lung disease. On January
28, 1881, the writer died.
12. Conclusion
The work of F.M. Dostoevsky is one of the pinnacle phenomena
of Russian literature. "In terms of the depth of the idea, in
terms of the breadth of the tasks of the moral world developed
by him, this writer stands completely apart from us," M.E.
Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote about F.M. Dostoevsky. "He not only
recognizes the legitimacy of those interests that concern
modern society, but even goes further, enters the realm of
foreknowledge and premonitions, which are the goal not of the
immediate, but of the most distant searches of mankind."
Indeed, the artistic world of F.M. Dostoevsky is like a cosmos:
the writer was able to touch upon a wide range of historical,
social, and philosophical problems in his works, as well as show
the depths of human consciousness.
The work of F.M. Dostoevsky had a great influence on the
development of not only Russian, but also world literature.
