F. M. Dostoevsky and K. E. Golubov

The article examines the place and role of K. E. Golubov’s spiritual quest in the context of F. M. Dostoevsky’s work of the late 1860’s. Dostoevsky pondered what may lead young Russian nihilists back to the soil, to Russian folk life, and who may become their spiritual mentors. Dostoevsky was interested in K. E. Golubov’s personality and world outlook and in the very fact of his conversion to Edinoverie as a natural progression of the modern man towards the truth. The writer was close to the former Old Believer, who was averse to the modern European development path. K. E. Golubov’s position on Darwinism as a cultural phenomenon was primarily close to that of the staunch anti-Darwinist N. N. Strakhov. The Old Believer firmly believed that man has a spiritual nature, unlike animals. Golubov’s stance on man could not fail to attract Dostoevsky’s attention. Besides, the views of the former Old Believer and the writer are similar in regard to the consequences of the dissemination of natural scientific ideas in modern society, whose spiritual foundations have been shaken: both defend the divinely inspired spiritual nature of man. Dostoevsky, in a letter to A. N. Maykov dated December 11 (23), 1868, depicted K. E. Golubov as the link to the idea of ‘new Russian people’. In “The Idiot”, by creating a scene of Myshkin’s speech at Yepanchin’s party and by including a remark of the Old Believer merchant in his speech, the writer was implicitly referring to P. Prussky and K. E. Golubov, introducing the theme of "their" God and the exceptionally sharp contrast between the East and the West.