“Jack of hearts” A. T. Neofitov from the circle of F. M. Dostoevsky

The article reconstructs the life path of Alexander Timofeevich Neofitov, the first legal representative of A. F. Kumanina. The recreation is based on the memorial, epistolary, biographic and historic resources introduced into scientific discourse. They include the testimonies from the unpublished memoirs of A. M. Dostoevsky, an unreleased letter by A. G. Dostoevskaya to N. N. Strakhov dated October 18, 1881, which characterizes the Kumanin case as “wretched and bewitched” (Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts. Fund 1159. List 6. File 6. Page 1), materials of the well-known Moscow trial of false-coiners, and other criminal cases (“The Jack of Hearts Club. Criminal trial.” 1877). It also comprises the details from the history of Moscow Academy of Commercial Studies, which Aleksei Alekseevich Kunanin had founded and where he served as a trustee. As a professor of World History at the Academy, A. T. Neofitov became one of the key members of the Jack of Hearts Club criminal network. His involvement in various illegal schemes with the Kumanin inheritance was described in Dostoevsky’s novels Crime and Punishment and The Raw Youth . As a result of the inquiry, we can deduce that due to the fraud conducted by Neofitov, who was the ‘enfant terrible’ among the writer’s relatives, the Kumanin inheritance case turned out to be not only “wretched” and “bewitched,” but highly criminalized.