00:00We think Dostoevsky was always a beacon of Russian literature,
00:04but true recognition came to him nearly a century late,
00:10even though his literary career started off promisingly.
00:20Dostoevsky's first novel, Poor Fog, was published in 1846, and for the young author,
00:26just 25 years old at the time, it was an overwhelming success.
00:32Dostoevsky wrote that he was suddenly famous, and everyone was talking about him.
00:38But everyone meant the literary salon-goers, just a small circle of a few dozen people.
00:46To give you some context, literary magazines in the mid-19th century
00:51had circulations ranging from 600 to 6,000 copies.
00:56Now let's add more context.
00:59In 1840, St. Petersburg had a population of 470,000 people, and Moscow had 350,000 people.
01:09Literacy rates across Russia ranged from 2% to 8%, depending on the region.
01:14So, in reality, not everyone was interested in Dostoevsky.
01:18Most people were far more interested in gypsy songs and biographies of saints.
01:24But, as people tend to do then and now, they lived in their own informational bubbles
01:31and projected their impressions onto the entire world.
01:39At the literary gatherings Dostoevsky attended, participants read forbidden articles and discussed
01:47potential reforms for Russia.
01:50At that time, most of the country's population were serfs, essentially property bought and sold
01:57like livestock.
01:59Just like in America, this outraged many educated people.
02:04One writer suggested setting up an underground printing press to produce pamphlets.
02:10And that was enough for the entire group to be arrested, sentenced to death, and then
02:17commuted to forced labor.
02:19These people had not killed or stolen from anyone.
02:23They had no money, no weapons, no organization capable of a coup.
02:29They hadn't even come near the Tsar's palace.
02:32They posed no real threat.
02:35The cruelty and senselessness of such punishments back then and even today can be explained quite
02:43simply.
02:44Officials in charge of political cases could expect rewards and promotions if they harshly punish rebels.
02:53It was a way to prove loyalty to their superiors and advance their own careers.
03:00In 1849, at age 28, Dostoevsky was sent to Siberia.
03:06He returned to St. Petersburg ten years later and wrote about his experiences in the House of the Dead.
03:15People in the Russian mainland often saw the terrifying endless columns of prisoners being marched to Siberia.
03:24But few knew what really happened there.
03:27Dostoevsky had visited hell and come back alive.
03:33And this sparked not only sympathy, but intense curiosity.
03:38That's how Dostoevsky became a literary celebrity.
03:47Dostoevsky lived off his writing and he had significant expenses.
03:51First, he had a wife and children to support.
03:54He had four kids, but two died, a sadly common story.
03:58And second, Dostoevsky suffered from epilepsy and tuberculosis,
04:03the defining urban illness of the 19th century.
04:06Treating these conditions meant constant trips to German resorts.
04:11There was no other way to ease his suffering.
04:15Third, Dostoevsky had a gambling habit.
04:19And could easily lose not only all his earnings, but even his pocket watch.
04:25To keep afloat financially, he had to sign contracts with literary magazines
04:30that serialized his novels, publishing them in parts over a year or so.
04:36If you ever found the plots of Dostoevsky's novels a bit chaotic, now you know why.
04:44He did not submit the whole manuscript at once.
04:47He sent it chapter by chapter.
04:50Sometimes he'd send the beginning to the publishers without knowing himself
04:54what would come next.
04:56He had to piece the plot together as he went along.
05:05Do you think his works were immediately accepted for publication?
05:10Not at all.
05:12Dostoevsky first had to get his theme approved by the editor.
05:16He didn't have much creative freedom.
05:19He initially wanted to write about a strong personality,
05:24but that idea was rejected.
05:26The editors also did not like his concept for The Drunkards,
05:30a novel about the alcoholics of St. Petersburg.
05:33Back then, just as today, it was considered not the right format.
05:38He desperately needed money.
05:41But the publishers only became interested in a new novel
05:45when he pitched a psychological account of a crime.
05:49You know what came of it?
05:51Crime and punishment.
05:54Dostoevsky simply could not afford to write something that wouldn't sell.
05:58So if the publisher, Katkov, had not given Dostoevsky an advance of 300 rubles,
06:06we'd never had met Raskolnikov.
06:13What true readers to Dostoevsky's work.
06:16He built his stories not on what happened to his characters,
06:20but on their inner experiences and reflections.
06:25Some people live their lives in the external world,
06:29while for others, the most important events happen inside their minds.
06:35Dostoevsky was one of the later,
06:37and he spoke to like-minded readers in the language they understood.
06:43This was how the psychological novel was born.
06:47Moreover, Dostoevsky captured a major trend of his time.
06:51The second half of the 19th century was an era of rapid urbanization.
06:57Millions of people flocked to the cities,
06:59trying to adapt to conditions completely different from village life.
07:04This gave rise to crime, poverty, and other social issues,
07:09affecting both former peasants and landless nobles who had lost their means of living.
07:16Readers in cozy drawing rooms had no idea what was happening in the back alleys,
07:22taverns, and gloomy apartment buildings where the city poor lived.
07:27But they wanted to know, especially since the idea that a respectable person
07:33should serve not oneself, not feudal lord, but the people had firmly taken root in the second half of the
07:4119th century.
07:42To do that, it was necessary to understand how the people lived and what they fought.
07:52Dostoevsky's novels can be compared to the work of American photojournalist Jacob Rees,
07:57who in 1890 shocked the public by revealing how the other half of New York lived.
08:04He was the first to use flash photography for a reportage, literally illuminating the city's dark corners.
08:13And what he found there was terrifying.
08:16Dostoevsky showed not only the horrors of urban poverty, but also helped his readers formulate their own beliefs
08:26and answer important questions.
08:29What are my values?
08:31What do I believe in?
08:34What are good and evil for me personally and for society?
08:46Dostoevsky was famous in a relatively small circle.
08:50Many people attended his funeral, but let's remember the context.
08:5520,000 people attended the funeral of Matrona the Barefooted Fool.
09:00In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dostoevsky was seen as just a commercially successful writer.
09:08with his own fan base among the educated, but he was gradually forgotten.
09:15In the early years of Soviet rule, Dostoevsky was only remembered by literary scholars.
09:22He had a reputation as a reactionary who opposed revolutionary ideas.
09:27As a result, he was excluded from the pantheon of great Russian writers until the late 1960s.
09:37His fame came back thanks to translations into German and later other European languages.
09:44It was only when prominent foreign authors began to talk about the importance of Dostoevsky
09:51that Soviet leaders took notice.
09:53This happened during the heat of the Cold War,
09:57a time when the USSR needed symbols to clearly show what Soviet people could be proud of.
10:04In the 1960s, the USSR faced an unsolvable contradiction.
10:10Half a century had passed since the Bolshevik Revolution, but prosperity was nowhere to be found.
10:17Clever officials found a solution.
10:20They declared that the West did everything for money,
10:23while in the USSR everything was done for great ideals and achievements.
10:29So national symbols became grand sports, classical ballet, space exploration, and great writers.
10:39These symbols represented depth, scale, and greatness in contrast to the lowly culture of the West.
10:47What they conveniently left out was that Soviet sports, ballet, and space exploration became great
10:55only because enormous resources were poured into them.
10:59The same applied to the promotion of the great debt writers.
11:05Their works were published in massive print runs, translated into foreign languages,
11:11and support was given to those studying Russian culture, especially in the USSR's allied countries.
11:20All of this was done at the state's expense, without regard to supply and demand.
11:27This is how Dostoevsky became a luminary of Russian literature.
11:32Tell us what's appeared after all videoing about British immigrants.
11:33The sameとうαν zwanger states were made in tired exotic things...
11:37No, blessAosius.
11:38Amen.
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