The following biographical sketch emphasizes those aspects of Dostoevsky's life that most influenced his great masterpiece, Brothers Karamazov. This sketch is compiled from well-known facts about Dostoevsky, but also makes liberal use of the canonical biographies by Joseph Frank and Leonid Grossman. For additional biographical information and for complete citations for the Frank and Grossman biographies, consult our Bibliography.

Dostoevsky's Early Years

Before the man comes the child, and before the child comes the parents. Russia's greatest novelist, Fyodor Mikhailevich Dostoevsky, was born in Moscow on October 30, 1821, to parents of remarkably different character. Dostoevsky's father was a stern man who held his son to rigorous standards. His mother was a generous woman who provided her son unconditional love. This tension - between harsh judgment and forgiving love - would be his life's theme, recurring throughout his major works.

Dostoevsky's father, Mikhail Andreevich Dostoevsky, was born into the clergy and was expected to become a clergyman himself. But after graduating from the seminary at fifteen, the senior Dostoevsky ran off to Moscow and enrolled in the Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy. He graduated in 1812, and for many years served as a surgeon at various military posts. Though his medical career was successful, years of performing hopeless operations and gruesome amputations embittered the doctor, further twisting a nature that was already subject to despair.

Biographers presume that Dr. Dostoevsky suffered from an undiagnosed nervous disorder. Bad weather gave him excruciating headaches and threw him into fits of drinking, bad temper, and despondency. Exacerbating his physical problems was a profound religious temperament - Dr. Dostoevsky believed absolutely that he was one of God's chosen ones, and that all of his trials carried special significance. His sufferings were therefore not merely physical; they were profoundly spiritual as well.

In contrast to his father was Dostoevsky's mother, Maria, who was warm and loving. Dostoevsky's mother had a different orientation to her religion: she was moved not by the trials of her religion, but by the generosity and joyfulness of Christ. Dostoevsky's education was from the start infused by Maria's religious spirit - it was she who taught her son to read using the stories of the Old and New Testaments. Still, it's interesting to note that the young Dostoevsky's favorite story was the story of Job - a man who suffered terrible trials in order to be obedient to the will of his God. We can imagine that the young Dostoevsky saw his father's character reflected in this story. But in the soothing sounds of his mother's gentle tutoring, this hard lesson of suffering was complemented by the promise and fulfillment of love.

The relationship between Dostoevsky's parents was complicated. Publicly, they seemed a respectable couple. Indeed, documents exist that illustrate a very strong and passionate love. Dr. Dostoevsky found it difficult to be parted from his wife, and wrote loving, longing letters to her when she was absent. But longing has its darker sides, and Dr. Dostoevsky's love was marked by jealousy, possessiveness, and a strong desire to control. At one point his jealousy became so fierce that he irrationally challenged the paternity of one of his children - causing the pious Maria to burst into a tearful plea in her own defense.

Dr. Dostoevsky was not only a controlling and demanding husband; he was a controlling and demanding father as well. He required the highest standards of his children, and he was cruel when these standards were not met. His despotism was so intense that it influenced even the most banal household routines. For example, every afternoon the doctor would return home for a nap. While he was napping, the children had to be absolutely silent. They were punished severely for the slightest of sounds. In summer months, they would take turns standing by their father for the duration of his nap, swatting away the flies.

Even a loving mother would find it difficult to counter the sense of oppression that surrounded Dostoevsky as a child. His physical environment did little to lift the sense of gloom. The hospital sat in a neighborhood of squalor, one of the worst areas in Moscow. The landmarks included a cemetery for criminals, a lunatic asylum, and an orphanage for abandoned infants. The hardships of this urban landscape made a lasting impression on the young Dostoevsky, whose interests in and compassion for the poor and oppressed tormented him. Though his parents forbade it, Dostoevsky liked to wander out to the hospital garden, where the suffering patients sat, devouring any small bit of sun. The young Dostoevsky loved to spend time with these patients. Their sad stories were living examples of human suffering.

Though his time in Moscow marked him, urban life was not the whole of Dostoevsky's childhood world. In 1827, Dostoevsky's father was promoted to a rank that permitted him to own land and serfs. In 1831, he purchased the village of Darovoe, and a year later he bought the hamlet of Cheremoshna - 1400 acres of land and 100 "souls." For four months every year, Dostoevsky would go with his mother and brother to the country - a journey that liberated him from the moods of his father. In Darovoe, Dostoevsky experienced what he would later call "a happy and placid childhood."

Dostoevsky loved the countryside, with its sweeping landscapes and open air. He spent most of his time wandering in the forest around his family's estate. In fact, he spent so much time in the woods that his family referred to the forest as "Fedka's Wood." During his ramblings Dostoevsky discovered not only the majesty of the nature, but also the simple dignity of the peasants who inhabited countryside. The young Dostoevsky was enchanted by the way the peasants lived. He romanticized their simple poverty, admired the power of their faith, and developed a deep sympathy for their hardships.

In the spring of 1833, an event occurred that would underscore these hardships for the young Dostoevsky: a fire broke out and destroyed both of his father's villages, leaving the landscape charred and the serfs homeless. This event would have a strong effect on the young Dostoevsky, whose heart bled at the sight of desolation and suffering. Many years later, Dostoevsky would recall the burnt landscape in Dmitri's dream in Brother's Karamazov.

The peasants' suffering inspired an almost religious feeling in Dostoevsky. He came to idealize the peasant as capable of spiritual understanding purer than any that might be achieved by the overly intellectual members of his own class.

Dostoevsky's mother shared her son's sympathy for the peasants, but her husband did not. This difference was a source of division between the couple. Maria refused to treat her serfs with cruelty, even when her husband insisted that she beat them to keep them in their place. Nor would she berate her children for not mastering their lessons - something that her husband would frequently do. Maria's small rebellions became a great source of irritation to her husband, who became increasingly demanding of her. The devoted Maria, who had been delicate to begin with, was exhausted by her husband's relentless need to control her.

The exhaustion took its toll. The last several years of Dostoevsky's life in Moscow were colored by his mother's slow decline as she was diagnosed with, and then suffered from, consumption. In the final months the illness grew aggressive, ravaging her until she lost consciousness. And then, one morning, when her son was only 15 years old, Maria Dostoevskaya regained consciousness, called her family together, asked for an icon to kiss, wept, and then died. She was 35 years old. The family was devastated. It had lost its center.

After the death of his wife, Dr. Dostoevsky went into seclusion with his younger children in Darovoe, sending Mikhail and Fyodor to boarding school. In seclusion he became more bitter and more cruel. Dr. Dostoevsky often took his unhappiness out on his serfs, beating them on a whim. This brutality would prove to be fatal. One day in early June, 1838, the doctor left Darovoe for his other property, Cheremoshna and did not return. He was later found murdered on the road between the two villages, suffocated by a cushion from the carriage. His driver was missing. So were his horses. Several of his serfs had also disappeared.

No trial was held for this murder; no conclusive motive was determined. Some say that the murder resulted from a fight that had broken out spontaneously between landowner and serf. Others believe that the senior Dostoevsky was ambushed as revenge for having dishonored some young girls in his household. Still others believed that the doctor had been punished for his cruelty.

Whatever the case, at the age of 16 Dostoevsky was orphaned. His family life had come to an end.

Read on: Setting Out to Petersburg

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