The Pre-Siberian Period in the Biography of F. M. Dostoevsky in New Documentary Research (Review of the Collective Monograph: New Archival and Printed Sources of the Scientific Biography of F. M. Dostoevsky. St. Petersburg, The Russian Christian Academy for the Humanities Publ., 2021. 260 p.)

Abstract

The peer-reviewed collective monograph is a series of articles, each of which, filling a certain lacuna of the least studied first half of F. M. Dostoevsky's life, is an example of a real investigation of confusing, unclear or completely distorted facts about the writer and his genealogy based on a strict systematization of the already known and newly discovered documentary sources. The main body of articles and the appendix were prepared by the project manager B. N. Tikhomirov, three sections — with the participation of E. D. Maskevich, and one — in co-authorship with N. A. Tikhomirova. The study includes various aspects that in one way or another influenced the formation of the personality and worldview of the classic, and his artistic system. The reader will learn numerous new details not only about Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, but also about his milieu (father, brothers, especially Mikhail, with whom he was closest; fellow students, teachers and colleagues in the Main Engineering School and the Drawing Room of the Engineering Department), as well as about the collisions of this period, the vicissitudes of the time of Dostoevsky's entry into the literary circle, months of imprisonment in the Peter and Paul Fortress, and the details of sending convicted Petrashevites to Siberia. Through the prism of the writer's scientific biography, little-known facts of Russia’s history and culture are revealed to the general public, i. e., the peculiarities of the education system (using the example of the educational process at the Main Engineering School) and the provision of material assistance from the imperial treasury to the families of political prisoners, including Mikhail Dostoevsky. The literary block of the study included a scrupulous analysis of the reading circle of the young Dostoevsky, which in a certain sense determined the features of his artistic poetics: the book “One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories of the Old and New Testaments” by I. Gibner, as well as Gothic novels by A. Radcliffe, and numerous “pseudo-Radcliffians.” Many archival documents reflected in the monograph are published and introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The logical conclusion of the data added by the authors to the scientific biography of Dostoevsky of the preSiberian period was the first complete publication of the memoirs written by Baron A. E. Rizenkampf, a friend of the writer's youth, with a commentary by B. N. Tikhomirov, which supplements and corrects certain points in the previous editions of the memoirs. The importance of the reviewed monograph cannot be overestimated. It seems necessary to continue the monumental work of the authors to fill in the gaps in the scientific biography of F. M. Dostoevsky.