Researchers of Dostoevsky in USSR of 1920-1930s: scientific community vs liminal group

The institutionalization of science about Dostoevsky at the turn of the 1910-1920s led to the emergence in the USSR of scientific community (L.P. Grossman, A.S. Dolinin, V.L. Komarovich, B.M. Engelgardt, M.M. Bakhtin, G.I. Chulkov, etc.), acting in the single scientific field with its autonomy from socio-political context, accumulation of scientific resources and internal struggle for the monopoly of scientific authority. In the first half of the 1920s, on the basis of the nationalization of Dostoevsky’s archive and the wide celebration of the 100th anniversary of the writer, outstanding results were achieved in the study of his biography and work, as well as in the editional and textual practice. Since the middle of 1920s, the circle of legal opportunities for leading researchers was narrowed due to the policy of the Soviet power in the education sector, science and the public. Some of them were in prisons, camps and exile (Bakhtin, Komarovich, Engelhardt); others, unsuccessfully trying to integrate into a new ideological paradigm, often has been going to the ritual rejection of former values (Dolinin, Grossman, Chulkov). Thus, in the 1930s, the scientific community of Dostoevsky scholars, having lost its autonomy, interested social response, material and moral remuneration for scientific work and accessible infrastructure, turned into a liminal group.