“The Former Prince” Vsevolod Dolgorukov as a Prototype and Reader of Dostoevsky’s Novel The Raw Youth

Abstract

The article deals with the biographical, real and historical-literary aspects of the novel The Raw Youth that are related to the life and work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Vsevolod Dolgorukov. The latter was a “former prince,” who possessed literary talents and was a member of the “Jacks of hearts” gang, which was involved in the “case of the Kumanin inheritance.” He first became the prototype of the characters of the novel The Raw Youth, and then an epigone of its author. After sinking very low in his youth, he experienced a new life surge in Siberian exile, due to sincere repentance and moral purification. Correction and “restoration” of Vsevolod Dolgorukov is confirmed by his subsequent charitable and creative activities. Like Dostoevsky, he was the “Russian youth” type from a “random family,” which, along with the heroes of Dostoevsky’s novel Arkady Dolgoruky and Sergei Sokolsky, included the young Count Nagorov, the main character of the saga novel Literary Bohemia (1890) by Vs. Dolgorukov. The memoir notes of the “former prince,” who was twice stripped of his title, largely echo the notes of The Raw Youth in narrative and ideology due to the influence of Dostoevsky’s novel on Vs. Dolgorukov. It is also evidenced by his convict-themed short story Mishka the Flea, which is typologically similar to Notes from the Dead House and the Easter short story The Peasant Marey. Based on the above, the author concludes that Dostoevsky’s hope for an encounter of “Russian youths” with the Orthodox idea was embodied in the life and work of Vsevolod Dolgorukov.