In Defense of Alexander Ivanovich Isaev (Using Materials of the State Archive of the Tomsk Region)

Abstract

The article introduces into scientific circulation official documents dated 1853‒1855, preserved in the State Archive of the Tomsk region and recreating the last months of the life of Alexander Ivanovich Isaev — a friend of F. M. Dostoevsky in Semipalatinsk, the first husband of Maria Dmitrievna Constant (Isaeva, Dostoevskaya). These documents include: A. I. Isaev's certificate of service, issued on September 27, 1853, and 6 reports and 12 official letters dated February‒November 1855. Until recently, the corpus of biographical literature about Dostoevsky offered an image of A. I. Isaev as a bitter drunkard, a weak-willed man who ruined his career and life and left his family in poverty. Materials of the State Archive of the Tomsk region contain positive characteristics of Isaev and confirm his professional achievements and career growth from 1840 to July 28, 1853, the day of his dismissal. These archival materials reveal an important fact — the official reason for his dismissal from service. It was not Isaev's alcoholism, exaggerated in the works of Dostoevsky's biographers, but a deadly disease, namely, consumption (tuberculosis). This fact explains the words of Dostoevsky in a letter to Baron A. E. Wrangel dated August 14, 1855. about Isaev’s “dark fate”, the writer's unwavering respect and goodwill towards him, as well as the desire to raise his son Pavel as if he was Dostoevsky’s own. Archival materials demonstrate that immediately after the Isaev's death on August 4 (16), 1855, many persons applied for his position as a tavern assessor in the Kuznetsk Zemsky court, but relinquished it soon after starting the job.