Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Introduction
Major works and their characteristics
Background and early life
Early works
Political activity and arrest
Works of the 1860s
- Notes from the Underground
- Stay in western Europe
- Crime and Punishment
- The Idiot
Dostoyevsky’s last decade
- The Possessed
- A Writer’s Diary and other works
- The Brothers Karamazov
Legacy

Quotes References & Edit History Quick Facts & Related Topics

Images & Videos

See Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story “The Crocodile” brought to life

Listen to Clifton Fadiman's analysis of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short story “The Crocodile”

At a Glance

Fyodor Dostoyevsky summary

Quizzes

Nobel prize-winning American author, Pearl S. Buck, at her home, Green Hills Farm, near Perkasie, Pennsylvania, 1962. (Pearl Buck)

Novels and Novelists Quiz

Three stacked volumes of collected works by William Shakespeare. Shakespearean tragedies, Shakespearean comedies, books.

Literary Classics Quiz

49 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular Literature Quizzes

Related Questions

How are epileptic seizures portrayed in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot?
How did Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina help stabilize Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s life?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky describe the importance of individual freedom in The House of the Dead?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky influence dystopian novels and prison camp literature?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Siberian experience strengthen his connection to Russian Orthodoxy?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s childhood religion influence his later writing?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s family background differ from that of Leo Tolstoy?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s gambling influence the writing of The Gambler?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s mock execution take place at Semyonovsky Square?
How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s time in Siberia change his political beliefs?
How did the mock execution change Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s views about life and freedom?
How does Notes from the Underground challenge determinism and utopian socialism?
How does Poor Folk portray the psychological effects of poverty?
How does Porfiry Petrovich pressure Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment?
How does Sonya Marmeladova influence Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment?
How does The Possessed portray terrorism and radical political ideas?
How does White Nights show Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s interest in loneliness and imagination?
How does the Devil appear to Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov?
How long was Fyodor Dostoyevsky sentenced to a Siberian prison camp?
In which Russian city was Fyodor Dostoyevsky born?
What happens to Raskolnikov after he confesses in Crime and Punishment?
What ideas did members of the Petrashevsky Circle discuss?
What kinds of writing did Fyodor Dostoyevsky include in The Diary of a Writer?
What theory does Raskolnikov use to justify murder in Crime and Punishment?
What work did Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s father do at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor?
When did Fyodor Dostoyevsky begin having epileptic seizures?
When was Fyodor Dostoyevsky born?
Where did Fyodor Dostoyevsky die?
Where did Fyodor Dostoyevsky study military engineering?
Which French novelist did Fyodor Dostoyevsky first translate into Russian?
Which Romantic and Gothic writers influenced Fyodor Dostoyevsky when he was young?
Which journals did Fyodor Dostoyevsky edit with his brother Mikhail?
Which major questions about evil and freedom appear in The Brothers Karamazov?
Which prison camp experiences inspired Fyodor Dostoyevsky to write The House of the Dead?
Which themes are explored in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story White Nights?
Who are the main characters in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s White Nights?
Who murders Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov?
Who was Anna Grigoryevna Snitkina?
Who was Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s first wife?
Why did Fyodor Dostoyevsky dictate The Gambler to a stenographer?
Why did Fyodor Dostoyevsky join the Petrashevsky Circle?
Why did Fyodor Dostoyevsky oppose the radical intelligentsia?
Why did Fyodor Dostoyevsky travel through western Europe during the 1860s?
Why did Vissarion Belinsky praise Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Poor Folk?
Why did the Russian government close Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s journal Vremya?
Why do many scholars doubt that Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s father was murdered by his serfs?
Why does Raskolnikov murder the pawnbroker in Crime and Punishment?
Why is Dmitry Karamazov arrested for his father’s murder?
Why is Notes from the Underground important to Western literature?
Why is The Possessed also called The Demons or The Devils?
Why was Fyodor Dostoyevsky arrested in 1849?
What did Truman Capote write?
What awards did Truman Capote win?
How did Truman Capote and Harper Lee meet?
What was Isaac Asimov’s first job?
What is Isaac Asimov best known for?
What were Isaac Asimov’s accomplishments?
What is J.D. Salinger famous for?
Did J.D. Salinger have PTSD?
How did J.D. Salinger’s experience in World War II influence his writing?
Why did J.D. Salinger become a recluse?

Literature Novels & Short Stories Novelists A-K

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External Websites

BBC News - A Point of View: The writer who foresaw the rise of the totalitarian state
ABC listen - Soul Search - Big questions in books Â— Dostoyevsky and the love that we owe
DigitalCommons at Providence - Dostoevsky, Raskolnikov, and Freedom in Crime and Punishment (PDF)
Columbia College - Biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
Presidential Library - The Presidential Library marking Fyodor DostoevskyÂ’s birthday
CBC Radio - In Dostoevsky in Love, Alex Christofi captures the tortured brilliance of the great Russian writer

Britannica Websites

Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Russian author

Also known as: Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky(Show More)

Written by

Gary Saul Morson

Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities; Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. Author of Anna Karenina in Our Time, Hidden...

Gary Saul Morson

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Britannica Editors

Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....

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Last updated

Nov. 8, 2026 •History

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (born November 11 [October 30, Old Style], 1821, Moscow, Russia—died February 9 [January 28, Old Style], 1881, St. Petersburg) was a Russian novelist and short-story writer whose psychological penetration into the darkest recesses of the human heart, together with his unsurpassed moments of illumination, had an immense influence on 20th-century fiction. Dostoyevsky is usually regarded as one of the finest novelists who ever lived. Literary modernism, existentialism, and various schools of psychology, theology,...

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