Writer of world significance F. M. Dostoyevsky — in the electronic collection of the Presidential Library

November 11, 2017, marks the 196th anniversary of the birth of a classic author of Russian literature and plainly a figure of world significance Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. Dedicated to a writer and a philosopher electronic collection, which includes digital copies of the texts of his works and the materials about his life and work, are available on the Presidential Library is available.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow in the family of a healer. In 1843, the future author of such novels as “Crime and Punishment,” “The Brothers Karamazov” and “Demons” graduated from the Engineering School in St. Petersburg, being already fascinated by literature and making his first successful steps in the writing field of work.

Siberia, where Dostoevsky was exiled to hard labor for his connection with an underground organization, changed everything. “Pre-Siberia Dostoevsky is a young engineering officer, who has revealed an outstanding literary talent. <…> A completely different person came back from Siberia —a great writer, whose talent was hardened in a hearth of true, not imaginary, anguishes, but even more — a man of unbending civil courage,” — according to A spiritual birth of F. M. Dostoevsky in Siberia: the “Notes from the Dead House” book of fate public video lecturing.

Published in 1881 in one of the numbers of the Russkaya starina (lit. Russian ancient times) historical magazine article by A. P. Milyukov entitled “Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky” says about this period the same. The author writes: “Owing to his energy and never abandoning him faith in a better future, F. M. Dostoyevsky survived a severe challenge of hard labor in exile, although it affected his health. <…> Out of all Dostoevsky’s stories about his life in penal servitude could be seen, what impression he took from there. If, before his exile, he especially liked to notice a warm feeling and sympathetic features in a poor and humiliated environment, now, it seems, he was looking even more attentively at rejected by society people and trying to find in them that spark of God, which he had been spiking about in his later works.”

Dostoevsky returned to literary activity in the early 1860s, and then the public was able to see the changes in him: “…in 1861 the “Vremya” (lit. times) magazine was founded, where Fyodor Mikhailovich has become its actual editor. His articles, published in the pages of this mag, acquire a specially lighting up writer’s personality and his views in the period immediately following his return from Siberia; these articles answer a question of how fare penal servitude has changed his youthful beliefs,” — Sovremennyi Mir (lit. contemporary world) magazine wrote in 1917.

“Dnevnik Pisatelya” (lit. writer’s diary) magazine gives most complete understanding of Dostoevsky’s world outlook and his social positioning. This monthly philosophical and literary publication of a single author, according to its concept, has no analogues, grew out of the weekly column in the “Grazhdanin” (lit. sitizen) magazine. Dostoevsky said: “I write my “diary,” that is, I write down my impressions about everything that most strikes me in the current events.” The works of the classic were publishing in there, and in there he was reviewing the literary works of other authors.

A collection of issues of Dnevnik Pisatelya for 1877 is in open access on the Presidential Library website, which reflected all aspects of life that then were especially troubling for the Russian intelligentsia. In the first chapter, Dostoevsky denotes his rather rigid position: “…don’t be ashamed of you own convictions, and now it is not necessary, and if anyone has something to say, let him speak without a fear that he will not be heard, even a fear that they will make fun of him, and that he will not make any impression on the minds of his contemporaries. In that point, the “Dnevnik Pisatelya” will never get out of its way, never yield to a spirit of the century, a power of ruling and dominant influences, if it considers them unfair, will not adapt with them, flatter and play cunning.”

Such works from the Presidential Library as The tasks for the Russian people (1894), A memo about F. M. Dostoevsky (1906) by M. F. Taube, A legend about the grand inquisitor of F. M. Dostoevsky (1894), Dostoevsky and Herzen in the history of Russian identity (1907) T. Y. Ganzhulevich.

The electronic collection includes recent scientific works on the literary heritage of the classic. Among them are the theses’ abstracts on the theme Evangelical parable in the author’s discourse of F. M. Dostoyevsky, Confession as the principle of composition of the poetic fiction of Fyodor Dostoevsky, The artistic logic of a shame in the prose of F. M. Dostoyevsky, “Notes from the Underground” by F. M. Dostoevsky in the context of the author’s myth of militant atheism and many others.