What happened to Dostoevsky's closest relatives?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Those who are at least a little familiar with the biography of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky probably know that his widow, Anna Grigorievna, far outlived the writer himself and died in 1918. Of the four children of the Dostoevsky spouses, two died in early childhood, but daughter Lyubov and son Fyodor died already in the 1920s. But the details of their life during the years of the revolution, as well as after it, are few people know. What were the fate of Dostoevsky's heirs?

Anna Grigorievna in April 1917 decided to retire to a small estate near Adler to wait for the riots to calm down. However, the revolution overtook her here too. The former gardener of the estate, who had deserted from the front, declared that he, the "proletarian", should be the real owner of the estate. Then Anna Grigorievna fled to Yalta, where she had her own house. But even there she could not settle down - even before the arrival of the owner of the dacha, she was robbed several times and here two women who lodged there were killed. One of them was hit on the head with an ax; splashing blood fell on the marble bust of the writer, which stood in the hallway. Anna Grigorievna was so shocked by what had happened that she no longer found the strength to cross the threshold of the house. She died in the Yalta hotel "France". There was even no one to bury her until six months later her son Fyodor Fyodorovich Dostoevsky arrived from Moscow.

Dostoevsky's son, Fedor (1871 - 1921), graduated from two faculties of Dorpat University - law and science, became a specialist in horse breeding. He was proud and vain, strived to be the first everywhere. He tried to prove himself in the literary field, but was disappointed in his abilities. According to the memoirs of his son (grandson of the writer) Andrei Fyodorovich Dostoevsky, when Fyodor Fyodorovich was exporting Dostoevsky's archive from the Crimea to Moscow, which remained after the death of Anna Grigorievna, he was almost shot by the Chekists on suspicion of speculation - they thought that he was transporting smuggling in baskets. Fedor Fedorovich died in Simferopol. The grave has not survived.

Dostoevsky's beloved daughter Lyubov, Lyubochka (1868-1926), according to the recollections of contemporaries, "was arrogant, arrogant, and simply quarrelsome." She did not help her mother to perpetuate the glory of Dostoevsky, creating her image as the daughter of the famous writer, later she left Anna Grigorievna altogether. In 1913, after another trip abroad for treatment, she remained there forever, taking on a new name - Ema. She wrote the book Dostoevsky in the Memoirs of His Daughter, which, according to most biographers, is replete with many inaccuracies and controversial statements. Her personal life did not work out. She died in 1926 from leukemia in the Italian city of Bolzano.

Fyodor Fedorovich Dostoevsky had two sons. The eldest, also Fedor, in 1921, aged 16, died either from hunger or from typhoid fever. He was very musical, wrote poetry and painted.

Dostoevsky's nephew, the son of his younger brother, Andrei Andreevich (1863–1933), is an amazingly modest man devoted to the memory of Fyodor Mikhailovich. He had a luxurious apartment on Pochtamtskaya. After the revolution, it was "compacted" by settling in several more families. Andrei Andreevich was sixty-six when he was sent to the White Sea Canal. Six months after his release, he died …

The former Dostoevskys' apartment was partitioned off and converted into a Soviet communal apartment, and the family was squeezed into one room … And before Lenin's centenary, this house was declared unfit for habitation and his great-grandson was made happy with a new house on the outskirts of Leningrad, in a squalid Khrushchev building.

The great-grandson of Dostoevsky himself, Dmitry Andreevich, born in 1945, lives in St. Petersburg. He is a tram driver by profession, and has worked on route 34 all his life.