• Writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky, 1821

   

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born and raised within the grounds of the Mariinsky hospital. At an early age he was introduced to English, French, German and Russian literature, as well as to fairy tales and legends. His mother's sudden death was devastating for Dostoyevsky, and he had to leave private school for a military school. After his graduation he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a primarily liberal lifestyle. He soon began translating books to make up for money problems. Around the mid 1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, which brought him into the mainstream. In 1849 he was arrested for his involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle, a progressive discussion group. He and other members were condemned to death for their participation in the group, but the mock execution was overturned at the last moment, and Dostoyevsky's sentence was commuted to four years of imprisonment in Siberia. After his release from prison he lived as a soldier, but then resigned to continue writing.

In the following years Dostoyevsky began working as a journalist. He also published and edited several magazines of his own and later his serial A Writer's Diary. Beginning with his travels to Europe he struggled with money issues caused by his gambling addiction, and the resulting humiliation of being forced to beg for money. He also suffered from epilepsy throughout his adult life. Through his considerable productivity he eventually became one of the most widely read and renowned Russian writers. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and have sold around 15 million copies. Dostoyevsky left a lasting influence on other people, ranging from James Joyce to Ernest Hemingway.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born on 30 October 1821 (11 November 1821, according to the Gregorian Calendar), the second child of Mikhail Dostoyevsky and Maria Nechayeva. The Dostoyevskys were a multi - ethnic and multi - denominational Lithuanian nobility from the Pinsk region; however, Dostoyevsky's family had fallen on hard times and had been reduced to the class of non - monastic clergy. Dostoyevsky's paternal great - grandfather and grandfather practiced as priests in the Ukrainian town of Bratslava, where his father was born. As was the custom, Mikhail was destined to follow his father into the clergy, but instead of joining a seminary he escaped from home at the age of fifteen. This break with his family was permanent.

In 1809, at the age of twenty, Mikhail gained entry to Moscow's Imperial Medical - Surgical Academy. He was assigned to a Moscow hospital where he served as a military doctor and was appointed senior physician in 1818. In 1819 he married Maria Nechayeva. One year later he resigned from military service to accept a post at the Mariinsky Hospital for the poor. After the birth of two sons, Mikhail and Fyodor, he was promoted to the post of collegiate assessor, a position that entitled him to the legal status of nobility and enabled him to acquire a small estate 150 versts from Moscow called Darovoye. Nechayeva was descended from a family of Russian merchants. Both parents may have had Tatar ancestry as well. Maria and Mikhail went on to have five more children after Fydor and his elder brother.

Dostoyevsky was raised in the family home within the grounds of the Mariinsky hospital. It was neither a wealthy nor a poor home. In his childhood, Dostoyevsky often went with his family on summer visits to the estate in Darovoye. At the age of three he discovered heroic sagas, fairy tales, legends and began developing a deeply ingrained piety under the influence of nannies. He was soon obsessed with tales. The nanny Alina Frolovna and the serf and farmer Marei from Darovoye, the latter of whom helped him to fight his early hallucinations, possibly caused by the terrible tales and gothic literature, were influential in his childhood. Dostoyevsky also discovered the miserable hospital garden, which was separated by a large fence from their protected private garden. His parents forbade him to have contact with those on the other side, intending to shield their children from undesirable influences. Dostoyevsky, however, ignored their warnings and often talked with convalescent patients. On the other side, Dostoyevsky found a nine year old girl who had been raped by an insane man. He never forgot this traumatic experience.

Dostoyevsky's parents placed a high value on giving him a thorough education. At the age of four his mother taught him to read and write, using the Bible. One of the day's highlights was the evening readings by his father and mother. His parents introduced him to Russian literature at an early stage, including Karamzin's Russian Tales, Pushkin, Derzhavin, as well as the works of the English novelist Ann Radcliffe and the works of the German Friedrich Schiller. Dostoyevsky was impressed by the latter's play The Robbers, which he saw at the age of ten. Fyodor and his brother Mikhail both enjoyed Pushkin's poems, which they learned for the most part by heart; Pushkin's death was a shock for the whole family. He sent Fyodor first to a French boarding school and then to the best private high school in Moscow, the "College for Noble Male Children". As the school was too expensive, he had to get loans, take advances and extend his private practice. When the thirteen year old Dostoyevsky arrived at this famous college, he felt inferior to his aristocratic classmates. This feeling was often documented in his works, especially The Adolescent.

On 27 September 1837 his mother died of tuberculosis. Dostoeyvsky contracted a serious throat disease soon after. In May, before his mother's death, it was decided that Fyodor and his brother Mikhail should be sent to St Petersburg to attend the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. Fyodor and Mikhail had to abandon their academic education at the Moscow college, as his parents were not able to pay the fees. F. Dostoyevsky's career, however, seems to have been decided, as his father expected spaces at the academy for his sons, and the political propensity under Nicholas I allowed them the opportunity of a good professional military career. On the way to St. Petersburg, Dostoyevsky witnessed a violent situation in a posting house; a member of the military police beat a carter, and the carter subsequently passed his pain to his horse through a whip; Dostoyevsky referred to this situation in his serial A Writer's Diary. At the academy he was separated from his brother, who was later sent to Reval, Estonia, due to his poor health and the better studying conditions available there. Dostoyevsky passed the entrance exam and entered the academy on 16 January the next year, but only with the help of his godmothers, who, unknown to him, paid the tuition.

Dostoyevsky did not enjoy the academy, primarily because of his lack of interest in science, mathematics and military application and his preference for drawing and architecture. The academy was located in a former castle built for Tsar Paul I, who was murdered shortly after his accession to the throne. Among his 120 classmates, mainly of Polish or Baltic - German descent, Dostoyevsky's character made him an outsider; he was brave and had a strong sense of justice as opposed to his clownish and brutal class fellows. He protected newcomers, aligned himself with teachers, criticized corruption among officers and helped poor farmers. Although he was a loner and lived in his own literary world, his classmates showed respect for him. Dostoyevsky was called "Monk Photius" because of his reclusive way of life and his interest in religion.

Dostoyevsky might had his first strong attack of epilepsy after receiving a message telling him of the death of his father. Mikhail was murdered in 1839 by one of his peasants; the cause was one of Mikhail's irascibility attacks. Fyodor continued with his disliked studies. When he passed the exams and obtained the rank of engineer cadet, he was given the right to live off site. After a short visit to his brother Mikhail in Reval, Fyodor often went to concerts, operas, theaters and ballets, and was introduced to gambling by two of his friends. His independence led to financial troubles. In August 1843 he took employment as a draftsman. In the meantime, Dostoyevsky lived in an apartment owned by the German - Baltic Dr. A. Riesenkampf, a friend of his brother Mikhail. As in his childhood at the hospital, he showed an interest in sick people from the lower class. He began to work on translations, including George Sand's La dernière Albini and Balzac's Eugénie Grandet as well as Schiller's Mary Stuart, Pushkin's Boris Godunov and Goethe's Reineke Fuchs, and upon advice, Schiller's The Robbers, and Don Carlos among others. With the help of his translations, he could obtain badly needed money. His job became more and more humiliating. After quitting a duty travel, he was released on 19 October 1844 as a lieutenant. Dostoyevsky was in financial trouble, so he decided to write his own novel.

In the autumn of 1844, Dostoeyvsky shared an apartment with his friend from the academy, Dmitry Grigorovich. Dostoyevsky worked continuously on his first novel; he hoped to obtain a wide readership in order to improve his financial condition. He risked everything for his book to obtain some money. In a letter to Mikhail he wrote, "What matters is that my novel should cover everything. If it does not work, I will hang myself." In May 1845 Dostoyevsky worked on the manuscript for the last time and asked Grigorovich to read the novel aloud. Grigorovich was impressed by the novel and brought it the same night to Nikolay Nekrasov, a friend of his. Both were so impressed that after finishing the book at four o'clock in the morning they rang at Dostoyevsky's apartment. On the same day, Nekrasov brought the manuscript by the "New Gogol" to the most well known and influential literary critic of that time, Vissarion Belinsky. Initially skeptical, Belinsky was later similarly astonished upon reading the piece. Poor Folk was released in 15 January 1846 in the almanac St. Petersburg Collection and was commercially enormously successful.

Shortly after the publication of Poor Folk, Dostoyevsky wrote his second novel, The Double, during his visit in Reval. Although the book was released in February 1846, it had already been included in the journal Annals of the Fatherland on 30 January. The Double centers on the shy protagonist Yakov Golyadkin discovering his doppelgänger, who ruins his life piece by piece. The doppelgänger has the success in his career that has been prohibited to the original Golyadkin. The novel was panned by critics and readers; Belinsky commented that the work had "no sense, no content and no thoughts", and that the novel appears overall to be boring due to the protagonist's garrulity. The idea for The Double is brilliant, but its external form is misconceived and full of multi - clause sentences.

In the 1840s, the interests of the population began to turn more toward social questions, as opposed to romanticism and idealism. Dostoyevsky discovered socialism around 1846. His first influences were the French socialists Fourier, Cabet, Proudhon and Saint Simon. Dostoyevsky initially had a good relationship with Belinsky. Through him he extended his knowledge of the philosophy of socialism; its intellectual world, sense of justice and interest in the poor and disadvantaged attracted him. His relationship with Belinsky became, however, increasingly negative, as Belinsky's atheism and his dislike of religion clashed with Dostoyevsky's Orthodox beliefs and Christ's teachings. Dostoyevsky thus decided to quit the Belinsky circle. He took up the issues of the existence of God and nihilism in his later books, as well as the order of human coexistence, the requirements of fraternity, and the coherence of freedom and fortune.

As Dostoyevsky suffered assaults by the press on his second novel, his health declined and more epileptic seizures occurred. He, however, worked frantically and from 1846 to 1848 released a number of short stories in the magazine Annals of the Fatherland including "Mr. Prokharchin", "The Landlady", "A Weak Heart" and "White Nights". These were not successful, and from the release of the first short story on, he was again in financial trouble. He therefore decided to join the utopian socialist Betekov circle, where the members created a living community, and this helped him. After the circle's break up, Dostoyevsky befriended Apollon Maykov and his brother Valerian, and after the latter's death, Apollon became an important component in his life. In spring 1846 he joined the Petrashevsky Circle by the recommendation of the poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev. As contrasted with the former circles, the Petrashevsky Circle was socio - Christian. Mikhail Petrashevsky discussed in a harmless manner the possibilities of social reforms in Russia. Dostoyevsky used its library on Saturday and Sunday, and sometimes participated on this circle, discussing such themes as freedom from censorship and the abolition of serfdom.

Dostoyevsky and other members of the Petrashevsky Circle were discovered by the agent Antonelli, who submitted reports to the official Librandi of the Ministry of International Affairs. Dostoyevsky was accused of having read several works by Belinsky, including Correspondence with Gogol, Criminal Letters and The Soldier's Speech, being present or passing transcriptions. Antonelli wrote in his report, "[Correspondence with Gogol] summoned a considerable amount of enthusiastic approval from the society, in particular on the part of Belasoglo and Yastrzhembsky, especially at the point where Belinsky says that religion has no basis among the Russian people. It was proposed that this letter be distributed in several copies." Dostoyevsky responded that he did not like those essays but only read it "as a literary monument, neither more nor less" and argued about "personality and human egoism" instead of politics. Dostoyevsky and several members of the circle were nonetheless arrested on 22 April 1849 upon the request of Count A. Orlov and Emperor Nicolas I. The latter feared a revolution or revolt similar to the Decembrist revolt of 1825 in Russia and the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, calling the Petrashevtsy "conspirators".

On 23 December Dostoyevsky and the rest of the circle were brought to Semyonov Place in St. Petersburg. The mock execution was then canceled by the Tsar and Dostoyevsky's sentence was commuted to four years of exile with hard labor at a katorga prison camp in Omsk, Siberia, followed by a term of compulsory military service. The people were divided into groups of three, consisting of one prisoner, one gendarme and one military policeman. After the fourteen day drive on a sleigh they finally reached Tobolsk, a meeting place for prisoners, on 11 January 1850. Twelve days later Durov and Dostoyevsky reached Omsk. He described the barracks as follows:

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...

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pisma, I: 135 – 37.

After his release on 14 February 1854, Dostoyevsky asked his brother Mikhail for help and to send him books by authors such as Vico, Guizot, Ranke, Hegel or Kant. He also began to work on The House of the Dead, thematizing his experience in prison. The first parts of his third book, the novel Netochka Nezvanova, were released in 1849, but the work remained unfinished. Dostoyevsky moved in mid March to Semipalatinsk to being forced serving in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion. Around this time, Dostoyevsky met Baron Alexander Egorovich Wrangel, his admirer who had attended the mock execution. They both rented houses outside of Semipalatinsk, in the "Cossack Garden".

During a visit with Lieutenant Colonel Belikhov, Dostoyevsky made an acquaintance with the family of Alexander Ivanovich Isaev and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva. Dostoyevsky soon fell in love with Maria, but she never returned the feeling. After Dostoyevsky sent a letter through Wrangel to General E. I. Totleben, apologizing for his activity in several utopian circles, he obtained in the fall of 1856 the right to publish books and to marry. After her husband's departure to Kuznetsk in August 1855 and his death the same year, Maria moved with Dostoyevsky to Barnaul, but later refused his marriage proposal, stating that they were not meant for each other and that his poor financial situation precluded marriage. Dostoyevsky later went to Kuznetsk and discovered that she had had an affair with the 24 year old schoolmaster Nikolay Vergunov. Despite this, Maria married Dostoyevsky in Semipalatinsk on 7 February 1857. Their family life was unhappy, however, and his seizures shocked her. They mostly lived apart.

In 1859 he was released from military service due to a medical certificate; his health had worsened since the marriage. In the same year he was granted permission to return to Russia, first to Tver, where he met his brother for the first time in ten years, and then back to St. Petersburg on 16 September 1859, although he remained under police surveillance until his death. Shortly after his arrival in St. Petersburg, he joined the Society for the Aid of Needy Writers and Scholars, known as the Literary Fund. Their goal was to help scholars and writers in need, such as those arrested on political grounds. Dostoyevsky's only work completed in prison, "A Little Hero", was issued in a journal, while "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo" were not published until 1860. Notes from the House of the Dead was released in Russky Mir (Russian World) on September 1860, and "The Insulted and the Injured" was released in the newly established Time magazine, which was created with the help of funds from his brother's cigarette factory.

Dostoyevsky began his planned trip to Europe on 7 June 1862. His first stops were in the German cities Cologne, Berlin, Dresden and Wiesbaden (where he went for gambling), followed by Belgium and finally Paris in mid June. In London he met Herzen and visited the Crystal Palace; he traveled with Strakhov through Switzerland in July and then through northern Italian cities, including Turin, Geneva, Livorno and Florence. Dostoyevsky wrote of his mainly negative impression of European countries in his Winter Notes on Summer Impressions. In this book he criticized such themes as capitalism, modernization, materialism, catholicism and protestantism.

Time was a very popular periodical with more than 4000 subscribers, before its closure on 24 May 1863 by the Tsarist Regime because of a misunderstanding resulting from the publication of an essay by Nikolay Strakhov about the Polish revolt in Russia. Time and its 1864 successor Epokha followed the philosophy of the conservative and Slavophile movement Pochvennichestvo, which was favored by Dostoyevsky during his term of imprisonment and in the post - prison years. From August to October 1863 Dostoyevsky made a second trip to Europe. In Paris he met his second love, Polina Suslova, and lost all of his money gambling in Wiesbaden and Baden - Baden. In Wiesbaden he wrote a letter to Wrangel, asking for a 100 thalers loan and first mentioning his next novel. Suslova's infidelity with a Spaniard and his gambling addiction resulted in their eventual separation. Dostoyevsky subsequently asked his brother and, after his death in July 1864, Baron Wrangel for money. Two months before Mikhail's death, Dostoyevsky's wife Maria died of tuberculosis, and he subsequently became the lone parent of his stepson Pasha and Mikhail's family. Added to this were the fees for the financing of Epokha, and without the help of his relatives and friends he would have gone bankrupt.

The first two parts of his sixth novel, Crime and Punishment, were published in January and February 1866 in the periodical The Russian Messenger. The novel became a success, prompting the critic Strakhov to remark afterwards, "Only Crime and Punishment was read during 1866". However, the novel initially received a mixed reception from critics. Most of the negative responses came from nihilists. Grigory Eliseev of the radical magazine The Contemporary called the novel a "fantasy according to which the entire student body is accused without exception of attempting murder and robbery". Strakhov was overall satisfied with the novel, stating that Dostoyevsky successfully portrayed a Russian person aptly and realistically.

The magazine was also doing well, bringing around 500 new subscribers. In summer 1866, Dostoyevsky moved to a country house in Lyublino with his brother - in - law Alexander Ivanov – married to his sister Vera – to escape the heat of Moscow. He returned to St. Petersburg in late September and promised editor F. T. Stellovsky to complete the novel The Gambler by November, not having written a single line. Milyukov, one of Dostoyevsky's friends, advised him to hire a secretary. Dostoyevsky contacted Pavel Olkhin, one of the best stenographers in St. Petersburg, who recommended his most talented pupil, Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina. Dostoyevsky was the favorite author of Snitkina and her recently deceased father. On 4 October 1866 she made a visit to Dostoyevsky. He began to dictate to her, while she wrote shorthand. Snitkina brought the last transcription of The Gambler to Dostoyevsky on 30 October (his birthday). Thanks to her skills the novel was completed in just 26 days, and Dostoyevsky soon after extended a contract with her. The Gambler treated a subject Fyodor Dostoyevsky himself was familiar with – gambling.

On 15 February 1867 Dostoyevsky married Anna Snitkina in the Trinity Cathedral in St. Petersburg. His strong double fit caused by heavy consumption of champagne during the marriage plunged her into despair. Also problematic was her bad relationship with his relatives and their neighbors. The 7000 rubles paid for Crime and Punishment were not enough to cover all the debts. To avoid a compulsory auction, Snitkina (now Dostoyevskaya) sold furniture, her piano and jewellery. With this money, the family finally began their delayed wedding journey abroad on 14 April 1867. In Berlin they had a rest in the Hotel Union, and in Dresden Dostoyevsky visited the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, where he sought inspiration for his future novels. He was deeply impressed by the paintings, especially Raphael's Sistine Madonna.

Three weeks later he moved to Homburg, where he lost all of his wife's money gambling. She and Dostoyevsky continued their trip in early July through Germany, visiting Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Heidelberg and Karlsruhe. In Baden - Baden he entered casinos despite having lost his money before. It was predictable that Dostoyevsky again gambled away his money, and subsequently Dostoyevskaya had no other choice but to go to different pawn brokerages to pawn such items as wedding rings, wedding presents, earrings and clothes. In the meantime, Dostoyevskaya became pregnant. On 23 August they left Baden - Baden and arrived in Basel to visit a museum, in which they viewed Holbein's The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, an influential painting for his next novel. Dostoyevsky was so captivated by the picture that his wife had to drag him away from the panel to avoid having an epileptic seizure.

In Geneva they were low on funds and had to pawn more of their possessions. Finally they found a lodging. Geneva was optimal for the birth of their first child, as the city had good doctors. Dostoyevsky occasionally gambled in Saxon - les - Bains to find money, but as usual he was unsuccessful. In December they rented a larger apartment on Rue du Mont - Blanc street next to an English church. Anna gave birth to their daughter Sonya, named after his beloved niece and the heroine in Crime and Punishment, on 5 March, but the child died three months later from pneumonia. She was buried in a children's cemetery in Plainpalais. Again in financial troubles due to his addiction, he returned to Geneva to work on his next novel.

When Dostoyevsky returned to Geneva in September, he began working on The Idiot, managing to complete 100 pages in just 23 days. Sonya's death was devastating, and Anna's health was affected by frequent trips to her grave. Dostoyevsky felt himself squeezed between the mountains and the Geneva lake. Subsequently they left Geneva and moved to Vevey in early June 1868, hoping for a better atmosphere for Dostoyevsky to complete The Idiot. Three months later they left for Milan through the shortest route above the two - thousand meter high Simiplon. While in Milan, Anna began to learn Italian and sometimes served as an interpreter. After enduring three rainy autumn months in Milan, they traveled southwards to Florence. The Idiot was completed there in January 1868 and shortly thereafter it was serialized in The Russian Messenger.

In May, Anna's mother visited the family to help them. They moved to an apartment on the Piazza del Mercato Nuovo due to lack of room. Its turbulent location near a market place and the summer heat caused the Dostoyevskys a great deal of trouble. Three months later they decided to leave the city for Prague. On the way there, their first stay was in Bologna and their second in Vienna. Three days after their arrival in Prague they had to leave the city because of an unsuccessful search for a ready furnished apartment, as furnishings and tableware were too expensive. They decided to return to Dresden in August. There they rented a house in the English quarter.

Shortly after their arrival, Anna's mother came to assist her daughter for the upcoming birth on 26 September of her second child Lyubov, meaning "Love" in Russian. Lyubov later called herself Aimée (French for "beloved"). In April 1871 Dostoyevsky made a final visit to a gambling hall in Wiesbaden. According to Anna, Dostoyevsky was cured of his addiction after the birth of Lyubov, but whether or not this is true is dubious. Another reason for his abstinence might be the closure of several casinos in Germany in the period 1872 - 1873; it was not until Hitler's coup d'état that these were re-opened. In July they took the train to Berlin. For fear of customs calamities Dostoyevsky burnt numerous manuscripts, including those for The Idiot. The family finally arrived in St. Petersburg on 8 July, marking the end of their four years and three month long "wedding trip", originally planned as a three month journey.

Anna's younger brother, Ivan Snitkin, visited the family in autumn 1869. A pupil at the Moscow Agriculture School, Snitkin told them about the unrest among the students. One of his fellow students, Ivanov, was, however, a sympathetic young man who had helped him with his travel preparations. Dostoyevksy later discovered that the same Ivanov was murdered on 21 November by a five man group in a park near the university. Behind the murder was the nihilist Nechayev. Influenced by Bakunin's Alliance révolutionnaire européenne, Nechayev formed a terror organization comprising several of these five man groups. Subsequently, Dostoyevsky planned to write a novel about nihilism.

Back in Russia, the family was again in financial trouble and therefore had to sell their surviving possessions. Moreover, Anna had reached the final period of her pregnancy. Dostoyevsky thought the child would be born on 15 July, and thus should be named Vladimir based on the calendar of saints, but Fyodor, or Fedya, was born one day later. Soon after the birth, they moved to a different apartment on Serpukhovskaya Street, near the Institute for Technology. The family hoped to clear the $25,000 they had in debts by selling their house in Peski, but as the tenant had refused to pay fees and duties, the building was sold in an auction for a relatively low price. Disputes between creditors still continued. Anna proposed to delegate her husband's copyrights and negotiated with the creditors to pay off their debts in installments.

Nonetheless, Dostoyevsky was able to revive his friendships with Maykov and Strakhov and to find new acquaintances, including Vsevolod Solovyov and his brother Vladimir, church politician Terty Filipov, and future imperial high commissioner of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, who influenced Dostoyevsky's political progression to Conservatism. In early 1872, art collector Pavel Tretyakov asked Dostoyevsky to pose for Vasily Perov. The resulting painting, according to Danish critic Georg Brandes a depiction of a "partly Russian peasant face, partly the likeness of a criminal", is possibly the most popular image of Dostoyevsky. Around this time, the Dostoyevskys planned a vacation in Staraya Russa, a spa known for its pleasant salt baths. On the way to it, they took the train to Sosnika and then to Novgorod. However, the family postponed their trip because of a wrist injury that Lyuba had received a few weeks before their departure. A doctor told them she had a sprain, but it ultimately turned out to be a fracture. Anna subsequently went back to St. Petersburg with her, while Dostoyevsky waited with their son in Staraya Russa for their return. Around the time of their return, Anna's sister died from typhus, while Anna had developed an abscess on her throat. Dostoyevsky's work on his next novel was delayed due to these issues.

The family returned to St. Petersburg in September 1872. The Demons was finished on 26 November 1872, and released in January by the "Dostoyevsky Press", founded by Dostoyevsky and his wife. Although the books were available on a cash only basis and their apartment served as a bookshop, the business was stable and about 3000 copies of Demons were sold. Anna was responsible for the financing. Dostoyevsky proposed to establish a new periodical, A Writer's Diary, including a collection of essays of the same name, but due to lack of money he first published it in Meshchersky's The Citizen, beginning publishing on 1 January in return for a payment of 3000 rubles per year. In the summer of 1873, Anna again traveled with her children to Staraya Russa, while Dostoyevsky stayed in St. Petersburg to continue with his Diary.

In March, Dostoyevsky left the The Citizen because of the stressful work and interference from the Russian bureaucracy. During his 15 months of activity as a journalist for The Citizen he was brought to court twice, on 11 June 1873, for citing the words of Prince Meshchersky without permission, and on 23 March 1874, for two days. Dostoyevsky offered The Russian Messenger a new novel he had not yet begun work on, but the magazine refused to give him the fee he asked for (the actual reason, which they kept secret from him, was that the periodical had closed a deal to release Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina). Nikolay Nekrasov visited him and proposed to publish A Writer's Diary in The National Annals; he would receive 250 rubles for each printer's sheet, 100 more than for The Russian Messenger.

Dostoyevsky's health declined and he suffered from cough and breathlessness, the first symptoms of a lung disease. Subsequently, Dostoyevsky was examined in St. Petersburg and he was advised by several doctors to take a cure outside of Russia. One doctor recommended Bad Ems, another Bad Soden. Dostoeyvsky left Russia and in June visited a well known pulmonologist in Berlin, who referred him to a doctor in Bad Ems. Around July, Dostoyevsky reached Ems but went to a different physician. He was diagnosed with an acute catarrh, and to alleviate the symptoms the doctor prescribed him a type of soda from a well. His health, however, was not improved until the physician gave him a different prescription. During his stay at the health spa he began to work on The Adolescent, also known as The Raw Youth. In late July he returned to St. Petersburg.

His wife proposed to spend the winter in Staraya Russa to provide him a rest from work. The doctors suggested that Dostoyevsky make a second visit to Ems, as his health has improved since his last visit. In late July he returned to Staraya Russa, and on 10 August his son Alexey was born. In mid September the family left the town for St. Petersburg. Dostoyevsky finished The Adolescent in the end of 1875, though parts of it had already been serialized between January and December 1875 in the Annals. The Adolescent chronicles the life of 19 year old intellectual, Arkady Dolgoruky, the illegitimate child of the controversial and womanizing landowner Versilov. A focus of the novel is the recurring conflict between father and son, particularly in ideology, which represents the battles between the conventional "old" way of thinking in the 1840s and the new nihilistic point of view of the youth of 1860s Russia.

In early 1876 he continued to work on his Diaries. The book's main theme is, like The Adolescent, child abuse by adults, reflecting his study of living conditions of children during his spa visit. The essay collection sold more than twice as many as any of his prior books. Dostoyevsky received more letters from readers than at anytime before. People of different ages and occupations visited him, be it a theology student who had religious doubts, or an agnostic teacher. Thanks to Anna's brother, the family finally bought a dacha in Staraya Russa.

In the summer of 1876, Dostoyevsky again suffered from breathlessness. He visited Ems for a third time and was examined by Dr. Orth, who prescribed him a similar cure as before. The doctor said that Dostoyevsky might live 15 years more providing that he would live in a healthy climate. When Dostoyevsky returned to Russia, Tsar Alexander II ordered him to visit his palace and to present him his Diaries. He also asked him to educate his sons, Sergey and Paul. This visit led to the increase of his circle of acquaintances. He was a common guest in several salons in St. Petersburg. He met with many famous people, including Princess Sofya Tolstaya, poet friend Yakov Polonsky, politician Sergei Witte, journalist Alexey Suvorin, musician Anton Rubinstein and artist Ilya Repin.

Dostoyevsky's health began to deteriorate and in March 1877 alone he had four epileptic seizures. Instead of going to Ems he decided to visit Maly Prikol, a manor near Kursk. On the way back to St. Petersburg to finalize his Diaries, Dostoyevsky visited Darovoye. At the same time Anna and her children made a pilgrimage to Kiev. In December he attended Nikolay Nekrasov's funeral and gave a speech. Around that time he was appointed an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In early 1878 he listened to a speech about the "Man of God" delivered by Vladimir Solovyov, which influenced his next novel. In February 1879 he received an honorary certificate from the academy, and in spring he was invited to participate in an international congress about copyright in Paris, headed by Victor Hugo. He declined the invitation after his son Alyosha's death on 16 May, who had not survived a two - hour death struggle caused by epilepsy. The family later moved to a different apartment on Yamskaya Street, where Dostoyevsky had written his first works. Around this time he was elected to the board of directors of the Slavic Benevolent Society in St. Petersburg, and in summer he was elected to the honorary committee of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, which included Victor Hugo, Ivan Turgenev, Paul Heyse, Alfred Tennyson, Anthony Trollope, Henry Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Leo Tolstoy.

Dostoyevsky made his fourth and final visit to Ems in early August 1879. He was diagnosed as having pulmonary emphysema in the initial stage. The doctor believed that it was not possible to cure the disease, but said that it could be combated with a high likelihood of success. The first parts of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, were serialized in The Russian Messenger on 1 February and the last parts were published in November 1880.

At nearly 800 pages, The Brothers Karamazov is undoubtedly Dostoyevsky's largest literary contribution; it is often cited as his greatest work, his magnum opus. Apart from being critically successful, the book did well on the market. On 3 February 1880 he was chosen as the vice president of the Slavic Benevolent Society. He was invited to the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial in Moscow. Initially scheduled for 26 May, the date of the unveiling was rescheduled to 6 June because of the death of Empress Maria Alexandrovna. Dostoyevsky delivered his memorized speech two days later inside a big room. During his impressive and hypnotizing speech many people cried or were hysterical, while others fainted or left the room. His speech was met with thunderous applause, and even his long time rival Ivan Turgenev embraced him. Dostoyevsky's delivery was later, however, attacked by several people, among them the liberal political scientist Alexander Gradovsky and conservative thinker Konstantin Leontiev. The attacks had a negative effect on Dostoyevsky's health.

On 25 January, the Tsar's secret police executed a search warrant in the apartment of one of Dostoyevsky's neighbors. They were searching for members of the terror organisation Narodnaya Volya ("The People's Will") who had assassinated Tsar Alexander II. It was thought that this investigation might have been jointly responsible for Dostoyevksy's pulmonary hemorrhage on 26 January 1881. However, Anna denied this claim, stating that the hematorrhea occurred after Dostoyevsky had searched for a dropped pen holder, and an even stronger hematorrhea occurred after he had asked for his residual fee for his novel. Anna searched shortly afterwards for the doctor von Bretzel and others, but they stated that Dostoyevsky would most likely die some time in the next few days. When his health became more steady, Dostoyevsky had a second rush of blood. Among Dostoyevsky's last words was his quoting of Matthew 3:14: "But John tried to stop him, saying, 'I need to be baptized by you, and are you coming to me?'" Dostoyevsky died on that day, eight minutes before half nine. According to a Russian custom his body was placed on a table. Initially Dostoyevsky wanted to be buried in the Novodevichy Convent cemetery near Nikolay Nekrasov, but due to money issues he was instead interred in the Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Convent, near his favorite poets Karamsin and Zhukovsky. It is not exactly known how many visitors attended his funeral. According to a reporter, more than 100,000 mourners attended it, while others state a number between 40,000 and 50,000. His burial attracted many prominent people. Nestor, archbishop of Vyborg, delivered the liturgy, while Ioann Yanyshev performed the consecration. His tombstone is inscribed with the words of Christ,

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

—New Testament, from the Gospel According to John 12:24

Dostoyevsky is known for his remarkable and powerful personality, but is known to have a fragile physical constitution. In his childhood he was described by the parents as a hothead, stubborn and having a cheeky mouth. Around the time when he was in the college, several people depicted him as a pale, introverted dreamer, and a peaking, overexcited romantic. The most descriptive account during the time was made by Dr. Alexander Riesenkampf, "Feodor Mikhailovich was no less - good natured and no less courteous than his brother, but when not in a good mood he often looked at everything through dark glasses, became vexed, forgot good manners, and sometimes was carried away to the point of abusiveness and loss of self - awareness", but "[i]n the circle of his friends he always seemed lively, untroubled, self - content".

The precise nature of Dostoyevsky's epilepsy is unknown. Some have thought it was a generalized epilepsy, others temporal lobe epilepsy, and some a combination of these two. Théophile Alajouanine stated that he had "partial and secondarily generalized seizures with ecstatic aura", while Henri Gastaut believed that his seizures were "idiopathic generalised". P.H.A. Voskuil had a view similar to that of Alajouanine and Gastaut: "complex partial seizures with secondarily generalized nocturnal seizures and ecstatic auras". According to Rosetti and Bogousslavsky, Dostoyevsky suffered from "temporal lobe epilepsy, most likely left mesiotemporal, with complex partial and secondarily generalized seizures, with a relatively benign course". Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who claimed that epilepsy is "always straight cases of hysteria", said the illness was caused by his father's death and he ultimately saw an Oedipus complex in him. Freud discussed his "hystero - epilepsy" in Dostoevsky and Parricide.

It is, however, dubious whether his father was really killed by his peasants. It is not explicitly known when Dostoyvsky's first epileptic seizures occurred. Some proposed the date of the first occurrence of epilepsy was at the age of 9, while others argued it was in his teens or early adulthood. Dostoyevsky, however, wrote that the first seizure appeared after the "psychological torture", the mock execution. In his notebook he recorded a total of 102 seizures in 20 years.

In a meeting with Baron Wrangel, "when [Dostoyevsky] came in", he was "extremely reserved [...] morose, his face pale and sickly and covered with freckles. [Dostoyevsky's] light colored hair was cut short, and he was of more than medium height. Intently looking at me with his sharp, grey - blue eyes, it seemed that he was trying to peer into [Wrangel's] very soul — now what sort of man is he? ... ". Herzen characterized Dostoyevsky as "a naive, not entirely lucid, but very nice person".

Dostoyevsky was raised in a "pious Russian family" and knew the Gospel "almost from the cradle". Early on he attended masses every Sunday, took part in annual pilgrimages at the St. Sergius Trinity Monastery and was introduced by his family to Christianity with the Russian translation of Johannes Hübner's One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments Selected for Children, which was partly a German children's bible and partly a catechism. Apart from religious literature Dostoyevsky was educated by a deacon near the hospital. One of his most remembered accounts of his childhood were the prayers in front of guests: "Mother of God, keep me and preserve me under Thy wing!", and the reading from the Book of Job, which "made an impression on [Dostoyevsky]" when "still almost a child".

According to an officer of the military academy, Dostoyevsky was deeply religious and orthodox and often read the Gospels and Heinrich Zschokke's Die Stunden der Andacht (Hours of Devotion). The latter book "preached a sentimental version of Christianity entirely free from dogmatic content and with a strong emphasis on giving Christian love a social application", which is perhaps his first introduction to Christian socialism. Through the literature of Hoffmann, Balzac, Sue and Goethe, Dostoyevsky created his own belief system similar to Russian sectarianism and Old Belief. After his arrest, the subsequent mock execution and the imprisonment in Siberia, his religious views changed significantly and were revived through the New Testament, the only book allowed in prison. In January 1854, however, Dostoyevsky wrote the following letter to a woman from whom he received the Testament:

I have heard from many sources that you are very religious, Natalia Dmitrievna... As for myself, I confess that I am a child of my age, a child of unbelief and doubt up to this moment, and I am certain that I shall remain so to the grave. What terrible torments this thirst to believe has cost me and continues to cost me, burning ever more strongly in my soul the more contrary arguments there are. Nevertheless, God sometimes sends me moments of complete tranquility. In such moments I love and find that I am loved by others, and in such moments I have nurtured in myself a symbol of truth, in which everything is clear and holy for me. This symbol is very simple: it is the belief that there is nothing finer, profounder, more attractive, more reasonable, more courageous and more perfect than Christ, and not only is there not, but I tell myself with jealous love that there cannot be. Even is someone were to prove to me that the truth lay outside Christ, I should choose to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Pisma, XXVIII, i, p. 176

In a meeting with Baron Wrangel, Dostoyevsky revived his belief in an omniscient, omnipotent Creator by viewing the spangled sky. Wrangel said that he was "rather pious, but did not often go to church, and disliked priests, especially the Siberian ones. But he spoke about Christ ecstatically". Both planned to translate Hegel's works and Carus' Psyche, and Dostoyevsky explored Islam when he asked his brother to send him a copy of the Quran. Two pilgrimages and two works by the influential archbishop, Dmitri Rostovsky, strengthened his beliefs. Rostovsky has influenced both the Ukrainian and Russian literature and also composed groundbreaking religious plays. Through his visits to Europe and discussions between Herzen, Grigoriev and Strakhov, Dostoyevsky discovered Pochvennichestvo. Just as the movement, he believed that the Catholic Church adopted the principles of rationalism, legalism, materialism and individualism from the ancient Rome and passed on its philosophy to Protestantism and finally to socialism, which then leads to atheism.

As Dostoyevsky never explicitly stated his faith, his real beliefs are uncertain. One exception might be his April 1876 statement to a question about a suicide in Diary of a Writer, remarking that he was a "philosophical deist", originally a quote from The Adolescent, though he did not mention that it was. However, Dostoyevsky said two months later in his Diaries that his heroine George Sand "died a deisté, firmly believing in God and in the immortality of the Soul", but deists at that time held different beliefs about immortality of the soul. Furthermore his belief in doctrines such as the Trinity, clearly discussed especially in The Brothers Karamazov, suggests that he did not quite understand the meaning of this term. Overall, many critics pointed out that Dostoyevsky's religion is unusual and partially at odds with Christian core beliefs. Malcolm V. Jones found elements of Islam and Buddhism in his religious beliefs.

Several writers and critics (including Joseph Frank, Maxim D. Shrayer, Stephen Cassedy, David I. Goldstein, Gary Saul Morson and Felix Dreizin) have offered insights and suppositions regarding Dostoyevsky’s views on Jews and organized Jewry in Russia. One view is that Dostoyevsky perceived Jewish ethnocentrism and influence to be threatening the Russian peasantry in border regions. In A Writer's Diary, Dostoyevsky wrote:

Thus, Jewry is thriving precisely there where the people are still ignorant, or not free, or economically backward. It is there that Jewry has a champ libre. And instead of raising, by its influence, the level of education, instead of increasing knowledge, generating economic fitness in the native population — instead of this the Jew, wherever he has settled, has still more humiliated and debauched the people; there humaneness was still more debased and the educational level fell still lower; there inescapable, inhuman misery, and with it despair, spread still more disgustingly. Ask the native population in our border regions: What is propelling the Jew — and has been propelling him for centuries? You will receive a unanimous answer: mercilessness. He has been prompted so many centuries only by pitilessness to us, only by the thirst for our sweat and blood.

And, in truth, the whole activity of the Jews in these border regions of ours consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them, taking advantage of the local laws. They have always managed to be on friendly terms with those upon whom the people were dependent. Point to any other tribe from among Russian aliens which could rival the Jew by his dreadful influence in this connection! You will find no such tribe. In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and of course, the reason therefore is that status of status of his, that spirit of which specifically breathes pitilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature who is not a Jew...

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Diary of a Writer, translated by Boris Brasol (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons), 1949.

Dostoyevsky has been noted as both having expressed antisemitic sentiments as well as standing up for the rights of the Jewish people. In a review of Joseph Frank's book, The Mantle of the Prophet, Orlando Figes notes that A Writer's Diary is "filled with politics, literary criticism, and pan - Slav diatribes about the virtues of the Russian Empire, [and] represents a major challenge to the Dostoyevsky fan, not least on account of its frequent expressions of anti - semitism." Frank, in his foreword for David I. Goldstein's book Dostoevsky and the Jews, attempts to place Dostoyevsky as a product of his time. Frank notes that Dostoyevsky made antisemitic remarks, but that Dostoyevsky's writing and stance, by and large, was one where Dostoyevsky held a great deal of guilt for his comments and positions that were antisemitic.

Steven Cassedy alleges in his book, Dostoevsky's Religion, that much of the depiction of Dostoyevsky's views as antisemitic omits that Dostoyevsky expressed support for the equal rights of the Russian Jewish population, an unpopular position in Russia at the time. Cassedy also notes that this criticism of Dostoyevsky also appears to deny his sincerity when he said that he was for equal rights for the Russian Jewish populace and the serfs of his own country (since neither group at that point in history had equal rights). Cassedy again notes when Dostoyevsky stated that he did not hate Jewish people and was not antisemitic. Even though Dostoyevsky spoke of the potential negative influence of Jewish people, Dostoyevsky advised emperor Alexander II of Russia to give them rights to positions of influence in Russian society, such as allowing them access to Professorships at Universities. According to Cassedy, labeling Dostoyevsky anti - Semitic does not take into consideration Dostoyevsky's expressed desire to reconcile Jews and Christians peacefully in a single universal brotherhood of mankind.

According to Rachel Thomas, Dostoyevsky was "an explorer of ideas", and his life "coincided with a particularly tumultuous period in Russian history, and was undoubtly shaped by the sociopolitical happenings he witnessed". Dostoyesvky represented the literary movement realism, which depicted the contemporary life and society "as they were". More precisely, Dostoyevsky was named a "fantastic realist" or "sentimental naturalist", coined by Dostoyevsky and Apollon Grigoryev, respectively.

His first works were particularly heavily influenced by the contemporary writers, including Pushkin, Gogol and Hoffmann, even leading to accusations of plagiarism. Several critics pointed out the imitations of The Double from Gogol's works, especially The Overcoat and The Nose, the short story "An Honest Thief" from George Sand's François le champi and Eugène Sue's Mathilde ou Confessions d'une jeune fille, and Netochka Nezvanova from Charles Dicken's Dombey and Son. Biographer and critic Victor Terras meant that the reason for his early imitations was because he "was not fully convinced of his own creative faculty, yet firmly believed in the correctness of his critical judgement".

In "White Nights", Dostoyevsky "has truly captured the spirit of German Romanticism" and its story "features rich nature and music imagery, gentle irony, usually directed at the first person narrator himself, and a warm pathos that is always ready to turn into self - parody". The first three parts of the unfinished novel Netochka Nezvanova chronicles the life of the poor Netochka, stepdaughter of second - class fiddler Efimov, who plays only for his fame rather than at heart. One day she befriends with Katya, but the latter was forced to leave Moscow, and Netochka lives from then on with her older sister. In "A Christmas Party and a Wedding" he switches to social satire.

Although spending four years in prison under poor condition, Dostoyevsky wrote two humorous books, the novella Uncle's Dream and the novel The Village of Stepanchikovo. The novel, Notes From the Underground, which he partially wrote in prison, became his first secular book without a single mention of religion, yet he wanted to include religious themes. Dostoyevsky expressed the censorship with the words: "The censor pigs have passed everything where I scoffed at everything and, on the face of it, was sometimes even blasphemous, but have forbidden the parts where I demonstrated the need for belief in Christ from all this". Humiliated and Insulted was similarly secular; only at the end of the 1860s, beginning with the publication of Crime and Punishment, became the religious themes apparent. Since the release of Notes from the Underground, critics began to believe that "Dostoyevsky's concern with the insulted and injured was motivated not so much by compassion as by an unhealthy curiosity about the darker recesses of the human psyche, ... by a perverse attraction to the deceased states of the human mind, ... or ... by sadistic pleasure in observing human suffering".

The House of the Dead are semi - autobiographical memoirs from the prison which include a few religious themes, though they play a minor part. Characters from the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, are featured in this novel. While the Jew Isay Fomich is negatively illustrated as well as the believers from the Orthodox and Old Believers denomination, the Muslims Nurra and Aley from Dagestan are depicted largely positively. Aley is later educated by reading the Bible, and shows fascination for the Sermon on the Mount passage, which he views as the ideal philosophy with its altruist messages.

Another typical characteristic in his works is the occurrence of autobiographical elements, as, according to Norwegian Slavist and vice president of the International Dostoevsky Association, Geir Kjetsaa, "Dostoyevsky's life is a novel". The Idiot, which is according to Kjetsaa perhaps his most autobiographical work, bears great resemblances to his life, for example the view of Holbein's The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb, Prince Myshkin's skilled handwriting or similarities between the characters.

The works in the 1870s cover the issue of human's manipulation. The Eternal Husband and "The Meek One" describes the relationship between man and woman in the marriage, whereby the first tells the manipulation of a husband by his wife, while the latter switches the genders. "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man" emphasizes the theme of manipulation from the individual to a metaphysical level. The protagonist, the "Dreamer", once intends to shoot himself until he views the sky and the subsequent encounter with a girl, but continues his way to his apartment. After an hours long intellectual game, he suddenly fell asleep. In the dream he commits suicide, then his grave suddenly opens after he begs for forgiveness. One time he misleads the people of a foreign star to the evil, and they did not forgive his actions. The story ends when the protagonist wakes up and understands his errors.

Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin wrote the influential essay Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (1963), which is according to René Wellek "one of the most stimulating and original books of the enormous literature on Dostoevsky". There he argues about his use of "polyphony", independent, equal voices that speaks for an individual self and distinct from others, and his "carnival", which is the context in which distinct individual voices are heard, flourish and interact together. Diaries and "Bobok" were for him "one of the greatest menippeas in all world literature". He concluded that all of his works have elements of menippean satire, and even said that he revived this underground genre which combines elements of comic, fantasy, symbolism and adventures. Examples of menipeas are found in "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man", the first encounter between Raskolnikov and Sonja in Crime and Punishment, which was "an almost perfect Christianized menippea", and "The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor".

Unnatural suicides are found in several Dostoyevsky books. The 1860s – 1880s marked in Russia a near epidemic period of suicides mainly caused by the growing atheist and positivist philosophy. Many Russian authors at that time wrote about these suicides in their works. Dostoyevsky's suicide victims are only disbelievers and models of the "new man": the Underground Man, Raskolnikov, Ippolit, Kirillov, Ivan Karamazov, Smerdiakov. In a correspondence with the atheist Petr Verkhovensky, Kirillov remarks in The Demons that "God is necessary and therefore must exist", while Verkhovensky responds "Well, that's wonderful". Kirillov then answers "But I know that He does not and cannot exist" and after a meaningless cliché by Verkhanovsky he continues "Don't you understand that a man with these two thoughts cannot go on living?", and Verkhovensky meant that the one must shoot himself. Kirillov's consequence, that "a man can shoot himself for that alone", will be realized at the end of the novel, as Kirillov begins suicide, while Verkhovensky a murder. The cause of the suicides is the characters' disbelief in God and immortality and their acceptance of the contemporary beliefs (for example positivism or materialism). Dostoyevky saw the belief in God and immortality necessary for human existence.

Dostoyevsky's books were not always met with positive reception. Several critics, such as Dobrolyubov, Bunin and Nabokov, found that while his works successfully explore psychological and philosophical themes, their artistical quality is "below criticism". Other criticized the chaotic and disorganized plots, while others, such as Turgenev, his "excessive psychologizing", or his too detailed naturalism. His characters were called "unrealistic, schematic and contrived". His style was deemed as "prolix, repetitious and lacking in polish, balance, restraint and good taste". Unrealistic characters found in The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov were expressed by critics such as Saltykov - Shchedrin, Tolstoy and Mikhailovsky as "puppets", or more precisely "pale, pretentious and artificial", which is unnatural for realism literature. The puppet - like appearance was compared with Hoffmann's characters, an author whom Dostoyevsky admired.

Together with Leo Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky is often regarded as one of the greatest and most influential novelists of the Golden Age of Russian literature. The publication of his debut novel, Poor Folk, pushed him into the literary mainstream, and critics saw him as a rising star of Russian literature. He was known for his gifted narrative, and through his sharp and often deep, sophisticated statements in intellectual and political discussions he was described as a spiritual guide, a teacher and even a prophet.

Dostoyevsky's works also attracted readers outside of Russia. The German translator Wilhelm Wolfsohn published one of the first translations, parts of Poor Folk, in an 1846 / 1847 magazine, and a French translation followed. The first English translations were provided by Marie von Thilo in 1881, and the first adequate translations were done between 1912 and 1920 by Constance Garnett.

Since then, many non - Russians were introduced to Dostoyevsky's works. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called Dostoyevsky "the only psychologist, incidentally, from whom I had something to learn; he ranks among the most beautiful strokes of fortune in my life…" Thomas Mann advised reading his novels en masse. While Hermann Hesse primarily enjoyed Dostoyevsky's work, he also stated that to read him is like a "glimpse into the havoc". Norwegian novelist Knut Hamsun wrote that "no one has analyzed the complicated human structure as Dostoyevsky. His psychologic sense is overwhelming and visionary. We have no yardstick by which to assess his greatness". André Gide said that Dostoyevsky "should be put beside Ibsen and Nietzsche; he is equal in size as the three, and maybe the most important".

According to an excerpt of a letter written by Edmund Gosse to Gide, "[Dostoyevsky] is the cocaine and morphia of modern literature". Ernest Hemingway cited Dostoyevsky as an influence in his posthumous collection of sketches A Moveable Feast, stating that "[i]n Dostoevsky there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true that they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know." According to Arthur Power's Conversations with James Joyce, Joyce praised Dostoyevsky's prose: "...he is the man more than any other who has created modern prose, and intensified it to its present day pitch. It was his explosive power which shattered the Victorian novel with its simpering maidens and ordered commonplaces; books which were without imagination or violence."

In her essay The Russian Point of View, Virginia Woolf said: "The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading". Franz Kafka named Dostoyevsky as his "blood - relative", and was heavily influenced by his works, especially The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, both of which had a profound effect on The Trial. Sigmund Freud called his last work "the most significant novel ever written". Left wing groups such as the surrealists, the existentialists and the Beats named Dostoyevsky as their influence. Dostoyevsky is cited as the forerunner of Russian symbolism, existentialism, expressionism and psychoanalysis.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Dostoyevsky's books were often censored or banned. His philosophy, especially in The Demons, was deemed capitalistic and anti - communist, leading Maxim Gorky to nickname the author "our evil genius". Reading Dostoyevsky was forbidden and those who did not observe the law were imprisoned. During the Second World War, however, his works were propagated by both the Soviets and the Nazis, and after the war the prohibition law was overturned. His 125th anniversary in 1947 was celebrated throughout Russia, but despite this his novels were banned again until Nikita Khrushchev's accession to power ten years later following de-Stalinization, which softened the laws.

After the Second World War, his works topped the best seller lists worldwide. Philosophers, psychologists, theologians, politicians, literary critics, physicians, lawyers, and students have acknowledged his works. Many of his novels and stories were filmed and dramatised in the Soviet Union and the West. Dostoyevsy's fictional characters and his work overall were popularized in graffiti, presidential speeches, vaudeville, films and plays.

In 1956 a green - olive stamp dedicated to Dostoyevsky was released in the Soviet Union with a print run of 1,000 copies. The Dostoevsky Museum was opened 12 November 1971 in the apartment where he wrote his first and last novels. The minor planet 3453 Dostoevsky was discovered in 1981 by Lyudmila Karachkina. Viewers of the TV show Name of Russia voted him the ninth greatest Russian of all time, behind chemist Dmitry Mendeleev and ahead of ruler Ivan IV. Four of his books, Crime and Punishment, The Possessed, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, are included on the list of 100 best books of all time. The Moscow Metro station Dostoyevskaya in the Lyublinsko - Dmitrovskaya Line was scheduled to open for the public on 15 May, the 75th anniversary of Moscow Metro. The illustrations on the décor made by artist Ivan Nikolaev were criticized because of their depiction of suicides, but did not hinder its opening on 19 June 2010.

Dostoyevsky's works of fiction include 15 novels and novellas, 17 short stories, and 5 translations. Many of his longer novels were first published in serialized form in literary magazines and journals. In English many of his novels and stories are known by several titles.