Dostoevsky’s Philosophical Universe

Abstract

Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose 200th birthday we celebrated in 2021, is perhaps one of the most eminent Russian thinkers. A giant of nineteenth-century literature, Dostoevsky became a symbol of Russian culture. Not only did his contemporaries view him as a Russian national prophet, but also his novels and other literary writings greatly affected the way in which Russia would think of itself in the years following his death. This manifestly points to the important place that Dostoevsky rightly holds in the cultural heritage of Russia. Hence, it is not surprising that now—in the wake of the Russian unprovoked invasion of Ukraine—he, along with other famous Russian literary and cultural figures, has emerged as a target of the growing number of calls for canceling Russian culture. The current widespread attempt at “total disengagement” from Russia has led many to boycott musicians, artists, writers, and other cultural figures who have been associated with Russia at any time in history. Even those who died decades, or even centuries, before the shaping of Russia’s current political regime and those responsible for the present-day atrocities, are openly being blamed for the war in Ukraine and accused of being instrumental to cultivating the hostile ideology of the “Russian world.” Dostoevsky and his legacy have not been spared from this predicament as well. To be sure, the recently developed dismissive attitude toward the author of widely known and loved novels such as The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment may not be fully ungrounded, and not simply because Putin happened to list Dostoevsky as one of his favorite authors. More worrisome is Dostoevsky’s own support and open advocacy for PanSlavism, a nationalistic ideology that argues for integration and unity of the Slavic peoples and states under the great patronage of Russia to counter the expansion of the West. Formed into a political movement, Pan-Slavism rose