“The Fight with Gradovsky”: Causes and Consequences

Abstract

The speech of the lawyer and publicist A. D. Gradovsky against F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Pushkin Speech,” as well as the latter’s response in the “Diary of a Writer” in 1880, occupy a prominent place in the golden fund of Russian thought. For the first time, a study of the background of this episode has been undertaken. In 1869–1878, Gradovsky was an ally of Dostoevsky, but in 1879 he already became his opponent. The main reason for this divergence is their different approaches to the problem of the relationship between the people and the intelligentsia, their role in the country’s history, in its present and future. Gradovsky’s position was reduced to the value of the intelligentsia as educators, with its progressive efforts being supported by the state, while the people were viewed as “passive material.” Dostoevsky, on the contrary, insisted on the active, effective nature of popular ideals, hence his call to hear and understand his people — the key goal set in the January 1881 “Diary of a Writer,” which became the last remark of the Russian thinker in this dispute. An article by A. D. Gradovsky “The Answer to G. Dostoevsky,” written between August 12 and 20, 1880, but not published, is published for the first time in the appendix.