4 Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was a very complicated person. Many people believe that his difficult life helped to make him a literary genius.

Dostoyevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow. His childhood was very unhappy. His father, a doctor, was bad-tempered and violent. He believed in very strict discipline for his children. Fyodor's mother was a sweet and gentle woman. She was the only person who could control his father. When she died in 1837, Fyodor's father became even worse. He lost all control and was angry all the time. He left his job at the hospital and went to live on the family's land in the country. But he was so cruel to his workers that they eventually murdered him.

Fyodor's father wanted his son to work in medicine, so Fyodor went to college in Saint Petersburg. When he was 21, he joined the army. He worked hard, and in his free time he liked to go out with his friends. Unfortunately, Fyodor spent his money foolishly and lost a lot of his money gambling. He earned a good salary, but he was always in debt.

Dostoyevsky hated the army and left after only two years. He wanted to be a writer. He wrote a novel and sent it to some publishers.But the publishers wanted him to make some big changes. He refused. So he borrowed money and published the novel himself in 1846. The novel was called Poor Folk. It was a great success, and suddenly Dostoyevsky was famous. Everyone wanted to meet this talented writer. He loved all the attention, but he loved it too much. He became very conceited. He was often cruel to his friends and admirers. After a while, he had no friends.

Dostoyevsky wanted new friends, so he joined a secret political group. The people in the group disagreed with some laws of the government. They believed in freedom of speech. They also wanted the farm workers, who were called serfs, to be free. At that time, wealthy Russians owned the serfs who worked on their land. As a boy, Dostoyevsky had spent the summer at his family's home in the country and he had become friends with the serfs. He believed very strongly that they should have rights. Dostoyevsky almost died for these beliefs.

On April 23, 1849, the police arrested Dostoyevsky and other members of the political group. All of them were sentenced to death. They stayed in prison for eight months. On December 22, the prisoners were taken to a public place in Saint Petersburg, the capital of Russia. It was extremely cold, but the men wore only their shirts. An officer read the men's names. After each name he said“Sentenced to be shot.” There was a line of coffins nearby. Someone tied up the first three men and put bags over their heads. The soldiers pointed their guns. Dostoyevsky watched in horror. There was no hope for him now. Suddenly an officer rode into the square waving a white flag. He announced that Tsar Nicolas I, the leader of Russia, had changed his mind. The prisoners were now sentenced to four years of hard labor in a prison camp in Siberia. Dostoyevsky was very relieved, but this experience tortured him. He wrote about many of these feelings in later books.

For the next four years, Dostoyevsky worked as a prisoner in Siberia. The conditions were very difficult. Siberia was one of the coldest places in the world. Many prisoners suffered terribly, and many died. After Dostoyevsky left the prison camp he had to stay in Siberia for several more years. In 1857 he married a widow with a nine-year-old son. He also joined the army and began to write The House of the Dead,a novel about his horrible experiences in the prison camp.

Two years later, Dostoyevsky was allowed to return to Saint Petersburg. He finished writing his book and it was eventually published. A few years later, his wife became ill and returned to Siberia. Dostoyevsky needed to raise money for his family, so he started to gamble again. Unfortunately, he only got more into debt. In 1864, Dostoyevsky's wife, his brother, and a close friend died. He was terribly depressed, and now had more financial problems. He took responsibility for caring for his brother's family and paying his brother's large debts.

Dostoyevsky moved to western Europe during the 1860s. A publisher there offered him a lot of money to write another novel.But he had to do it quickly to get the money. So he hired an assistant, Anna Snitkina, to help him. About six months later, he married her. Anna was 25 years younger than Dostoyevsky. Over the years, they had four children and a good life together. Anna took care of all of Dostoyevsky's business. She worked with the publishers and with the people he owed money. She helped him to have a happier and easier life.

During the last 20 years of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote his four most important novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. All of them are great masterpieces. He worked very hard. He usually worked late into the night, then slept until the early hours of the morning. He also worked quickly. Sometimes he worked on two books at a time—one in the morning, another in the afternoon.

Dostoyevsky was never a healthy man. He had very bad eyesight, which made it hard for him to work. He also had a serious brain disease called epilepsy.People with epilepsy shake violently and lose consciousness.Another illness caused him to lose consciousness and remain very still for a long time, as if he were dead. Because of this, Dostoyevsky had a terrible fear of being buried alive.

Dostoyevsky died at age 59 after years of illness. Thirty thousand people watched his coffin pass through the streets of Saint Petersburg. It was the largest funeral procession in Russian history. When he died, he was Russia's greatest writer. Now many believe he is one of the greatest writers in the world.