Sentenced to death in 1849, Dostoevsky was reprieved at the last moment
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 to 1881) wrote thirteen novels, three novellas and seventeen stories that probed guilt, faith and freedom in nineteenth-century Russia. Before the masterpieces came a death sentence lifted at the final moment, four years of Siberian hard labour and a gambling habit that left him begging for money.
He grew up in Moscow, the second son of Mikhail Dostoevsky, a military doctor who later worked at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. In 1828 the father's promotion to collegiate assessor lifted the family into the nobility and let them buy a small estate at Darovoye, about 150 kilometres from the city, where they spent summers. Fairy tales, legends and books both Russian and foreign shaped the boy early. The family line on his father's side included priests and reached back to Aslan Chelebi-Murza, who left the Golden Horde for Russia in 1389; the surname itself comes from a village called Dostojewo near Pinsk, granted to an ancestor in 1509.
His mother died in 1837, around the time he left school for the Nikolayevsky Engineering Academy. Once qualified he took engineering work, lived lavishly for a while and translated books for extra income. His first novel, Poor Folk, written in the mid-1840s, opened the doors of Saint Petersburg's literary world. Then in 1849 he was arrested for belonging to the Petrashevsky Circle, a group that read banned works critical of the Tsar. Condemned to death, he was spared at the last minute and sent to a Siberian labour camp for four years, followed by six years of compulsory army service in exile. The camp became the material for The House of the Dead.
Back in public life he ran and edited his own magazines and later produced A Writer's Diary. Travels in Western Europe fed a gambling addiction and serious debt. His major novels followed: Crime and Punishment in 1866, The Idiot in 1869, Demons in 1872, The Adolescent in 1875 and The Brothers Karamazov in 1880. The 1864 novella Notes from Underground is often counted among the first existentialist works.
His reach proved enormous. Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn, Camus and Sartre all drew on him, and he is linked to the rise of both existentialism and Freudian thought. Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols, called him the only psychologist who had taught him anything. His books have appeared in more than 170 languages.
Source: Fyodor Dostoevsky
