by Fedot Streletsky
[Regnum] Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, whose 205th birthday we celebrate today, is remarkable and great in every way. Including this: his work and biography offer a window into the political life of Russia and the world in the 19th century, revealing fascinating parallels. Because he himself played an active role in that life.
Everyone knows that in 1849, Dostoevsky was nearly executed in the so-called Petrashevsky Trial. Specifically, he was accused of publicly reading "Belinsky's Letter to Gogol"—a nominally critical review of the book "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends."
However, it must be understood that Vissarion Belinsky was not only, and not even so much, a literary critic, but first and foremost a left-wing radical oppositionist who preached revolutionary socialism and often used the word “Russian” in his letters in a negative and dismissive manner.
"Russian reality is vile," he wrote to Vasily Botkin, the brother of the famous doctor, in 1841. And in that same ill-fated letter (from abroad, characteristically) to Nikolai Gogol, he called Russia a country where "there is not even police order."
Naturally, the Russian Imperial authorities banned this text for its calls for the overthrow of the existing regime (which it also contained). And Fyodor Mikhailovich, who had fallen under the corrupting influence of these harmful ideas, faced a harsh sentence.
However, subsequent events—the mock execution, the commutation of the sentence, and the penal servitude—forced Dostoevsky to rethink many things, abandon his socialist views, and embrace the concept of nachvennichestvo (pochvennichestvo).
| Pochvennichestvo is apparently a late 19th century movement closely tied to Slavophilia that idealized Russian history, called for emancipating the serfs, and rejected Europeanization, nihilism, Marxism, and classical liberalism, instead calling for social improvement through individual humility and social reform via the Russian Orthodox church. |
"There are many old, gray-haired liberals who never loved Russia, even hated it for its 'barbarism,' and are convinced in their hearts that they love both Russia and the people. These are all abstract people, the kind whose entire education and Europeanism consists of 'loving humanity terribly,' but only in general."
How ultimately beneficial this seemingly traumatic experience was for Dostoevsky's development as an author and thinker is clearly evident in "Notes from the House of the Dead," where the political dimension is practically marginalized. His personal political work taught him to look beyond politics—at the individual.
Fyodor Mikhailovich wrote his most widely acknowledged “politicized” work, the novel “Demons,” in the wake of the Nechayev case—a trial that was not just high-profile, but in principle unique in its kind, widely covered in the press, which at that time was an unheard-of precedent.
Sergei Nechayev was the organizer of a secret society with the telling name "People's Reprisal"—something between a totalitarian sect and a terrorist organization. He also positioned himself as a representative of a certain "World Revolutionary Union," which was in fact fictitious.
The case was opened following the brutal murder of a student named Ivanov, a member of the society who had doubted Nechayev's methods and ideas (which he, in turn, had gleaned from Mikhail Bakunin ). He was then murdered in a showpiece, ostensibly as a warning and a rallying cry for the group.
In other words, in his novel "Demons," Dostoevsky illuminated what we might now call the most hyped topic of his time. But, of course, he didn't simply illustrate it; he delved deeper, as he knew how, in an attempt to understand where monsters like Sergei Nechayev even come from.
Interestingly, Dostoevsky initially planned a purely fantasy based on newspaper articles, and his Pyotr Verkhovensky, whose prototype was Nechayev, loomed large in the writer's mind as a "comical figure." Meanwhile, he described the real participants in the trial as "in my opinion, these pathetic freaks are not worthy of literature."
But as new chilling details emerged during the investigation and the true scale of the phenomenon became clear, Verkhovensky acquired increasingly sinister features, and the novel, accordingly, acquired depth, turning into the ultimate study of the disease that causes such phenomena.
Thanks to this, today, when we read the news about the latest new Nechayevs and their atrocities, both here and abroad (like Charles Manson – isn’t he an American Nechayev?), we can be horrified, but not surprised: look, Fyodor Mikhailovich already analyzed all this for us in detail 150 years ago.
Another high-profile political case that inspired Dostoevsky was the Dolgushin case, also revolutionaries, but not as ruthless as the Nechayevites. Therefore, they are portrayed in The Adolescent in a completely different—sympathetic and somewhat embellished—way.
Alexander Dolgushin was actually one of Nechayev's followers, but he was acquitted and released. He then formed his own youth group to engage in popular propaganda and incite peasants to revolt. However, the Dolgushinites also based their worldview on the Gospel ideal. This is what captivated Dostoevsky.
Here, however, it's important to understand that just as Verkhovensky isn't the equal of Nechayev (even if he was modeled on him to some extent), so too are the Dergachevites from "The Adolescent" not the equal of the Dolgushins. Specifically, in Dostoevsky, no one calls on the peasants to revolt. Instead, they prefer to debate, voicing contradictory opinions.
Take a character named Kraft, who "concluded that the Russian people are a secondary people" and, realizing that he himself was part of the Russian people, committed suicide. A vivid illustration of the consequences of delusional theories.
Nevertheless, in "The Adolescent," Dostoevsky comes to the conclusion that not all political radicals are demons. Some are simply misguided idealists seeking brotherhood and meaning, sometimes even finding the latter in what seems to be the right place—the Gospel. But in the wrong ways.
Soon after the publication of "The Adolescent," Dostoevsky fully established himself as a major "political blogger," starting a one-man journal (now called a blog) called "A Writer's Diary." In it, he regularly expressed his views on pressing news topics. And many of these statements remain relevant today, which is somewhat alarming.
Here, for example, is what Dostoevsky wrote in 1877 regarding the Russo-Turkish War that had just begun: “Everyone feels that something final has begun, that some kind of end is coming to something old, long, long old, and a step is being taken towards something completely new” - as if it had been written very recently.
Or: "Europe remarkably dislikes us and always has; it has never considered us its own, Europeans, but always merely annoying newcomers." With the explanation: "What confuses and frightens them now in Russia's image is rather something truthful, something too selfless, honest, disdaining both conquest and bribery."
Indeed, wherever you poke your nose, you'll stumble upon a perfectly understandable explanation of anything happening in politics today. It's completely unclear how it works, but it's true: you can read nothing about the modern world anywhere, and only Dostoevsky, and still understand the essence of current events.
Because greatness is a connection to eternity, and eternity is one and constant, and from there everything is visible as if in the palm of your hand.