Mikhail Semevsky and Fyodor Dostoevsky

The article presents the history of business and friendly relations between F. M. Dostoevsky and M. I. Semevsky, an employee of the “Vremya” journal and the editor of “Russkaya Starina”, the largest historical journal of the 19th century. Semevsky most likely met Dostoevsky in the early 1860s, when the former became a contributing author of the “Vremya” journal and wrote two large-scale historical essays for the publication: “Tsarina Praskovya” and “The Mons Family.” Dostoevsky was familiar with Semevsky's works even prior to their personal meetings and intended to polemize with his concept of Peter's time, as evidenced by the surviving sketches of the writer's critical review. The idea of a polemic was rejected when Semevsky became the author of the “Vremya” journal. Its editors, the Dostoevsky brothers, appreciated his cooperation and, as confirmed in the fee book, paid him more than many other authors. The meetings of Dostoevsky and Semevsky were reflected in the epistolary legacy and in the notes of Semevsky, which he wrote in the autumn of 1866 after the trial of the revolutionary Nikolai Ishutin. In November 1876, Semevsky gave Dostoevsky the documents for “A Writer's Diary”, requesting him not to identify the source. The communication between Dostoevsky and Semevsky in the last year of the writer's life is mentioned in the memoirs of E. N. Opochinin. The article provides an overview of Dostoevsky's letters of 1854-1879, published in “Russkaya Starina” in 1883-1885, as well as of memoirs of various persons about Dostoevsky, published during the life of the editor and after his death. Archival documents revealing new facts of the biography of Dostoevsky, Semevsky and their contemporaries were used and introduced into scientific circulation in the study.