The polemic of F. M. Dostoevsky with Catholicism: towards the formulation of the problem.

Abstract

The subject of the study is the journalistic work of F. M. Dostoevsky in the aspect of his religious and confessional problems, which includes a complex of specific motives, among which the anti-Catholic question stands out. The author points out that the Catholic theme, the genesis of which dates back to the early 1860s, will become one of the leading ones for all subsequent publicistic and artistic creativity of Dostoevsky. Criticism of Catholicism as a sum of ideas, denunciation of the Catholic Church, correspondence polemics with the anti—Christian and even "anti-Christ" principle of papal Catholicism - all these topics are implicit or explicit in the novels of the Great Pentateuch and publicistic articles by F. M. Dostoevsky, influencing the conceptual design and architectonics of the works. It is based on this fact that the problem of the genesis and evolution of the writer's anti-Catholic views acquires a relevant significance in literary studies and Dostoevistics. The author demonstrates that the Catholic theme appears in Dostoevsky's field of vision in the first half of the 1860s in connection with the events unfolding in the west of the Russian Empire and on the Apennine Peninsula - the Polish uprising of 1863-1864 and the Italian Risorgimento. Catholic problems initially arise in Dostoevsky's field of view as a journalistic fact — various eventful incidents, everyday episodes captured by foreign and domestic press. The author of the article believes that it was the factology of the "Polish question" and the "Roman question", along with the anti-Catholic rhetoric of Slavophiles and soil scientists, that had a decisive influence on the formation of Dostoevsky's steady rejection of Catholicism, with which the writer will confidently and convincingly polemize until the end of his days.