Dostoevsky's great-grandson spoke about the writer's bad habits. Biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky briefly the most important Dostoevsky his biography

He said: "Stop at some bright points in your life, hold on to them, and then everything will be fine in your life." The great-grandson of the writer Dmitry Dostoevsky shared stories about such “bright points” in his life, and also about representatives of a famous family, the power of maternal prayer and the miracle of his healing at the Old Russian Icon of the Mother of God.

On Coming to Faith and Conquering Cancer

I was driven to faith by illness. When I was 25, I was diagnosed with cancer. There was an operation, then for six months I was in the Cancer Center on Tchaikovsky Street in Leningrad, where I underwent a course of chemotherapy. I did my best to fight this disease.

I was taken to the operation without any preliminary preparation, and I told the doctors: “Why is that? I'm afraid". In response to me: “In your direction it is written:“ Cito ”. Do you know what "cito" is? It is Latin for "immediately", "urgently". We want to save you." I say: "Well, well, save." That is, at that moment it was a matter of life and death.

Mysteriously, at that moment, a translator from Japan appeared in St. Petersburg, working on the translation of Dostoevsky. Japan was then one of the most advanced countries in the production of cancer drugs. My mother, now deceased, turned to him with a letter asking him to save a descendant of Dostoevsky (later I gave her letters to the museum). When literally a week later (in Soviet times!) I brought a box of medicine to the head of our department, she did not believe that this was possible: “We order this medicine through Moscow by name! You weren't on the list. And in a week you bring this medicine!” And I said with great pride: “Well, I'm Dostoevsky, a descendant of Fyodor Mikhailovich, who is known all over the world. Therefore, it is natural that the whole world is ready to help me continue to live.

Through the prayer of my mother, I did not die of cancer, I survived

This is on the one hand. And the other is connected with my mother, who, 50 years after her baptism, went to church to beg for the life of her son. I believe that the second reason I stayed alive is my mother's prayer. She forgot everything that was supposed to be done in the temple, and just like a mother turned to God: “Lord! Save my son! Leave him alive!" For the Lord to help you, you need faith and soul, a direct appeal to God. He helped me, and more than once.

Personally, I was able to defeat cancer twice. Believe me, the devil is not as scary as he is painted. You just have to not give up and not be afraid, but believe that you can win. At the same time, one should not wait for symptoms - poor health and pain (after all, the tumor itself does not hurt), but be checked at least once a year. My victories are based on the fact that I found my sores on time.

It is also important not to leave a person alone with this formidable disease, to support in his faith that he will cope. But it is equally important for the patient himself to be in a positive tone and it is during this period to do what he likes. My experience tells me that the forces of the body itself in these conditions work for a cure. Therefore, I always wish everyone good health!

“God healed me of a peptic ulcer at the Old Russian Icon”

The Dostoevsky Readings are regularly held in Staraya Russa, and for many years they have been spiritually nourished by Metropolitan Lev of Novgorod and Starorussky. According to a long-established tradition, Old Russian readings begin with the Divine Liturgy in the temple, one of the most ancient Old Russian churches. Fyodor Mikhailovich was a parishioner of this church.

I felt that I needed to approach this particular icon. I come up and suddenly burst into tears ...

For me, this is a special temple. In Staraya Russa, I began to experience terrible pains due to the fact that the local water is completely different from the Leningrad one. Because of my illness, I suffered terribly. And suddenly, one day, something led me to St. George's Church. Grandmothers scrubbed the floor, there was no service. In my mind, I understood that I had come here at the wrong time, that none of the worshipers were here now, only I was alone. And the heart at that moment was directed to the miraculous Old Russian Icon of the Mother of God. I felt that I needed to approach her. I'm coming. There is a kind of catharsis. I, an adult man, and suddenly burst into tears ... I leave the church, not understanding at all what happened to me.

A day passes. And suddenly I discovered that there was no pain, that I was completely healthy and even felt a surge of strength in myself. I stay for the day, listening to the reports. The next day after the reports, the readings are closed and a banquet is held, at which the entire administration of Staraya Russa is present. Everyone is in some bewilderment: “Dmitry Andreevich, you finally visited our farewell banquet. It is so pleasant!" Since then, I have not had this disease.

At the age of 45, that is, at a fairly mature age, I was baptized in Staraya Russa, where I also celebrated my 60th birthday. So it was in Staraya Russa that my healing took place, and one of the most important events of my life - baptism. With the blessing of the priests of St. George's Church, I tell about the miracle of my healing from peptic ulcer everywhere and everywhere. And I am very happy when people come up to me and say: “You know, the same thing happened to me as to you.” Not only were they healed of illnesses, but other life problems were resolved after praying at the Old Russian Icon of the Mother of God. All believers who happen to visit Staraya Russa try to come to this icon.

It was brought by the Greeks from Olviopol in the first centuries of Christianity in Rus' and was in Staraya Russa until the 17th century. During the pestilence of 1655, a resident of the city of Tikhvin had a revelation that the pestilence would stop if the miraculous Staraya Russian icon was brought there, and the Tikhvin icon would be sent to Staraya Russa. After the transfer of the icons, the pestilence stopped, but the people of Tikhvin did not return the image, and only in the 18th century they were allowed to make a copy of the Old Russian icon. On May 4, 1768, a copy was brought to Staraya Russa, in honor of which a festival was established. The second holiday date is celebrated on September 18, 1888, when the original was returned to Staraya Russa. This year marks the 130th anniversary of this historic event.

Children and grandchildren of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

My mother, who was born before 1917, like all Russian people then, was baptized. But she perceived the Soviet reality already as a kind of reality in which she had to live, and therefore she tried to protect her life and ours as much as possible. And due to the fact that she married Andrei Fedorovich, a descendant of “the archaic Dostoevsky,” as Lenin called the writer, she was afraid to baptize us, her children.

In general, my mother did not expect that she would give birth to twins. This was in 1945. According to her, my sister Ira and I had one blanket for two. Like all "military children", we were weakened and about three months after our birth we fell ill with pneumonia. It so happened that the Lord left me as the successor of the male line, and took Ira away. Once my mother brought me to the grave where Ira was buried, and said: “This is your sister.” I don’t remember her at all, we were only three months old. And then my mother was buried there - in St. Petersburg, at the Skhodnensky cemetery. Now there are more Dostoevskys, because the whole family of Andrei Fyodorovich is there. Six graves of Dostoevsky. I hope that someday I will return there.

Fyodor Mikhailovich had three sisters and three brothers. And all the branches stopped, only our little branch remained. When my father's birthday was being celebrated, I took the liberty of making a report on his life. This, of course, is a very difficult task, because a person bearing the surname Dostoevsky must live his own life and at the same time always remember that he is a descendant of Fyodor Mikhailovich, who said very important words to the whole world.

After graduating from the Engineering School at the age of 19, Fedor Mikhailovich immediately declared: "I will not be engaged in this profession, but I will be a writer." His son Fyodor also quickly found himself - all his life he was engaged in horse breeding, he was a fairly well-known specialist in this field, he published many articles in the imperial horse breeding magazine.

When Fyodor Mikhailovich left for Moscow for the opening of the monument to Pushkin, where he delivered his famous “Pushkin speech”, Anna Grigoryevna wrote to him: “I can’t get along with Fedya, he runs away all the time, I find him with boys on the street, he is interested in horses ". And he answered her: “Buy him a foal, he will have something to do, and he will stop running away from home.” Which is what was done. And in the next letter, hoping that a foal has already been bought for his son, Fyodor Mikhailovich asks to kiss him on an equal basis with everyone else. It was almost a prophetic prediction that Fedor Fedorovich would be engaged in horses all his life. At such a young age, the father accurately identified the main interest of his son's life.

When you know Yu t that there was also a third Fedor - the grandson of the writer, who, unfortunately, died early, the question is often asked: “Why are there so many Fedorovs?” In Rus', according to tradition, the eldest son was often called the name of his father, counting on having many children. But Fyodor Mikhailovich started a family late, and he could not have many children, although three of his four children lived a full life.

True, the children of Fyodor Mikhailovich left this world very sadly. Dostoyevsky's daughter Lyuba died in 1926 in Italy. A few days before her death, she was visited by the consul of Czechoslovakia, who then helped Lyuba a lot. A letter was found in which he wrote: "I must admit that the daughter of a world famous writer is dying in poverty." Son Fedor under the same circumstances died in Moscow. He was 60 years old and she was 62 or 63 years old.

Anna Grigorievna begged her son: "Look at the world." And Fedya answered: “Russia is enough for me”

Fedya was born in St. Petersburg and, remaining a Russian, did not want to go abroad at all, although his mother begged him: “Go, you have money, see how others live.” And he: “No, Russia is enough for me, I’d rather go to the bathhouse.” And Lyuba, who was born in the West, took it and left Russia forever, telling her mother that she was going to be treated for a short time. She traveled all over Europe, then fell ill and died in Italy, in Bolzano, on the border with Austria.

Fedor Fedorovich died and was buried in Moscow. Unfortunately, his grave has been lost, and now we are trying to find it. These are the different fates of the two children of Fyodor Mikhailovich ...

In general, Fedor Mikhailovich was very worried because his children were late, that he would not be able to raise them. At the end of his life, he again settled in St. Petersburg, where his brother Andrei also lived, whose children were already quite old. “How I would like my little children to be like your independent children,” Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote to his brother. But he understood that due to age he might not see his children as adults. This, of course, was a great tragedy for him.

The education system of F.M. Dostoevsky

In letters about children, Dostoevsky never used the word "educate", but: "observe", "lead"

This is a completely unique system. Few have taken advantage of it. Unfortunately, pedagogical science did not follow in the footsteps of Dostoevsky. First of all, he never used the word “educate” in his letters to Anna Grigorievna, but used completely different words: “observe”, “lead”.

His principle was to understand the child, and not to pull him up to his adult level, facilitating his own existence. And it brought great results. Anna Grigorievna recalled that he could not pass by any child so as not to start talking to him, translating rather serious thoughts into a child's language. One day, Anna Grigorievna recalled, they were either traveling from Staraya Russa or to Staraya Russa, and as soon as they entered the car, they heard the cry of a child, and Fyodor Mikhailovich immediately disappeared. Soon the child calmed down, and Anna Grigorievna saw him talking about something with Fyodor Mikhailovich. True, she was somewhat unhappy that her husband forgot about her and immediately flew to someone else's child, and took him back to her compartment.

Let me tell you one more case. I found notes about a trip on a steamer to Ryazan. There was land, part of which was to be inherited by Fyodor Mikhailovich. They then took care of their inheritance. On deck, someone's child was arguing, crying and not at ease. Although four-year-old Fedya and six-year-old Lyuba were with them, Fyodor Mikhailovich ran to help someone else's child and took care of him for quite a long time, leaving his children.

Great-grandfather Grigory Gomerovich and great-great-grandfather Gomer Karlovich

At the Dostoevsky readings and symposiums dedicated to the life and work of Fyodor Mikhailovich, we heard a lot about various interesting finds related to the history of the family and the biography of the writer. Even I, his descendant, previously had little knowledge of Dostoevsky's ancestors such as his grandmother Anastasia, the wife of a Uniate priest, great-grandfather Grigory Gomerovich and great-great-grandfather Homer Karlovich. Their names and patronymics sound somewhat unexpected to the Russian ear.

The secret of the sudden departure of Dostoevsky's father Mikhail Andreevich from his father's house and his break with his parental family, the circumstances of his participation in the war of 1812, is also ajar. True, recently discovered new investigative documents relating to his mysterious death in 1839, believed to have been at the hands of serfs, still do not allow an unambiguous solution to this issue.

Documents about the descendants of Dostoevsky, who were repressed in the 1930s, have also been declassified today.

Great-great-grandchildren and great-great-granddaughters Dostoevsky

I have one son, and I always dreamed of a girl. And now we have three very pretty granddaughters who once came with me to Staraya Russa for the Dostoevsky readings. Even as a child, I prepared them to understand that they were not just girls, but girls with Dostoevsky genes - Masha, Vera and Anya. The youngest Mashenka was born on November 23, 2006.

When I brought Anya to the famous 30-volume academic collected works of Fyodor Mikhailovich, she looked appraisingly and said: “No, I can’t write so much.” A couple of days later, she folded the leaf in half and wrote her own work in neat scrawl, alas, unreadable. Now this "book" is in the fund of the Museum of F.M. Dostoevsky in Petersburg.

Of course, we also dreamed of a grandson, and when he was born, we named him Fedor. So now we have another Fyodor Dostoevsky growing up.

About the Museum of Childhood in Darovoye

The writer spent his childhood in the Dostoevsky Darovoye estate near Moscow. In general, for the formation of a person's personality, it is very important in what conditions and in what environment his childhood passes. Therefore, I think people are interested in seeing the place where the future genius writer lived and grew up from 10 to 17 years old.

It is necessary to create a Museum of Dostoevsky's childhood in the Darovoye estate. This is a unique place

The writer's brother Andrei recalled that little Fedya was cheerful, loved to play, walk through the linden grove and forest. His first prayers were heard by the walls of the Holy Spirit Church, which has survived to this day. It is located in the neighboring village of Monogarovo. The future writer was taken here by his mother. Dostoevsky mentions a dove that flew from one window to another during the Liturgy. If we keep these bright points associated with the childhood of the writer, it will greatly help in the perception of his worldview. Near the temple there is a small churchyard, where, it is believed, the father of Fyodor Mikhailovich is buried. Now the main task is to establish the exact location of his grave.

At international scientific conferences dedicated to Dostoevsky, reports are heard on the significance of childhood memories in the writer's work. It is necessary to create a museum of the writer's childhood in the Darovoye estate. This is a unique place where the historical landscape is almost completely preserved, a grove with 200-year-old lindens, a ravine, settlements that are mentioned in the works of Dostoevsky.

"From a diamond to a tram driver"

There are 18 professions in my work book. I usually say: "I have professions - from a diamond worker to a tram driver." Now I am a consultant at the St. Petersburg Museum of Dostoevsky. True, I do not have a higher education. Sometimes I think that I didn’t go to university in vain, because I had enough knowledge to calmly pass the exams and go where I want to. But after graduating from school, it seemed to me that it was more interesting to plunge into the thick of life and try myself in different areas, and I did not go anywhere. And when one day during perestroika, a work book fell into my hands (usually it is in the personnel department), it turned out that I had 18 professions. This has helped me a lot in my life sometimes.

About a German who would like to be born in Russia

In 1990, it was very hard, the shops were empty. And suddenly I was invited to Germany to the opening of the Dostoevsky Society. The opening is only one day, and then what? And then I think: “Yeah, I can do a lot. I'll find a job here." And I worked in Germany, helping my family with parcels from there. It was such a "parcel period". The Germans kept asking: “What is missing in Russia, what should we send?” I helped by suggesting what products are needed in Russia.

The Germans really wanted to help someone in particular, it was important for them not only to help, but also to become friends, to exchange letters. When I was returning from vacation in Hamburg, an elderly couple asked me to give the German who helped them a letter and a “thank you very much”.

It struck me then. I thought: “You came to us as a conqueror, with a gun. What is it in Russia that made you say such a phrase in your declining years?” As a patriot of my country, I was, of course, very pleased with his words.

Name: Fyodor Dostoevsky

Age: 59 years old

Place of Birth: Moscow

A place of death: Saint Petersburg

Activity: Russian writer

Family status: was married

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Biography

At the very first meeting with his future wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, Dostoevsky told her, a completely alien and unfamiliar girl, the story of his life. “His story made a terrible impression on me: I had a chill on my skin,” Anna Grigoryevna recalled. This apparently secretive and stern man told me his whole past life in such detail, so sincerely and sincerely, that I was involuntarily surprised. Only later did I understand that Fyodor Mikhailovich, completely alone and surrounded by hostile people against him, was at that time thirsty to tell someone a biography about his life ... "

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born in 1821 into the once noble Dostoevsky family, whose family originated from the Russian-Lithuanian gentry. The annals mention the fact that back in 1506, Prince Fyodor Ivanovich Yaroslavich granted his voivode Danila Rtishchev a family coat of arms and a vast Dostoevo estate near present-day Brest, and from that voivode the entire numerous Dostoevsky family went. However, by the beginning of the century before last, only one coat of arms remained from the family inheritance, and the father of the future writer Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky was forced to feed his family by his own labor - he worked as a staff doctor at the Mariinsky Hospital on Bozhedomka in Moscow. The family lived in an outbuilding at the hospital, where all eight children of Mikhail Andreevich and his wife Maria Feodorovna were born.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - childhood and youth

Fedya Dostoevsky received a decent education for the noble children of that time - he knew Latin, French and German. The mother taught children the basics of literacy, then Fedor, together with his older brother Mikhail, entered the Moscow private boarding school of Leonty Chermak. “The humane attitude towards us, children, on the part of the parents was the reason that during their lifetime they did not dare to put us in a gymnasium, although it would have cost much less,” Fyodor Mikhailovich’s brother, Andrei Dostoevsky, later wrote in his memoirs about his biography.

Gymnasiums did not enjoy a good reputation at that time, and in them there was the usual and ordinary corporal punishment for every slightest offense. As a result, private pensions were preferred. When Fedor turned 16, his father sent them and Mikhail to study at Kostomarov's private boarding school in St. Petersburg. After graduation, the boys moved to the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School, which was then considered one of the privileged educational institutions for the "golden youth". Fedor also considered himself a member of the elite - primarily intellectual, since the money sent by his father was sometimes not enough even for the bare necessities.

Unlike Mikhail, who did not attach much importance to this, Fedor was embarrassed by his old dress and the constant lack of cash. During the day, the brothers went to school, and in the evenings they often visited literary salons, where at that time the works of Schiller, Goethe, as well as Auguste Comte and Louis Blanc, French historians and sociologists that were fashionable in those years, were discussed.

The carefree youth of the brothers ended in 1839, when news of the death of their father came to St. Petersburg - according to the existing “family legend”, Mikhail Andreevich died on his estate Darovoye at the hands of his own serfs, whom he caught red-handed stealing timber. Perhaps it was the shock associated with the death of his father that forced Fyodor to move away from the evenings in bohemian salons and join the socialist circles, which then acted in large numbers among the students.

The members of the circle talked about the ugliness of censorship and serfdom, about the corruption of the bureaucracy and the oppression of freedom-loving youth. “I can say that Dostoevsky never was and never could be a revolutionary,” his classmate Pyotr Semyonov-Tyan-Shansky later recalled. The only thing is that he, as a noble man of feelings, could be carried away by feelings of indignation and even anger at the sight of injustices and violence committed against the humiliated and offended, which became the reason for his visits to the Petrashevsky circle.

It was under the influence of Petrashevsky's ideas that Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote his first novel, Poor People, which made him famous. Success changed the life of yesterday's student - the engineering service was over, now Dostoevsky could rightfully call himself a writer. The name of Dostoevsky in his biography became known not only in the circles of writers and poets, but also among the general reading public. Dostoevsky's debut turned out to be successful, and no one had any doubts that his path to the heights of literary glory would be direct and easy.

But life decreed otherwise. In 1849, the "Petrashevsky case" broke out - the reason for the arrest was the public reading of Belinsky's letter to Gogol, forbidden by censorship. All two dozen of those arrested, including Dostoevsky, repented of being carried away by "harmful ideas." Nevertheless, the gendarmes saw in their "pernicious conversations" signs of the preparation of "distemper and rebellion, threatening to overthrow any order, trampling on the most sacred rights of religion, law and property."

The court sentenced them to death by firing squad on the Semyonovsky parade ground, and only at the last moment, when all the convicts were already standing on the scaffold in the clothes of suicide bombers, the emperor relented and announced a pardon with the replacement of the execution with hard labor. Mikhail Petrashevsky himself was sent to hard labor for life, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, like most of the "revolutionaries", received only 4 years of hard labor, followed by service in ordinary soldiers.

Fyodor Dostoevsky served his term in Omsk. At first he worked at a brick factory, he fired alabaster, later he worked in an engineering workshop. “All four years I lived hopelessly in prison, behind the walls, and went out only to work,” the writer recalled. - The work was hard, and I happened to be exhausted, in bad weather, in sputum, in slush or in winter in an unbearable cold ... We lived in a heap, all together, in one barracks. The floor is an inch dirty, dripping from the ceiling - everything is see-through. We slept on bare bunks, one pillow was allowed. They covered themselves with short sheepskin coats, and their legs were always bare all night. You tremble all night. I consider those 4 years as the time in which I was buried alive and closed in a coffin ... ”During hard labor, Dostoevsky’s epilepsy worsened, the attacks of which then tormented him all his life.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Semipalatinsk

After his release, Dostoevsky was sent to serve in the seventh Siberian linear battalion at the fortress of Semipalatinsk - then this town was known not as a nuclear test site, but as a provincial fortress that guarded the border from the raids of Kazakh nomads. “It was a semi-city, semi-village with crooked wooden houses,” Baron Alexander Wrangel, who at that time served as the prosecutor of Semipalatinsk, recalled many years later. Dostoevsky was settled in an ancient hut, which stood in the most bleak place: a steep wasteland, loose sand, not a bush, not a tree.

Fyodor Mikhailovich paid five rubles for his premises, laundry and food. But what was his food like? At that time, four kopecks were given to the soldier for welding. Of these four kopecks, the company commander and the cook kept one and a half kopecks in their favor. Of course, life was cheap then: one pound of meat cost a penny, a pood of buckwheat - thirty kopecks. Fyodor Mikhailovich took home his daily portion of cabbage soup. porridge and black bread, and if he didn’t eat it himself, he gave it to his poor mistress ... "

There, in Semipalatinsk, Dostoevsky fell seriously in love for the first time. His chosen one was Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva, the wife of a former gymnasium teacher, and now an official in the tavern, exiled for some sins from the capital to the ends of the world. “Maria Dmitrievna was over thirty years old,” Baron Wrangel recalled. - A rather beautiful blonde of medium height, very thin, passionate and exalted by nature. She caressed Fyodor Mikhailovich, but I don’t think that she deeply appreciated him, she simply took pity on the unfortunate man downtrodden by fate ... I don’t think that Maria Dmitrievna was in any way seriously in love.

Fyodor Mikhailovich took the feeling of pity and compassion for mutual love and fell in love with her with all the ardor of youth. Painful and fragile. Maria reminded the writer of her mother, and in his attitude towards her there was more tenderness than passion. Dostoevsky was ashamed of his feelings for a married woman, worried and tormented by the hopelessness of the situation. But about a year after they met, in August 1855, Isaev died suddenly, and Fyodor Mikhailovich immediately made his beloved a marriage proposal, which, however, the widow did not immediately accept.

They married only at the beginning of 1857, when Dostoevsky received an officer's rank and Maria Dmitrievna gained confidence that he could provide for her and her son Pavel. But, unfortunately, this marriage did not justify Dostoevsky's hopes. Later he wrote to Alexander Wrangel: “Oh, my friend, she loved me endlessly, I loved her too without measure, but we did not live happily with her ... We were positively unhappy together with her (according to her strange, suspicious and painful - fantastic character) - we could not stop loving each other; even the more unhappy they were, the more they became attached to each other.

In 1859, Dostoevsky, together with his wife and stepson, returned to St. Petersburg. And he found that his name was not at all forgotten by the public, on the contrary, he was accompanied everywhere by the glory of the writer and "political prisoner." He began to write again - first the novel Notes from the House of the Dead, then Humiliated and Insulted, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. Together with his older brother Mikhail, he opened the Vremya magazine - his brother, who bought his own tobacco factory with his father's inheritance, subsidized the release of the almanac.

Alas, a few years later it turned out that Mikhail Mikhailovich was a very mediocre businessman, and after his sudden death, huge debts remained at the factory and at the editorial office of the magazine, which Fedor Mikhailovich had to take on. Later, his second wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, wrote: “To pay these debts, Fyodor Mikhailovich had to work beyond his strength ... How artistically my husband’s works would have won if he had not taken on these debts and could write novels without hastily, reviewing and finishing before sending them to print.

In literature and society, the works of Dostoevsky are often compared with the works of other talented writers and Dostoevsky is reproached for the excessive complexity, intricacy and piling up of his novels, while in others their creations are finished, and in Turgenev, for example, they are almost jewelry honed. And it rarely occurs to anyone to recall and weigh the circumstances under which other writers lived and worked, and under which my husband lived and worked.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - biography of personal life

But then, in the early 60s, it seemed that Dostoevsky had a second youth. He amazed those around him with his efficiency, he was often excited and cheerful. At this time, a new love came to him - it was a certain Apollinaria Suslova, a graduate of the boarding school for noble maidens, who later became the prototype of both Nastasya Filippovna in The Idiot and Polina in The Gambler. Apollinaria was the complete opposite of Maria Dmitrievna - a young, strong, independent girl.

And the feelings that the writer had for her were also completely different than his love for his wife: instead of tenderness and compassion, there was passion and a desire to possess. In her memoirs about her father, the daughter of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Lyubov Dostoevskaya, wrote that Apollinaria in the autumn of 1861 sent him “a declaration of love. The letter was found among my father's papers - it is written simply, naively and poetically. At first glance, we have before us a timid young girl, blinded by the genius of the great writer. Dostoevsky was touched by Polina's letter. This declaration of love came to him at the moment when he most needed it ... "

Their relationship lasted three years. At first, Polina was flattered by the adoration of the great writer, but gradually her feelings for Dostoevsky cooled off. According to the biographers of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Apollinaria was waiting for some kind of romantic love, but met the real passion of a mature man. Dostoevsky himself assessed his passion as follows: “Apollinaria is a big egoist. Egoism and pride in it are colossal. She demands everything from people, all perfections, does not forgive a single imperfection in respect for other good traits, but she herself relieves herself of the slightest duties to people. Leaving his wife in St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky traveled around Europe with Apollinaria, spent time in the casino - Fyodor Mikhailovich turned out to be a passionate but unlucky player - and lost a lot at roulette.

In 1864, Dostoevsky's "second youth" ended unexpectedly. In April, his wife Maria Dmitrievna died. and just three months later, brother Mikhail Mikhailovich suddenly died. Dostoevsky later wrote to his old friend Wrangel: “... I was suddenly left alone, and I was just scared. The whole life was broken in two at once. The one half that I crossed was everything I lived for. and in the other, still unknown half, everything is alien, everything is new, and not a single heart that could replace both of them for me.

In addition to mental suffering, the death of his brother also entailed serious financial consequences for Dostoevsky: he found himself without money and without a magazine that was closed for debts. Fedor Mikhailovich offered Apollinaria Suslova to marry him - this would also solve issues with his debts, because Polina was from a fairly wealthy family. But the girl refused, by that time there was no trace of her enthusiastic attitude towards Dostoevsky. In December 1864, she wrote in her diary: “They talk to me about FM. I just hate him. He made me suffer so much when it was possible to do without suffering.

Another failed bride of the writer was Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, a representative of an ancient noble family, the sister of the famous Sophia Kovalevskaya. According to the writer's biographers, at first things seemed to be going to the wedding, but then the engagement was canceled without explanation. However, Fyodor Mikhailovich himself always claimed that it was he who freed the bride from this promise: “This is a girl of high moral qualities: but her convictions are diametrically opposed to mine, and she cannot give them up, she is too straightforward. It is unlikely that therefore our marriage could be happy.

From the hardships of life, Dostoevsky tried to hide abroad, but creditors pursued him there too, threatening him with the deprivation of copyright, an inventory of property, and a debtor's prison. His relatives also demanded money - the widow of brother Mikhail believed that Fedor was obliged to provide her and her children with a decent existence. Desperately trying to get at least some money, he entered into onerous contracts to write two novels at once - "The Gambler" and "Crime and Punishment", but soon realized that he had neither moral nor physical strength to meet the deadlines set by the contracts. Dostoevsky tried to distract himself with the game, but luck, as usual, did not accompany him, and, losing the last money, he became more and more depressed and melancholy. In addition, because of the undermined peace of mind, he was literally tormented by seizures of epilepsy.

It was in this state that 20-year-old Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina found the writer. For the first time, Anna heard the name of Dostoevsky at the age of 16 - from her father Grigory Ivanovich, a poor nobleman and petty Petersburg official, who was a passionate admirer of literature, was fond of the theater. According to her own recollections, Anya secretly took an edition of Notes from the House of the Dead from her father, read at night and shed bitter tears on the pages. She was an ordinary Petersburg girl of the middle of the 19th century - from the age of nine she was sent to study at the School of St. Anna on Kirochnaya Street, then - to the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium.

Anyuta was an excellent student, avidly read women's novels and seriously dreamed of rebuilding this world - for example, becoming a doctor or teacher. Despite the fact that already during her studies at the gymnasium it became clear that literature was much closer and more interesting for her than the natural sciences. In the fall of 1864, a graduate of Snitkin entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Pedagogical Courses. But neither physics nor mathematics were given to her, and biology became a torment at all: when the teacher in the class began to dissect a dead cat, Anya fainted.

In addition, a year later her father fell seriously ill, and Anna had to earn money herself to support the family. She decided to leave her teaching career and went to study shorthand courses, opened by Professor Olkhin, famous in those years. “At first, shorthand was definitely not successful for me,” Anya later recalled, “and only after the 5th or 6th lecture did I begin to master this gibberish letter.” A year later, Anya Snitkina was considered Olkhin's best student, and when Dostoevsky himself turned to the professor, wanting to hire a stenographer, he did not even have a doubt who to send to the famous writer.

Their acquaintance took place on October 4, 1866. “At twenty-five past twelve, I went up to Alonkin’s house and asked the janitor who was standing at the gate where apartment No. 13 was,” Anna Grigorievna recalled. - The house was large, with many small apartments inhabited by merchants and artisans. He immediately reminded me of that house in the novel "Crime and Punishment", in which the hero of the novel Raskolnikov lived. Dostoevsky's apartment was on the second floor. I rang, and an elderly maid immediately opened the door for me, who invited me into the dining room ...

The maid asked me to sit down, saying that the master would come immediately. Indeed, Fyodor Mikhailovich appeared two minutes later... At first glance, Dostoevsky seemed to me rather old. But as soon as he spoke, he immediately became younger, and I thought that he was hardly more than thirty-five to seven years old. He was of medium height and carried very straight. Light brown, even slightly reddish hair, was heavily pomaded and carefully smoothed. But what struck me was his eyes; they were different: one - brown, in the other - the pupil was dilated in the entire eye and the irises were imperceptible. This duality of the eyes gave Dostoevsky's gaze a kind of enigmatic expression...”

However, at first their work did not work out: Dostoevsky was annoyed by something and smoked a lot. He tried to dictate a new article for Russkiy Vestnik, but then, apologizing, invited Anna to come in at eight o'clock in the evening. Arriving in the evening, Snitkina found Fyodor Mikhailovich in much better condition, he was talkative and hospitable. He admitted that he liked the way she behaved at the first meeting - seriously, almost sternly, did not smoke and did not at all resemble modern shorn girls. Gradually, they began to communicate freely, and unexpectedly for Anna, Fyodor Mikhailovich suddenly began to tell her the biography of his life.

This evening conversation became for Fyodor Mikhailovich the first pleasant event in such a difficult last year of his life. The very next morning after his “confession”, he wrote in a letter to the poet Maykov: “Olkhin sent me his best student ... Anna Grigorievna Snitkina is a young and rather handsome girl, 20 years old, of a good family, who completed her gymnasium course excellently, with extremely kind and clear character. Our work went great...

Thanks to the efforts of Anna Grigorievna, Dostoevsky managed to fulfill the incredible terms of the contract with the publisher Stelovsky and write the whole novel "The Gambler" in twenty-six days. “At the end of the novel, I noticed that my stenographer sincerely loves me,” Dostoevsky wrote in one of his letters. - Although she never said a word about it to me, I liked her more and more. Since I have been terribly bored and hard to live since the death of my brother, I suggested that she marry me ... The difference in years is terrible (20 and 44), but I am more and more convinced that she will be happy. She has a heart, and she knows how to love.

Their engagement took place literally a month later, on November 8, 1866. As Anna Grigoryevna herself recalled, when making an offer, Dostoevsky was very worried and, fearing to receive a direct refusal, first spoke about the fictional characters of the novel he allegedly conceived: they say, do you think a young girl, suppose her name is Anya, could love tenderly her loving , but an old and sick artist, besides burdened with debts?

“Imagine that this artist is me, that I confessed my love to you and asked you to be my wife. Tell me what would you say? - Fyodor Mikhailovich's face expressed such embarrassment, such heartfelt anguish, that I finally realized that this was not just a literary conversation and that I would deal a terrible blow to his vanity and pride if I gave an evasive answer. I looked at the excited face of Fyodor Mikhailovich so dear to me and said: - I would answer you that I love you and will love you all my life!

I will not convey the tender, full of love words that Fyodor Mikhailovich spoke to me in those unforgettable moments: they are sacred to me ... "

Their wedding took place on February 15, 1867 at about 8 pm in the Izmailovsky Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. It seemed that Anna Grigoryevna's joy would never end, but literally a week later the harsh reality reminded of itself. Firstly, Dostoevsky's stepson Pavel spoke out against Anna, regarding the appearance of a new woman as a threat to his interests. “Pavel Alexandrovich took a look at me as a usurper, as a woman who forcibly entered their family, where until now he was the complete master,” Dostoevskaya recalled.

Unable to interfere with our marriage, Pavel Alexandrovich decided to make it unbearable for me. It is quite possible that with his constant troubles, quarrels and slanders against me Fyodor Mikhailovich, he hoped to quarrel us and force us to disperse. Secondly, the young wife was constantly slandered by other relatives of the writer, who feared that she would “cut” the amount of financial assistance that Dostoevsky distributed to them from his fees. It got to the point that after a month of living together, constant scandals so complicated the life of the newlyweds. that Anna Grigorievna seriously feared a final break in relations.

The catastrophe, however, did not happen - and mainly thanks to the extraordinary mind, determination and energy of Anna Grigoryevna herself. She pawned all her valuables in a pawnshop and persuaded Fyodor Mikhailovich to go abroad, to Germany, secretly from relatives, in order to change the situation and at least live together for a short time. Dostoevsky agreed to escape, explaining his decision in a letter to the poet Maykov: “There are two main reasons. 1) Save not only mental health, but even life in certain circumstances. .. 2) Creditors”.

It was planned that the trip abroad would take only three months, but thanks to the prudence of Anna Grigoryevna, she managed to snatch her beloved from her usual environment for four whole years, which prevented her from becoming a full wife. “Finally, a period of serene happiness came for me: there were no money worries, there were no faces standing between me and my husband, there was a full opportunity to enjoy his company.”

Anna Grigorievna weaned her husband from addiction to roulette, having somehow managed to arouse shame in his soul for the lost money. Dostoevsky wrote in one of his letters to his wife: “A great deed has been done to me, the vile fantasy that has tormented me for almost ten years has disappeared (or, better, since the death of my brother, when I was suddenly crushed by debts): I kept dreaming of winning; dreamed seriously, passionately ... Now it's all over! I will remember this all my life and every time I will bless you, my angel. No, it's yours now, yours inseparably, all yours. Until now, half of this damned fantasy belonged.

In February 1868, in Geneva, the Dostoevskys finally had their first child - a daughter, Sophia. “But we were not given long to enjoy our cloudless happiness. - wrote Anna Figorievna. - In the first days of May, the weather was wonderful, and on the urgent advice of the doctor, we took our dear baby to the park every day, where she slept in her stroller for two or three hours. On one unfortunate day during such a walk, the weather suddenly changed, and, apparently, the girl caught a cold, because that same night she developed a fever and coughed. Already on May 12, she died, and Dostoevsky's grief seemed to know no bounds.

“Life seems to have stopped for us; all our thoughts, all our conversations focused on memories of Sonya and that happy time when she illuminated our lives with her presence ... But the merciful Lord took pity on our suffering: we soon became convinced that the Lord blessed our marriage and we can again hope have a child. Our joy was immeasurable, and my dear husband began to take care of me with the same attention. just like my first pregnancy.

Later, Anna Grigorievna gave birth to her husband two more sons - the eldest Fedor (1871) and the younger Alexei (1875). True, the Dostoevsky spouses once again had a bitter lot to survive the death of their child: in May 1878, the three-year-old Alyosha died of an attack of epilepsy.

Anna Grigorievna supported her husband in difficult times, was for him both a loving wife and a spiritual friend. But besides this, she became for Dostoevsky, in modern terms, his literary agent and manager. It was thanks to the practicality and initiative of his wife that he was able to finally pay off all the debts that had poisoned his life for years. Anna Grigorievna began with that. What. having studied the intricacies of publishing, she decided to print and sell Dostoevsky's new book - the novel "Demons" herself.

She did not rent a room for this, but simply indicated her home address in newspaper advertisements and paid off the buyers herself. To her husband's considerable surprise, literally in a month the entire circulation of the book was already sold out, and Anna Grigorievna officially established a new enterprise: “F.M. Dostoevsky (exclusively for non-residents).

Finally, it was Anna Grigorievna who insisted that the family leave noisy St. Petersburg forever - away from obsessive and greedy relatives. The Dostoevskys chose to live in the town of Staraya Russa in the Novgorod province, where they bought a two-story wooden mansion.

Anna Grigorievna wrote in her memoirs: “The time spent in Russa is one of my most beautiful memories. The children were quite healthy, and during the whole winter it was not necessary to invite a doctor to them. which did not happen when we lived in the capital. Fyodor Mikhailovich also felt good: thanks to a calm, measured life and the absence of all unpleasant surprises (so frequent in St. Petersburg), her husband's nerves got stronger, and epileptic seizures occurred less frequently and were less severe.

And as a consequence of this, Fyodor Mikhailovich rarely got angry and irritated, and was always almost good-natured, talkative and cheerful ... Our daily life in Staraya Russa was all distributed by the hour, and this was strictly observed. Working at night, the husband got up no earlier than eleven o'clock. Going out to drink coffee, he called the children, and they happily ran to him and told all the incidents that had happened that morning, and about everything they had seen on a walk. And Fyodor Mikhailovich, looking at them, rejoiced and maintained the most lively conversation with them.

Never before or since have I seen a man who is as skilled as my husband. enter into the worldview of children and thus interest them in your conversation. In the afternoon, Fyodor Mikhailovich called me into his office to dictate what he managed to write during the night ... In the evening, playing with the children, Fyodor Mikhailovich, to the sound of an organ (Fyodor Mikhailovich bought it himself for the children, and now they amuse themselves with it and his grandchildren) danced quadrille, waltz and mazurka with me. My husband was especially fond of the mazurka and, to be fair, he danced it smartly, with enthusiasm ... "

Fyodor Dostoevsky - death and funeral

In the autumn of 1880, the Dostoevsky family returned to St. Petersburg. They decided to spend this winter in the capital - Fyodor Mikhailovich complained of feeling unwell, and Anna Grigoryevna was afraid to entrust his health to provincial doctors. On the night of January 25-26, 1881, he was working as usual when his fountain pen fell behind a bookcase with books. Fyodor Mikhailovich tried to move the bookcase, but from strong exertion his throat bled - in recent years the writer suffered from emphysema. For the next two days, Fyodor Mikhailovich remained in a serious condition, and on the evening of January 28 he died.

The funeral of Dostoevsky became a historic event: almost thirty thousand people accompanied his coffin to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. Every Russian person experienced the death of the great writer as national mourning and personal grief.

Anna Grigoryevna could not come to terms with Dostoevsky's death for a long time. On the day of her husband's funeral, she vowed to devote the rest of her life to serving his name. Anna Grigorievna continued to live in the past. As her daughter Lyubov Fedorovna wrote, “mother did not live in the twentieth century, but remained in the 70s of the nineteenth. Her people are Fyodor Mikhailovich's friends, her society is a circle of departed people close to Dostoevsky. She lived with them. Everyone who works on the study of the life or works of Dostoevsky seemed to her a kindred person.

Anna Grigoryevna died in June 1918 in Yalta and was buried at the local cemetery - far from St. Petersburg, from her relatives, from Dostoevsky's dear grave. In her will, she asked to be buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, next to her husband, and at the same time they would not put up a separate monument, but simply cut out a few lines. In 1968, her last wish was fulfilled.

Three years after the death of Anna Grigoryevna, the famous literary critic L.P. Grossman wrote about her: “She managed to melt the tragic personal life of Dostoevsky into the calm and complete happiness of his last pores. She undoubtedly extended the life of Dostoevsky. With the deep wisdom of a loving heart, Anna Grigoryevna managed to solve the most difficult task - to be the life companion of a nervously ill person, a former convict, an epileptic and the greatest creative genius.

Someone calls him a prophet, a gloomy philosopher, someone - an evil genius. He himself called himself "a child of the century, a child of disbelief, doubt." Much has been said about Dostoevsky as a writer, but his personality is surrounded by an aura of mystery. The multifaceted nature of the classic allowed him to leave a mark on the pages of history, to inspire millions of people around the world. His ability to expose vices, without turning away from them, made the characters so alive, and the works - full of mental suffering. Immersion in the world of Dostoevsky can be painful, difficult, but it gives birth to something new in people, this is exactly the kind of literature that educates. Dostoevsky is a phenomenon that needs to be studied for a long time and thoughtfully. A brief biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, some interesting facts from his life, creativity will be presented to your attention in the article.

Brief biography in dates

The main task of life, as Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky wrote, is “not to lose heart, not to fall”, despite all the trials sent from above. And he had a lot of them.

November 11, 1821 - birth. Where was Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky born? He was born in our glorious capital - Moscow. Father - head doctor Mikhail Andreevich, a believing, pious family. Named after my grandfather.

The boy began to study at a young age under the guidance of his parents, by the age of 10 he knew the history of Russia quite well, his mother taught him to read. Religious education was also given attention: daily prayer before going to bed was a family tradition.

In 1837, the mother of Fyodor Mikhailovich Maria died, in 1839 - father Mikhail.

1838 - Dostoevsky enters the Main Engineering School of St. Petersburg.

1841 - becomes an officer.

1843 - enlisted in the engineering corps. The study did not please, there was a strong craving for literature, the writer made his first creative experiments even then.

1847 - visiting Fridays Petrashevsky.

April 23, 1849 - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

From January 1850 to February 1854 - Omsk fortress, hard labor. This period had a strong influence on the work, the attitude of the writer.

1854-1859 - the period of military service, the city of Semipalatinsk.

1857 - wedding with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva.

June 7, 1862 - the first trip abroad, where Dostoevsky stays until October. For a long time I was fond of gambling.

1863 - falling in love, relationship with A. Suslova.

1864 - the writer's wife Maria, older brother Mikhail die.

1867 - marries stenographer A. Snitkina.

Until 1871, they traveled a lot outside of Russia.

1877 - spends a lot of time with Nekrasov, then delivers a speech at his funeral.

1881 - Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich dies, he was 59 years old.

Biography in detail

The childhood of the writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky can be called prosperous: born into a noble family in 1821, he received an excellent home education and upbringing. Parents managed to instill a love for languages ​​(Latin, French, German), history. After reaching the age of 16, Fedor was sent to a private boarding school. Then the training continued at the military engineering school of St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky showed interest in literature even then, visited literary salons with his brother, tried to write himself.

As evidenced by the biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, 1839 takes the life of his father. Internal protest is looking for a way out, Dostoevsky begins to get acquainted with the socialists, visits Petrashevsky's circle. The novel "Poor People" was written under the influence of the ideas of that period. This work allowed the writer to finally finish the hated engineering service and take up literature. From an unknown student, Dostoevsky became a successful writer until censorship intervened.

In 1849, the ideas of the Petrashevites were recognized as harmful, the members of the circle were arrested and sent to hard labor. It is noteworthy that the sentence was originally death, but the last 10 minutes changed it. The Petrashevites, who were already on the scaffold, were pardoned, limiting the punishment to four years of hard labor. Mikhail Petrashevsky was sentenced to life imprisonment. Dostoevsky was sent to Omsk.

The biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky tells that serving the term was difficult for the writer. He compares that time to being buried alive. Hard monotonous work like burning bricks, disgusting conditions, cold undermined the health of Fyodor Mikhailovich, but also gave him food for thought, new ideas, topics for creativity.

After serving his sentence, Dostoevsky serves in Semipalatinsk, where the only consolation was the first love - Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. These relationships were tender, somewhat reminiscent of the relationship of a mother with her son. The only thing that stopped the writer from proposing to a woman was the fact that she had a husband. A little later he died. In 1857, Dostoevsky finally achieves Maria Isaeva, they get married. After the marriage, the relationship changed somewhat, the writer himself speaks of them as "unfortunate".

1859 - return to St. Petersburg. Dostoevsky writes again, opens the Vremya magazine with his brother. Brother Mikhail does business ineptly, gets into debt, dies. Fyodor Mikhailovich has to deal with debts. He has to write quickly in order to be able to pay all the accumulated debts. But even in such a hurry, the most complex works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky were created.

In 1860, Dostoevsky falls in love with the young Apollinaria Suslova, who does not at all resemble his wife Maria. The relationship was also different - passionate, bright, lasted three years. Then Fedor Mikhailovich is fond of playing roulette, he loses a lot. This period of life is reflected in the novel "The Gambler".

1864 claimed the lives of his brother and wife. Something seems to have broken in the writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Relations with Suslova come to naught, the writer feels lost, alone in the world. He tries to escape from himself abroad, to get distracted, but the longing does not leave. Epileptic seizures become more frequent. This is how Anna Snitkina, a young stenographer, came to know and love Dostoevsky. The man shared with the girl the story of his life, he needed to speak out. Gradually, they became closer, although the age difference was 24 years. Anna accepted Dostoevsky's offer to marry him sincerely, because Fyodor Mikhailovich evoked the brightest, enthusiastic feelings in her. The marriage was perceived negatively by the society, Dostoyevsky's adopted son Pavel. The newlyweds leave for Germany.

Relations with Snitkina had a beneficial effect on the writer: he got rid of his addiction to roulette, became calmer. Sophia is born in 1868, but dies three months later. After a difficult period of common experiences, Anna and Fedor Mikhailovich continue their attempts to conceive a child. They succeed: Lyubov (1869), Fedor (1871) and Alexei (1875) are born. Alexei inherited the illness from his father and died at the age of three. The wife became for Fedor Mikhailovich support and support, a spiritual outlet. In addition, she helped to improve the financial situation. The family moves to Staraya Russa to escape the stressful life in St. Petersburg. Thanks to Anna, a wise girl beyond her years, Fyodor Mikhailovich becomes happy, at least for a while. Here they spend their time happily and serenely, until Dostoevsky's health forces them to return to the capital.

In 1881 the writer dies.

A stick or a carrot: how Fedor Mikhailovich raised children

The indisputable authority of his father was the basis of Dostoevsky's upbringing, which passed into his own family. Decency, responsibility - the writer managed to invest these qualities in his children. Even if they did not grow up to be the same geniuses as their father, some craving for literature existed in each of them.

The writer considered the main mistakes of education:

• ignoring the inner world of the child;
• intrusive attention;
• bias.

He called the suppression of individuality, cruelty, and the relief of life a crime against a child. Dostoevsky considered the main instrument of education not corporal punishment, but parental love. He himself incredibly loved his children, greatly experienced their illnesses and losses.

An important place in the life of a child, as Fyodor Mikhailovich believed, should be given to spiritual light, religion. The writer rightly believed that a child always takes an example from the family where he was born. Dostoevsky's educational measures were based on intuition.

Literary evenings were a good tradition in the family of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. These evening readings of masterpieces of literature were traditional in the childhood of the author himself. Often the children of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky fell asleep, did not understand anything they read, but he continued to cultivate literary taste. Often the writer read with such feeling that in the process he began to cry. He liked to hear what impression this or that novel made on children.

Another educational element is a visit to the theater. Opera was preferred.

Lyubov Dostoevskaya

Attempts to become a writer were unsuccessful with Lyubov Fedorovna. Maybe the reason was that her work was always inevitably compared with the brilliant novels of her father, maybe she did not write about that. As a result, the main work of her life was a description of the biography of her father.

The girl who lost him at the age of 11 was very afraid that in the next world the sins of Fyodor Mikhailovich would not be forgiven. She believed that life continues after death, but here, on earth, one must seek happiness. For Dostoevsky's daughter, it consisted primarily in a clear conscience.

Lyubov Fedorovna lived to be 56 years old, spent the last few years in sunny Italy. She must have been happier there than at home.

Fedor Dostoevsky

Fedor Fedorovich became a horse breeder. The boy began to show interest in horses in childhood. I tried to create literary works, but it did not work out. He was vain, sought to achieve success in life, these qualities were inherited from his grandfather. Fedor Fedorovich, if he was not sure that he could be the first in something, preferred not to do it, his pride was so pronounced. He was nervous and withdrawn, wasteful, prone to excitement, like a father.

Fedor lost his father at the age of 9, but he managed to invest in him the best qualities. The upbringing of his father greatly helped him in life, he received a good education. He was very successful in his business, perhaps because he loved what he did.

Creative path in dates

The beginning of Dostoevsky's career was bright, he wrote in many genres.

Genres of the early period of creativity of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky:

• humorous story;
• physiological essay;
• tragicomic story;
• Christmas story;
• story;
• novel.

In 1840-1841 - the creation of historical dramas "Mary Stuart", "Boris Godunov".

1844 - Balzac's translation of "Eugenie Grande" is published.

1845 - finished the story "Poor people", met Belinsky, Nekrasov.

1846 - the "Petersburg Collection" was published, "Poor People" were printed.

In February, "Double" was published, in October - "Mr. Prokharchin".

In 1847, Dostoevsky wrote The Mistress, published in the St. Petersburg Vedomosti.

In December 1848, "White Nights" were written, in 1849 - "Netochka Nezvanova".

1854-1859 - service in Semipalatinsk, "Uncle's Dream", "The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants".

In 1860, a fragment of Notes of the Dead House was printed in Russkiy Mir. The first collected works were published.

1861 - the beginning of the publication of the magazine "Time", the printing of part of the novel "Humiliated and Insulted", "Notes from the Dead House".

In 1863, "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" was created.

May of the same year - the Vremya magazine was closed.

1864 - the beginning of the publication of the magazine "Epoch". "Notes from the Underground".

1865 - "An Extraordinary Event, or a Passage within a Passage" is published in "The Crocodile".

1866 - written by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky "Crime and Punishment", "Player". Departure abroad with family. "Idiot".

In 1870, Dostoevsky wrote the story "The Eternal Husband".

1871-1872 - "Demons".

1875 - printing of "Teenager" in "Notes of the Fatherland".

1876 ​​- the resumption of the activities of the Writer's Diary.

The Brothers Karamazov were written from 1879 to 1880.

Places in Petersburg

The city keeps the spirit of the writer, many books by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky were written here.

1. Dostoevsky studied at the Engineering Mikhailovsky Castle.
2. The Serapinskaya hotel on Moskovsky Prospekt became the residence of the writer in 1837, he lived here, seeing St. Petersburg for the first time in his life.
3. "Poor people" were written in the house of the post director Pryanichnikov.
4. "Mr. Prokharchin" was created in Kohenderfer's house on Kazanskaya street.
5. Fedor Mikhailovich lived in Soloshich's tenement house on Vasilievsky Island in the 1840s.
6. The profitable house of Kotomin introduced Dostoevsky to Petrashevsky.
7. The writer lived on Voznesensky Prospekt during his arrest, wrote "White Nights", "Honest Thief" and other stories.
8. "Notes from the House of the Dead", "Humiliated and Insulted" were written on 3rd Krasnoarmeyskaya Street.
9. The writer lived in the house of A. Astafieva in 1861-1863.
10. In Strubinsky's house on Grechesky Prospekt - from 1875 to 1878.

Symbolism of Dostoevsky

You can analyze the books of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky endlessly, finding new and new symbols. Dostoevsky mastered the art of penetrating into the essence of things, their soul. It is thanks to the ability to unravel these symbols one by one that the journey through the pages of novels becomes so exciting.

• Axe.

This symbol carries a deadly meaning, being a kind of emblem of Dostoevsky's work. The ax symbolizes murder, crime, a decisive desperate step, a turning point. If a person pronounces the word "ax", most likely, the first thing that comes to his mind is "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

• Clean linen.

His appearance in the novels occurs at certain similar moments, which allows us to speak of symbolism. For example, Raskolnikov was prevented from committing a murder by a maid hanging out clean linen. A similar situation was with Ivan Karamazov. It is not so much the linen itself that is symbolic, but its color - white, denoting purity, correctness, purity.

• Smells.

It is enough to skim through any of Dostoevsky's novels to understand how important smells are to him. One of them, which is more common than others, is the smell of a putrid spirit.

• Silver pledge.

One of the most important characters. The silver cigarette case was not made of silver at all. There is a motive of falsity, forgery, suspicion. Raskolnikov, having made a cigarette box out of wood, similar to silver, as if he had already committed a deceit, a crime.

• The ringing of a copper bell.

The symbol plays a warning role. A small detail makes the reader feel the mood of the hero, imagine the events brighter. Small objects are endowed with strange, unusual features, emphasizing the exclusivity of the circumstances.

• Wood and iron.

There are many things in the novels from these materials, each of them carries a certain meaning. If a tree symbolizes a person, a victim, bodily torment, then iron is a crime, murder, evil.

Finally, I would like to note some interesting facts from the life of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky.

1. Dostoevsky wrote most of all in the last 10 years of his life.
2. Dostoevsky loved sex, used the services of prostitutes, even when he was married.
3. Nietzsche called Dostoevsky the best psychologist.
4. He smoked a lot and liked strong tea.
5. He was jealous of his women for every pillar, forbade even smiling in public.
6. Mostly worked at night.
7. The hero of the novel "The Idiot" is a self-portrait of the writer.
8. There are many film adaptations of Dostoevsky's works, as well as those dedicated to him.
9. The first child appeared with Fedor Mikhailovich at the age of 46.
10. Leonardo DiCaprio also celebrates his birthday on November 11th.
11. More than 30,000 people attended the writer's funeral.
12. Sigmund Freud considered Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov the greatest novel ever written.

We also present to your attention the famous quotes of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky:

1. One must love life more than the meaning of life.
2. Freedom is not in not holding back, but in being in control of yourself.
3. In everything there is a line beyond which it is dangerous to cross; for once crossed, it is impossible to turn back.
4. Happiness is not in happiness, but only in achieving it.
5. No one makes the first move because everyone thinks it's not mutual.
6. The Russian people, as it were, enjoy their suffering.
7. Life goes breathless without an aim.
8. To stop reading books means to stop thinking.
9. There is no happiness in comfort, happiness is bought by suffering.
10. In a truly loving heart, either jealousy kills love, or love kills jealousy.

Conclusion

The result of a person's life is his deeds. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (years of life - 1821-1881) left behind brilliant novels, having lived a relatively short life. Who knows if these novels would have been born if the life of the author were easy, without obstacles and hardships? Dostoevsky, who is known and loved, is impossible without suffering, mental turmoil, inner overcoming. They are what make the work so real.

It always seems strange to me that even such a great writer as Dostoevsky (1821-1881), and approximately could not imagine what would happen in very near times. Although he wrote "Demons", a pamphlet on Russian revolutionaries, he could not foresee that the danger would come from a slightly different direction and that almost everything was ready for the arrival of this danger. The "conspiracy" (in which no one believes) has already been drawn up, and there were only some technical issues of its implementation.

Dostoevsky, who idolized the common Russian people, "ardently prayed" for the sovereign and for the Russian empire, who hated the Western peoples and predicted their imminent death - how much anger he expressed about the Germans, French, Swiss, not to mention the Poles! - did not foresee that his beloved wife and children would live to see the greatest Russian catastrophe, fall into the most stupid Soviet.

In 1879, he wrote to Anna Grigorievna, his wife, about buying an estate:

“I’m all, my dear, thinking about my death myself (I think seriously) and about what I will leave you and the children with. ... you do not like villages, but I have all the convictions that 1) the village is capital, which will triple by the age of the children, and 2) that the one who owns the land also participates in political power over the state. This is the future of our children…”

“I tremble for the children and for their fate”

Kramskoy. Portrait of Dostoevsky.

I already wrote earlier that the writer's wife, Anna Grigoryevna, lived until 1918. In April 1917, she decided to retire to her small estate near Adler to wait until the unrest subsided. But the revolutionary storm also reached the Black Sea coast. A former gardener on the Dostoevskaya estate, who deserted from the front, declared that he, the proletarian, should be the real owner of the estate. A.G. Dostoevskaya fled to Yalta. In the Yalta hell of 1918, when the city changed hands, she spent the last months of her life. There was even no one to bury her, until six months later, her son Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky arrived from Moscow:

“At the height of the Civil War, Fyodor Dostoevsky Jr. made his way to the Crimea, but he no longer found his mother alive. She was driven out by the watchman from her own dacha, and she died abandoned by everyone in the Yalta hotel. According to the memoirs of his son (the writer's grandson) Andrei Fyodorovich Dostoevsky, when Fyodor Fyodorovich took Dostoevsky's archive from the Crimea to Moscow, which remained after the death of Anna Grigoryevna, he was almost shot by the Chekists on suspicion of speculation - they considered that they were transporting contraband in baskets.

Dostoevsky's children were not marked by any significant talents, and they did not live long.

Dostoevsky's son, Fyodor (1871 - 1921), graduated from two faculties of the University of Derpt - law and natural, became a specialist in horse breeding. He was proud and conceited, strove to be the first everywhere. He tried to prove himself in the literary field, but was disappointed in his abilities. Lived and died in Simferopol. The grave has not survived.

Darling daughter of Dostoevsky Lyubov, Lyubochka (1868-1926), according to the memoirs of contemporaries, “she was arrogant, arrogant, and simply unaccommodating. She did not help her mother to perpetuate the glory of Dostoevsky, creating her image as the daughter of a famous writer, and subsequently parted ways with Anna Grigorievna. In 1913, after another trip abroad for treatment, she stayed there forever (she became "Emma" abroad). She wrote an unsuccessful book “Dostoevsky in the Memoirs of His Daughter” ... Her personal life did not work out. She died in 1926 from leukemia in the Italian city of Bolzano.

Dostoevsky's nephew, son of his younger brother, Andrei Andreevich (1863-1933), surprisingly modest and devoted to the memory of Fyodor Mikhailovich man. He had a luxurious apartment on Pochtamtskaya. Of course, after the revolution it was overhauled. Andrei Andreevich was sixty-six when he sent to the Belomorkanal. Six months after his release, he died ...

The former apartment of the Dostoevskys was partitioned off and converted into soviet communal, and the family was squeezed into one little room ... And before the centenary of Lenin, this house was recognized as unsuitable for habitation and the great-grandson was made happy with a housewarming on the outskirts of Leningrad, in a wretched Khrushchev.

The great-grandson of Dostoevsky himself, Dmitry Andreevich, Born in 1945, lives in St. Petersburg. By profession, he is a tram driver, he worked all his life on route No. 34.

Great-grandson Dmitry Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky, one of the most famous Russian writers and philosophers, was born on November 11, 1821. In this article we will talk about his biography and literary work.

Dostoevsky family

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821-1881) was born in Moscow into the family of a nobleman Mikhail Andreevich, a staff doctor serving in the Mariinsky Hospital, and Maria Feodorovna. In the family, he was one of eight children and only the second son. His father was from whose estate was located in the Belarusian part of Polesye, and his mother came from an old Moscow merchant family, originating in the Kaluga province. It is worth saying that Fedor Mikhailovich had little interest in the rich history of his family. He spoke of his parents as poor, but hardworking people, who allowed him to receive an excellent upbringing and quality education, for which he was grateful to his family. Maria Fedorovna taught her son how to read Christian literature, which left a strong impression on him and largely determined his future life.

In 1831, the father of the family acquired the small estate Darovoye in the Tula province. The Dostoevsky family began to visit this country house every summer. There, the future writer got the opportunity to get acquainted with the real life of the peasants. In general, according to him, childhood was the best time in his life.

Writer's education

Initially, their father was involved in the education of Fedor and his older brother Mikhail, teaching them Latin. Then their home education was continued by the teacher Drashusov and his sons, who taught the boys French, mathematics and literature. This continued until 1834, when the brothers were assigned to the elite Chermak boarding school in Moscow, where they studied until 1837.

When Fedor was 16 years old, his mother died of tuberculosis. Further years F.M. Dostoevsky spent time with his brother preparing to enter an engineering school. They spent some time at the Kostomarov boarding house, where they continued to study literature. Despite the fact that both brothers wanted to write, the father considered this activity completely unprofitable.

The beginning of literary activity

Fedor did not feel any desire to be in the school and was burdened by being there, in his free hours he studied world and domestic literature. Under inspiration from her, at night he was engaged in his literary experiments, reading passages to his brother. Over time, a literary circle was formed at the Main Engineering School under the influence of Dostoevsky. In 1843, he completed his studies and was appointed to the position of engineer in St. Petersburg, which he soon abandoned, deciding to devote himself entirely to literary creativity. His father died of apoplexy (although, according to the recollections of his relatives, he was killed by his own peasants, which is questioned by researchers of Dostoevsky's biography) in 1839 and was no longer able to oppose his son's decision.

The very first works of Dostoevsky, whose birthday is celebrated on November 11, have not reached us - they were dramas on historical themes. Since 1844, he has been translating while working on his work "Poor People". In 1845, he was welcomed with pleasure in Belinsky's circle, and soon he became a well-known writer, the "new Gogol", but his next novel, The Double, was not appreciated, and soon Dostoevsky's relationship (birthday according to the new style - November 11) with spoiled around. He also quarreled with the editors of the Sovremennik magazine and began to publish mainly in Otechestvennye Zapiski. However, the acquired fame allowed him to get acquainted with a much wider circle of people, and soon he became a member of the philosophical and literary circle of the Beketov brothers, with one of whom he studied at an engineering school. Through one of the members of this society, he got to the Petrashevites and began to regularly attend their meetings from the winter of 1847.

Circle of Petrashevists

The main topics that the members of the Petrashevsky Society discussed at their meetings were the emancipation of the peasants, the printing of books, and the change in legal proceedings. Soon Dostoevsky became one of several who organized a separate radical community among the Petrashevites. In 1849, many of them, including the writer, were arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

mock execution

The court recognized Dostoevsky as one of the main criminals, despite the fact that he strongly denied the accusations, and sentenced him to death by shooting, having previously deprived him of his entire fortune. However, a few days later the execution order was replaced by an eight-year penal servitude, which, in turn, was replaced by a four-year one, followed by a long service in the army, by special decree of Nicholas 1. In December 1849, the execution of the Petrashevites was staged, and only at the last moment was it announced pardon and sent to hard labor. One of the near-executed went mad after such an ordeal. There is no doubt that this event had a strong influence on the views of the writer.

Years of hard labor

During the transfer to Tobolsk, there was a meeting with the wives of the Decembrists, who secretly handed over the Gospel to the future convicts (Dostoevsky kept his until the end of his life). He spent the next years in Omsk in hard labor, trying to change the attitude towards himself among the prisoners, he was perceived negatively due to the fact that he was a nobleman. Dostoevsky could write books only in the infirmary in secret, since the prisoners were deprived of the right to correspond.

Soon after the end of hard labor, Dostoevsky was appointed to serve in the Semipalatinsk regiment, where he met his future wife Maria Isaeva, whose marriage was unhappy and ended unsuccessfully. The writer rose to the rank of ensign in 1857, when both the Petrashevskys and the Decembrists were pardoned.

Pardon and return to the capital

Upon his return, he had to make a literary debut again - these were Notes from the House of the Dead, which received universal recognition, since the genre in which the writer talked about the life of convicts was completely new. The writer published several works in the Vremya magazine, which he published jointly with his brother Mikhail. After some time, the magazine was closed, and the brothers began to print another publication - Epoch, which also closed a few years later. At that time, he took an active part in the public life of the country, having undergone the destruction of socialist ideals, recognized himself as an open Slavophile, and asserted the social significance of art. Dostoevsky's books reflect his views on reality, which contemporaries did not always understand, sometimes they seemed to them too harsh and innovative, and sometimes too conservative.

Travel Europe

In 1862, Dostoevsky, whose birthday is November 11, traveled abroad for the first time to receive medical treatment at resorts, but he ended up traveling most of Europe, becoming addicted to playing roulette in Baden-Baden and squandering almost all his money. In principle, Dostoevsky had problems with money and creditors throughout almost his entire life. He spent part of the trip in the company of A. Suslova, a young uninhibited young lady. He described many of his adventures in Europe in the novel The Gambler. In addition, the writer was shocked by the negative consequences of the French Revolution, and he established himself in the opinion that the only possible development path for Russia is unique and original, not repeating the European one.

Second wife

In 1867 the writer married his stenographer Anna Snitkina. They had four children, of which only two survived, and as a result, only the only surviving son Fedor became the successor of the family. The next few years they lived together abroad, where Dostoevsky, whose birthday is November 11, began work on some of the last novels included in the famous "Great Pentateuch" - this is "Crime and Punishment", the most famous philosophical novel, "The Idiot", where the author reveals the theme of a person trying to make others happy, but in the end suffering, "Demons", which tells about revolutionary currents, and "Teenager".

The Brothers Karamazov, also belonging to the Pentateuch, Dostoevsky's last novel, was in a sense a summing up of the entire creative path, since it contained features and images of all the writer's previous works.

The writer spent the last 8 years of his life in the Novgorod province, in the town of Staraya Russa, where he lived with his wife and children and continued to engage in writing, completing his novels.

In June 1880, Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich, whose work significantly influenced literature in general, came to the opening of the monument to Pushkin in Moscow, where many famous writers were present. In the evening he gave a well-known speech about Pushkin at a meeting of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.

Death of Dostoevsky

The years of the life of F. M. Dostoevsky - 1821-1881. Fyodor Mikhailovich died on January 28, 1881 from tuberculosis, chronic bronchitis, aggravated by emphysema of the lungs, shortly after a scandal with his sister Vera, who asked him to give up his inherited estate in favor of his sisters. The writer was buried in one of the cemeteries of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, a huge number of people gathered to say goodbye to him.

Although Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, whose biography and interesting facts about whose life we ​​examined in this article, became famous during his lifetime, real, grandiose fame came to him only after his death.