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#REDIRECT [[Fyodor Dostoevsky]]
[[ja:フョードル・ドストエフスキー]]
[[sv:Fjodor Dostojevskij]]
[[pl:Fiodor Dostojewski]]
'''Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky''' ([[1821]]-[[1881]] -- also: '''Dostojevski[j]''') was a [[Russians|Russian]] [[writer]], one of the major figures in [[Russian literature]]. He is sometimes said to be a founder of [[existentialism]].
Born on [[October 30]], [[1821]] to parents Mikhail and Maria, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was the second of seven children. Fyodor's mother died of an illness in [[1837]].
Fyodor and his brother Michael were sent to the Military Engineering Academy at St. Petersburg shortly after their mother's death, though these plans had begun even before she became ill.
It was not long before his father, an army surgeon, also died in [[1839]]. While not known for certain, it is believed that Mikhail Dostoevsky was murdered by his own [[serf|serfs]], who reportedly became enraged during one of Mikhail's drunken fits of violence, restrained him, and poured [[vodka]] into his mouth until he drowned.
Dostoevsky was arrested and imprisoned in [[1849]] for engaging in revolutionary activity against [[Tsar]] [[Nicholas I of Russia|Nicholas I]]. After a mock execution in which he faced a staged [[Execution by firing squad|firing squad]], Dostoevsky's sentence was commuted to a number of years of exile performing hard labor at a prison camp in [[Siberia]]. His sentence was completed in [[1854]], at which point he enrolled in the Siberian Regiment.
This was a turning point in the author's life. Dostoevsky abandonded his earlier radical sentiments and became deeply conservative and extremely religious. He began an affair with Maria Dmitrineva Isaeva, the wife of an acquaintance in Siberia, whom he later married. Little more is known of the circumstances of their relationship.
In [[1860]], he returned to St. Petersburg, where he ran a series of unsuccessful literary journals with his older brother Mikhail. Dostoevsky was devastated by his wife's death in [[1864]], followed shortly thereafter by his brother's death. He was financially crippled by business debts and the need to provide for his brother's widow and children. Dostoevsky sunk into a deep depression, frequenting gambling parlors and blithely accumulating massive losses at the tables.
To escape creditors in St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky traveled to Europe. Here, he attempted to rekindle a love affair with Apollinaria (Pollina) Suslova, a young university student with whom he had had an affair several years prior, but she refused his marriage proposal. Dostoevsky was heartbroken, but soon met Anna Snitkin, a 19 year old stenographer whom he married in [[1867]]. This period resulted in the writing of his greatest books.
Fyodor Dostoevsky died on [[January 28]], [[1881]] and was interred in [[Tikhvin Cemetery]] at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, [[St. Petersburg, Russia]].
==Major works==
* ''[[Netochka Nezvanova]]'' (1849)
* ''[[The Village of Stepanchikovo]]'' (or ''The Friend of the Family'') (1859)
* ''[[The House of the Dead]]'' (1862)
* ''[[A Nasty Story]]'' (1862)
* ''[[Notes from Underground]]'' (or ''Letters from the Underworld'') (1864)
* ''[[Crime and Punishment]]'' (1866)
* ''[[The Gambler]]'' (1867)
* ''[[The Idiot]]'' (1868)
* ''[[The Possessed]]'' (or ''Demons'' or ''The Devils'') (1872)
* ''[[The Raw Youth]]'' (1875)
* ''[[The Brothers Karamazov]]'' (1880)
==External links and references==
* http://www.top-biography.com/9042-Dostoevsky/
* ''Crime and Punishment,'' Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Vintage Classics, 1992, New York.
* ''Crime and Punishment,'' Fyodor Dostoevsky, translated by Constance Garnett, introduction by Joseph Frank. Bantam Books, 1987, New York.
*[[Project Gutenberg]] e-texts of [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/author?name=Dostoevsky,%20Fyodor some of Fyodor Dostoevsky's works]
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