The following biographical sketch emphasizes those aspects of Dostoevsky's life that most influenced his great

masterpieces. This sketch is compiled from well-known facts about Dostoevsky, but also makes liberal use of the

canonical biographies by Joseph Frank and Leonid Grossman.

Dostoevsky's Early Years

Before the man comes the child, and before the child comes the parents. Russia's greatest novelist, Fyodor
Mikhailevich Dostoevsky, was born in Moscow on October 30, 1821, to parents of remarkably different
character. Dostoevsky's father was a stern man who held his son to rigorous standards. His mother was a
generous woman who provided her son unconditional love. This tension - between harsh judgment and
forgiving love - would be his life's theme, recurring throughout his major works.

Dostoevsky's father, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, was born into the clergy and was expected to
become a clergyman himself. But after graduating from the seminary at fifteen, the senior Dostoevsky ran
off to Moscow and enrolled in the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. He graduated in 1812, and for
many years served as a surgeon at various military posts. Though his medical career was successful, years
of performing hopeless operations and gruesome amputations embittered the doctor, further twisting a
nature that was already subject to despair.

Biographers presume that Dr. Dostoevsky suffered from an undiagnosed nervous disorder. Bad weather
gave him excruciating headaches and threw him into fits of drinking, bad temper, and despondency.
Exacerbating his physical problems was a profound religious temperament - Dr. Dostoevsky believed
absolutely that he was one of God's chosen ones, and that all of his trials carried special significance. His
sufferings were therefore not merely physical; they were profoundly spiritual as well.

In contrast to his father was Dostoevsky's mother, Maria, who was warm and loving. Dostoevsky's mother
had a different orientation to her religion: she was moved not by the trials of her religion, but by the
generosity and joyfulness of Christ. Dostoevsky's education was from the start infused by Maria's religious
spirit - it was she who taught her son to read using the stories of the Old and New Testaments. Still, it's
interesting to note that the young Dostoevsky's favorite story was the story of Job - a man who suffered
terrible trials in order to be obedient to the will of his God. We can imagine that the young Dostoevsky saw
his father's character reflected in this story. But in the soothing sounds of his mother's gentle tutoring, this
hard lesson of suffering was complemented by the promise and fulfillment of love.

The relationship between Dostoevsky's parents was complicated. Publicly, they seemed a respectable
couple. Indeed, documents exist that illustrate a very strong and passionate love. Dr. Dostoevsky found it
difficult to be parted from his wife, and wrote loving, longing letters to her when she was absent. But
longing has its darker sides, and Dr. Dostoevsky's love was marked by jealousy, possessiveness, and a
strong desire to control. At one point his jealousy became so fierce that he irrationally challenged the
paternity of one of his children - causing the pious Maria to burst into a tearful plea in her own defense.

Dr. Dostoevsky was not only a controlling and demanding husband; he was a controlling and demanding
father as well. He required the highest standards of his children, and he was cruel when these standards
were not met. His despotism was so intense that it influenced even the most banal household routines. For
example, every afternoon the doctor would return home for a nap. While he was napping, the children had
to be absolutely silent. They were punished severely for the slightest of sounds. In summer months, they
would take turns standing by their father for the duration of his nap, swatting away the flies.

Even a loving mother would find it difficult to counter the sense of oppression that surrounded Dostoevsky
as a child. His physical environment did little to lift the sense of gloom. The hospital sat in a neighborhood
of squalor, one of the worst areas in Moscow. The landmarks included a cemetery for criminals, a lunatic
asylum, and an orphanage for abandoned infants. The hardships of this urban landscape made a lasting
impression on the young Dostoevsky, whose interests in and compassion for the poor and oppressed
tormented him. Though his parents forbade it, Dostoevsky liked to wander out to the hospital garden, where
the suffering patients sat, devouring any small bit of sun. The young Dostoevsky loved to spend time with
these patients. Their sad stories were living examples of human suffering.

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Though his time in Moscow marked him, urban life was not the whole of Dostoevsky's childhood world. In
1827, Dostoevsky's father was promoted to a rank that permitted him to own land and serfs. In 1831, he
purchased the village of Darovoe, and a year later he bought the hamlet of Cheremoshna - 1400 acres of
land and 100 "souls." For four months every year, Dostoevsky would go with his mother and brother to the
country - a journey that liberated him from the moods of his father. In Darovoe, Dostoevsky experienced
what he would later call "a happy and placid childhood."

Dostoevsky loved the countryside, with its sweeping landscapes and open air. He spent most of his time
wandering in the forest around his family's estate. In fact, he spent so much time in the woods that his
family referred to the forest as "Fedka's Wood." During his ramblings Dostoevsky discovered not only the
majesty of the nature, but also the simple dignity of the peasants who inhabited countryside. The young
Dostoevsky was enchanted by the way the peasants lived. He romanticized their simple poverty, admired
the power of their faith, and developed a deep sympathy for their hardships.

In the spring of 1833, an event occurred that would underscore these hardships for the young Dostoevsky: a
fire broke out and destroyed both of his father's villages, leaving the landscape charred and the serfs
homeless. This event would have a strong effect on the young Dostoevsky, whose heart bled at the sight of
desolation and suffering. Many years later, Dostoevsky would recall the burnt landscape in Dmitri's dream
in Brother's Karamazov.

The peasants' suffering inspired an almost religious feeling in Dostoevsky. He came to idealize the peasant
as capable of spiritual understanding purer than any that might be achieved by the overly intellectual
members of his own class.
Dostoevsky's mother shared her son's sympathy for the peasants, but her husband did not. This difference
was a source of division between the couple. Maria refused to treat her serfs with cruelty, even when her
husband insisted that she beat them to keep them in their place. Nor would she berate her children for not
mastering their lessons - something that her husband would frequently do. Maria's small rebellions became
a great source of irritation to her husband, who became increasingly demanding of her. The devoted Maria,
who had been delicate to begin with, was exhausted by her husband's relentless need to control her.

The exhaustion took its toll. The last several years of Dostoevsky's life in Moscow were colored by his
mother's slow decline as she was diagnosed with, and then suffered from, consumption. In the final months
the illness grew aggressive, ravaging her until she lost consciousness. And then, one morning, when her son
was only 15 years old, Maria Dostoevskaya regained consciousness, called her family together, asked for
an icon to kiss, wept, and then died. She was 35 years old. The family was devastated. It had lost its center.

After the death of his wife, Dr. Dostoevsky went into seclusion with his younger children in Darovoe,
sending Mikhail and Fyodor to boarding school. In seclusion he became more bitter and more cruel. Dr.
Dostoevsky often took his unhappiness out on his serfs, beating them on a whim. This brutality would
prove to be fatal. One day in early June, 1838, the doctor left Darovoe for his other property, Cheremoshna
and did not return. He was later found murdered on the road between the two villages, suffocated by a
cushion from the carriage. His driver was missing. So were his horses. Several of his serfs had also
disappeared.

No trial was held for this murder; no conclusive motive was determined. Some say that the murder resulted
from a fight that had broken out spontaneously between landowner and serf. Others believe that the senior
Dostoevsky was ambushed as revenge for having dishonored some young girls in his household. Still
others believed that the doctor had been punished for his cruelty.

Whatever the case, at the age of 16 Dostoevsky was orphaned. His family life had come to an end.

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Politics and Punishment

According to Dostoevsky's biographers, Petrashevsky first approached Dostoevsky with great fanfare on
Nevsky Prospekt and asked him what the subject of his next story would be.

Petrashevsky was a tremendously influential figure. He had a "circle" of young followers who met at his
house off of Potrovsky Square to discuss the overthrow of the current social order. Petrashevsky
aggressively criticized the reign of Nicholas I, calling for the abolition of serfdom, the reformation of the
courts, and freedom of the press. Petrashevsky's views were extreme: "We have sentenced the present
social order to death," he is often quoted as saying. "Now we must carry out that sentence."
Petrashevsky was a follower of Fourier, the anti-capitalist, French utopian philosopher who proposed a
romantic solution to social problems. Key to Fourier's utopia was the concept of the "phalanx" - a joint
agrarian/industrial association for community life, where concerts, dances, and readings would be held.
Fourier argued that such a center would teach people of all walks of life to live together in harmony. A
strong sense of community would bring people to love their work and their fellow man.

Dostoevsky never had revolutionary aspirations - that is, he never wanted to overthrow, in bloody fashion,
the existing government. Fourier's ideas were not a threat to Russia's political structure; rather, they
inspired a revolution of the mind and spirit. This sort of revolution interested Dostoevsky very much.

Dostoevsky wanted to form a different kind of circle - one whose concern was art, not politics. He asked
his friend Speshnev to help him create the new circle. The two men had in common a belief in the power of
language. Dostoevsky wanted to use that power to inspire utopia, not revolution. Speshnev, on the other
hand, wanted to use language to spread "socialism, atheism, and terrorism - everything good in the world."
Though he disagreed with Speshnev's ideas about the use of language, Dostoevsky shared with Speshnev
the belief that freedom in language was essential to Russia's future. Accordingly, Dostoevsky agreed to
establish, with Speshnev, an underground press. This relationship with Speshnev would prove to be
Dostoevsky's undoing.

Scholars continue to debate Dostoevsky's involvement in the plottings of Speshnev and his circle. What is
clear is that Dostoevsky declared that he'd found himself in a kind of devil's deal with Speshnev. For
several months at the end of 1848 and the beginning of 1849, Dostoevsky was especially melancholy and
agitated - so much so that he visited his doctor to see if there was some organic source for his malaise. His
doctor found nothing, but was concerned for Dostoevsky and asked him what was troubling him so.
Dostoevsky told the doctor that he had borrowed some money from his friend Speshnev - and in doing so
he had "a Mephistopheles" of his own. He went on to tell the doctor that he could not repay the debt. And
even if he could, Speshnev was not the sort of man to accept the repayment.

Joseph Frank believes that this final remark indicates that Dostoevsky's debt to Speshnev was more than
financial. Frank believes that Dostoevsky had become involved in Speshnev's plot to revolt against the Tsar
and did not know how to extricate himself. Perhaps he wasn't sure that he wanted to extricate himself. At
this time Dostoevsky was overheard arguing bitterly with his brother Mikhail, who was committed to
Fourier's view that the new social order should be achieved through peaceful means. In the argument,
Dostoevsky told his brother that he should read a book by Louis Blanc, which advocated using force to
implement social change. From this conversation, Frank concludes that Dostoevsky had broken with
Fourier's views and was preparing to join Speshnev in his plot against the tsar. However, in the view of
other scholars, Dostoevsky's extreme agitation over the very mention of Speshnev indicates that it's likely
that he was ambivalent about how far he was willing to go.

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The decision would never need to be made. Unbeknownst to the Petrashevsky Circle, Tsar Nicholas had
been watching them for fourteen months. Events in Europe - in particular, the political uprisings in France-
had made Nicholas nervous. He mobilized troops but never sent them. Instead, Nicholas turned his energies
to his own country, putting intellectuals and revolutionaries under surveillance. Arrests began. In April
1849, Nicholas called for the arrest of all of the members of the Petrashevsky Circle. Dostoevsky's name
was on that list.

A little after four in the morning, on April 22, 1849, an officer burst into Dostoevsky's room to tell him that
he was under arrest. A dazed Dostoevsky was taken immediately to the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he
was to be imprisoned while awaiting trial. Conditions at the fortress were severe. The dim cells were damp
with mould. Each cell was far from the other, so that in solitary confinement prisoners would feel utterly
and entirely alone.

Oddly, Dostoevsky claimed that his time in Peter and Paul Fortress was marked more by boredom than by
anxiety or despair. For three days he felt that his life was over; then a feeling of calm descended on his
soul. Some biographers say that the certainty of the upcoming trial was preferable to the uncertainty of the
general paranoia that he had been feeling before his arrest. Others believe that his calm indicated that he
had embraced his suffering and found strength in it.

In any case, Dostoevsky used his time in prison to read, write letters, and make notes for books to come. He
read voraciously whatever books were sent him. He particularly requested the Bible, in several translations;
he rejoiced over a collection of Shakespeare; he admired a serial publication of Jane Eyre. And he spent a
good deal of time writing his defense.

Dostoevsky was accused of four different charges:

1) As a former army office, he had listened to a story criticizing the army without objection;
2) He had read a letter to the circle, from Belinsky to the famous writer Gogol, which criticized the church
and government;
3) He was in possession of an illegal printing press;
4) He was part of a plot to murder the Tsar.

The last of the four accusations Dostoevsky denied, but to no avail. In his written defense, he explained
eloquently to his judges that though he believed in free speech and the abolition of serfdom, he was not
seeking revolution. He further stated that Petrashevsky's idol, Fourier, was not revolutionary; rather,
Fourier claimed that art, not revolution, held the power to bring a universal harmony to man. Though he
himself now believed that Fourier's ideas were outdated and impossible to achieve, Dostoevsky continued
to feel that socialism - of a particularly Russian character - might be the answer. He offers his own vision of
what Russia might become:
 All around us today, all whom life has trampled, all the worn-out women and starving
children, all the alcoholics, the dying villages, and the cities' horrible poverty and
diseases - all will disappear into one jubilant hymn of unknown, unprecedented, universal
and boundless happiness! [Leonid Grossman, Dostoevsky: A Biography, trans. Mary Mackler
(London:Bobbs-Merrill, 1974) 146]

His eloquence got him nowhere. The judges remained unmoved. They wanted two things of their prisoners:
1) a sense of remorse, and 2) some new information about other subversive movements. Dostoevsky gave
them neither. He did not renounce his convictions, and he was very concerned with protecting others. In the
end, the judges sentenced all of the members of the Petrashevsky circle to death by firing squad. The
prisoners were taken back to their cells to await their execution.

On the 22 of December, 1849, a 28-year-old Dostoevsky was marched out to face his death with the other
members of the Petrashevsky Circle. The morning was cold; the wind was howling so fiercely that
Dostoevsky could barely hear as each man's name was called and his sentence read. The first three were
called up to the line: Petrashevsky and two others. Dostoevsky was in the second group and stood watching
as his three friends faced their executioners. The order was given for the soldiers to load their guns. A
second order was given - which Petrashevsky refused - to lower the hoods on the prisoners' eyes. A third
order was given to take aim. And then came a long silence.

At first, Dostoevsky did not understand what was happening - or not happening. And then, by the order of
Tsar Nicholas, the death sentence was commuted, and the prisoners were instead sentenced to prison in
Siberia. The prisoners accepted the news differently. Some were resentful; others rejoiced; one, Grigoryev,
lost an already tenuous grip on his sanity. As for their leader, Petrashevsky: when the guards put on his
chains, Petrashevsky grabbed the hammer and began to rivet the shackles with his own hands, mutilating
himself in the process.

For Dostoevsky, the moment of reprieve was a resurrection. Having stood face to face with death, he was
ready to embrace life - even life in exile. Dostoevsky related his feelings about the ordeal in the often-
printed letter to his brother:

Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute will be an eternity of happiness! Si jeunesse savait!
[If youth only knew!]...My brother, I do not feel despondent and have not lost heart. Life is life
everywhere. Life is in ourselves and not outside us. There will be men beside me [in prison], and
the important thing is to be a man among men and to remain a man always, whatever the
misfortunes, not to despair and not to fall - that is the aim of life, that is its purpose. I realize this
now. The idea has entered into my flesh and my blood. Yes, that is the truth! ...I have still got my
heart and the same flesh and blood which can love and suffer and pity and remember, and that is
also life. Never before have I felt such abundant and healthy reserves of spiritual life in me as
now...
 [Joseph Frank, The Years of Ordeal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) 62-63. Quoted
from Dostoevsky's Pisma, I: 129 - 131.]

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Life in Exile

After a long journey across the Urals, in which the sledges were stalled in the snow and the cold bit
brutally at the travelers, Dostoevsky arrived at the Omsk Fortress, in Siberia. It was a cold, hopeless,
brutal place. Upon arrival, all prisoners had half of their heads shaved and were sent to a convict's hut,
which Dostoevsky describes as an "old, dilapidated wooden construction":

In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on
the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall...We were packed like herrings in a barrel...There
was no room to turn around. From dusk to dawn it was impossible not to behave like
pigs...Fleas, lice, and black beetles by the bushel...
[Frank 76. Quoted from Pisma, I: 135-137]

But the prison's most threatening vermin was Major Krivtsov, the despot who ran it. Krivtsov believed it
was his mission to break the prisoners' spirits. He humiliated them, terrified them, flogged them.
Dostoevsky became obsessed with a fear of being flogged. He would linger around prisoners who had
experienced the whip and ask them to describe the pain to him in minute detail. He wanted to determine
whether he, himself, could endure it. The hardships of prison proved to be a strain on his already-weak
nerves, and Dostoevsky found himself often in the prison hospital, suffering fits of epilepsy.

Making matters worse for Dostoevsky was the class hostility between prisoners. The serf prisoners hated
the gentlemen and took advantage of every opportunity to seek revenge for the wrongs done to them in
the outside world. Dostoevsky describes the class hatred:

They [the peasant convicts] were coarse, ill-natured, cross-grained people. Their hatred for the
gentry knew no bounds, and therefore they received us, the gentlemen, with hostility and
malicious joy in our troubles. They would have eaten us alive, given the chance... {The peasants
accused the gentry:] "You are noblemen, iron beaks that used to peck us to death. Before, the
master used to torment the people, but now he is lower than the lowest, has become one of us."
[Frank 76. Quoted from Pisma, I: 135-137]

This revelation - that the peasants hated the gentry - challenged Dostoevsky's earlier idealization of the
"simple peasant." It also challenged his belief that man is essentially good. In prison, Dostoevsky
witnessed the abuse of the prisoners by the guards; he also saw prisoners abusing one another. They stole
from each other, beat each other, cheated each other, and even raped each other. But worst of all, they
seemed not to feel any remorse. Dostoevsky had believed that the peasants were spiritually superior to
the intelligentsia. He also believed in the redeeming social power of remorse. Now he understood that he
had misunderstood human nature altogether.

Even worse, he had misunderstood himself. Dostoevsky was surprised at the revulsion he felt towards his
fellow man. In a letter, he says:

There were moments when I hated everybody I came across, innocent or guilty, and looked at
them as thieves who were robbing me of my life with impunity. The most unbearable misfortune
is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself -
but you just can't help it.
[Frank 105. Quoted from a letter to Mme. Fonvizina, Pisma, I: 143]

Still, in the midst of abuse, corruption, and cruelty, Dostoevsky experienced a change of heart. It was
during Pascha, a holiday very important to Orthodox Christianity, that Dostoevsky found that he did
indeed share something with his inmates -Russian Orthodoxy. Dostoevsky writes about this moment in
the "fictionalized memoir" he wrote after his return from exile, Notes from the House of the Dead:

The convicts took their prayers very seriously, and each time they came to church each one of
them would...buy a candle or contribute to the collection. "I'm somebody, too," was what they
thought or felt as they gave it up - "everyone's equal before God..." We took communion at early
mass. When, with the chalice in his hand, the priest cam to the words "...receive me, O Lord,
even as the robber," nearly all the convicts fell kneeling to the ground with a jangling of fetters,
apparently interpreting these words as a literal expression of their own thoughts.
[Fyodor Dostoevsky, House of the Dead, trans. David McDuff (London: Penguin Books, 1985)
275]

This moment illustrates the beginning of Dostoevsky's conversion. Once he saw the peasants as brothers
in Christ, he came to believe once again that criminals were spiritual beings, worthy of care and capable
of redemption:

Men, however, are everywhere men...Believe me, there are deep, strong, beautiful characters
among them, and what a joy it was to discover the gold under the coarse, hard surface. And not
one, not two, but several. It is impossible not to respect some of them, and some are positively
splendid...I have lived closely with them, and so I think I know them thoroughly. How many
stories of tramps and bandits, and in general or the dark and miserable milieu! ... What a
wonderful people ...
[Frank 77-78. Quoted from Pisma, I: 138-139]

Despite his conversion, however, Dostoevsky's belief in Russian Orthodoxy would never be complete. As
he wrote to a friend, he would always suffer as:

...a child of disbelief and doubt...and will remain so until the grave. How much terrible torture
 this thirst for faith has cost me and costs me even now, which is all the stronger in my soul the
more arguments I find against it.
[Frank 160. Quoted from a letter to Mme. Fonvizina, Pisma, I: 142]

Dostoevsky's prison days -- and, indeed, the whole of his life -- would be a struggle to retain his faith
both in God and in the goodness of man

Summarize your assigned section into FOUR essential points to share with the class:

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2–

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Write TWO questions based on your section: (1) A question about something your group
would like clarified or something your group wants more information on and (2) A
question which would generate a class discussion.

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2–