Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Birth: Nov. 11, 1821
Death: Feb. 9, 1881

Russian novelist, journalist, short-story writer. Born in Moscow, as the second son of a doctor. He was educated at home and at a private school. Shortly after the death of his mother in 1837, he was sent to St. Petersburg, where he entered the Army Engineering College where he graduated as a military engineer. With the help of a small income from the estate, he resigned in 1844 his commission to devote himself to writing.

His first novel, Poor Folk (1846) gained a great success with the critics. In 1846 Dostoevsky joined a group of utopian socialists. He was arrested on April 23 in 1849 during a reading of Vissarion Belinsky's radical letter "Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends" and sentenced to death.

He was imprisonment in Siberia where he spent four years in hard labor. These experiences provided subject matter for the his future works. During the years in Siberia Dostoevsky became a monarchist and a devout follower of the Russian Orthodox Church. Dostoevsky returned to St. Petersburg in 1859 as a writer with a religious mission.

He published three works that derive in different ways from his Siberia experiences: The House of the Dead (1861-62), The Insulted and Injured (1861), and Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863).In 1857 Dostoevsky married Maria Isaev, a 29-year old widow. Two years later he resigned from the army.In 1862 Dostoevsky went to abroad for the first time, traveling in France and England. He traveled Europe again in 1863 and 1865. During this period his wife and brother died, he was obsessed with gambling. "Crime and Punishment" was serialized in Ruskii vestnik (The Russian Messenger) from January through December 1866 and appeared in a book on 1867.

In 1867 he married Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina, his 22-years old stenographer, who seems to have understood her husband's manias and rages. He left Russia with her to avoid creditors and spent time in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland.

In Russia his literary fame only grew. When "The Possessed" turned out to be a success, he returned to Russia, and purchased a house in the provincial town of Staraya Russa. From 1873 to 1874 Dostoevsky was editor of the conservative weekly "Citizen". In 1876 he founded his own monthly, "The Writer's Diary". From its writings he collected The Diary of a Writer (1876). By the time of "The Brothers of Karamazov" (1879-80), Dostoevsky was recognized in his own country as one of its great writers. An epileptic all his life, Dostoevsky died in St. Petersburg on February 9, 1881. His wife devoted the rest of her life to cherish the literary heritage of her husband. (bio by: Jelena)

Cause of death: Hemorrhage
Burial:
Alexander Nevsky Monastery
St. Petersburg, Russian Federation