Crime and Punishment: A Bit of Dostoyevskian Background

Hello, readers! And welcome to our group reading + disussion of Crime and Punishment. The reading schedule kicks off today, though I know a few of you haven’t been able to resist jumping in early. (Here’s the schedule.) Next Sunday, I’ll recap Chapters 1-5 of Part I. For today, I’m going to give a short primer on Dostoyevsky up until he wrote C & P, as well as a bit of background on the real life inspiration behind the classic 1866 novel.

Let’s jump right in!

A Primer on Dostoyevsky

Few authors have lived lives as tumultuous and richly complex as Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Born in 1821 in Moscow, Dostoyevsky’s early years — alongside his seven siblings — were steeped in both privilege and suffering. His father, a doctor, was strict and stern, while his mother provided a bit of warmth in his otherwise cold upbringing. Unfortunately that refuge of warmth was snuffed out when his mother died of tuberculosis when Dostoyevsky was fifteen.

This loss profoundly impacted the young man’s worldview and led him to enroll in the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute. His heart was never in the military though; literature was his true passion. This calling led him into his life of writing, which started with a bang (much like young Tolstoy’s did) but ended up full of turbulent waves of success and failure. His first novel, Poor Folk (1845), was initially met with success, but was quickly overshadowed by political entanglements that would forever alter his path.

In 1849, Dostoyevsky was arrested for his involvement with a group of radical literary intellectuals known as the Petrashevsky Circle. They were generally opposed to Tsarist rule, which meant the government saw the group as a subversive force. Following his arrest, Dostoyevsky — along with a number of others in the group — was sentenced to death by firing squad. Just moments before his execution, that sentence was commuted by the Tsar and he was instead sent to a labor camp in Siberia. Dostoyevsky genuinely thought he was living his final minutes. Can you imagine the psychological toll that would have on a person? The emotional and spiritual complexity of that moment would find its way into his literature from that point on.