Was Pavel Aristov, prisoner of the Omsk jail, a prototype of Arcadiy Ivanovich Svidrigaylov?

The article studies the manuscripts of F. M. Dostoevsky’s three workbooks of the years 1865-1867 (the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts. Fund 212.1.3, 212.1.4 and 212.1.5). As a result of textual analysis, a recognized chronology of preliminary notes referring to the novel “Crime and Punishment” provided by the academic Complete Works of the writer, was significantly amended. The article particularly envisages some sketches that mention Aristov, a character named after a prisoner who then served his sentence in the Omsk jail with Dostoevsky. Since the 1930s following V. L. Komarovich and L. P. Grossman, Aristov has been traditionally seen as a prototype of Svidrigaylov, one of the protagonists of “Crime and Punishment”. Thanks to a critical analysis of these notes in terms of the corrected chronology, the article proves that Aristov from the early sketches in the first two notebooks of 1865 (Funds 212.1.3 and 212.1.4) and Svidrigaylov whose name appears only in the third notebook (Fund 212...