“…She’s a Sweet Sister and a Wonderful Person:” Varvara Mikhailovna Dostoevskaya-Karepina and Her Family (Additions to “The Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevskys”)

Abstract

The article introduces the results of archival research devoted to the family of the eldest of F. M. Dostoevsky’s sisters, V. M. Karepina. Vital records (records of birth, wedding, death) of Varvara Mikhailovna herself, her husband Pyotr Andreevich Karepin, their children and grandchildren, discovered by the authors of the article in the funds of the Central State Archive of the City of Moscow (CSA of Moscow), are published. The materials of the archival “Case of the Moscow Noble Deputy Assembly” are introduced into scientific circulation, including documents related to the inclusion in the 3rd part of the Genealogical Book of the Moscow Province of Dostoevsky’s sister’s husband, P. A. Karepin (1838) and the family of their son, the eldest nephew of the writer A. P. Karepin (1911). The documents in this case include the form list of P. A. Karepin, the decree on the resignation of A. P. Karepin, copies of metric documents on the wedding and death of Dostoevsky’s nephew, and the birth of his son, Vladimir Karepin. The published archival materials fill in significant factual gaps in the pedigree of the genealogical branch of Varvara Mikhailovna Dostoevskaya-Karepina, which was published in the fundamental “Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevskys” (2012), which was a revised and supplemented republication of the classic work of M. V. Volotsky “The Chronicle of the Generations of Dostoevsky” (1933). The Appendix contains two biographical notes: about the daughter of P. A. Karepin from his first marriage, stepdaughter of V. M. Dostoevskaya-Karepina — Yulia Petrovna Pomerantseva and her husband Nikandr Petrovich Pomerantsev.