New Data About Emilia Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya’s Family (from Correspondence and Archival Sources)

Based on documents stored in the Historical Archive of Estonia and the Tallinn City Archive, the article systematizes information about the family of the writer's sister-in-law, Emilia Fyodorovna Dostoevskaya, a native of Reval, with whom he communicated for almost 40 years. The circle of her direct relatives, which includes the Dittmer and Bergmann families, whose members F. M. Dostoevsky met during his three trips to Reval in the 1840s, has been established. The names and dates of births, deaths, and marriages of E. F. Dostoevskaya's grandfather, father, mother, stepfather, and nine siblings have been introduced into scientific circulation. This information is supplemented by unpublished letters from her family (1851, in German) addressed to Mikhail Mikhailovich, Emilia Fyodorovna and Fedya Dostoevsky, which are stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Archival data make it possible to clarify and document the status of another person from Dostoevsky's entourage: August Alexandrovich Bergmann, an employee of the magazines Vremya and Epoch in the 1860s, referred to in various sources as an “acquaintance,” “neighbor and acquaintance of the Riesenkampf family,” “distant relative” of Emilia Fedorovna — her younger half-brother Three photographs of the Bergmanns, preserved by E. F. Dostoevskaya’s youngest daughter, E. M. Manasseina, are also more accurately attributed. The study demonstrates the method of searching for genealogical and biographical information regarding the Baltic Germans of the Russian Empire: archival documents (the SAAGA project) supplement the information from the Amburger card index, the Baltic Biographical Lexicon, the digital archive of the University of Tartu, address books, and the German-language press. One of the difficulties when working with this type of sources (both documents and correspondence) is the need for a preliminary decoding of cursive German Gothic. Neural network-based translation programs can become an auxiliary tool. With their help, six Bergmann letters from 1851 and a letter from E. F. Dostoevskaya to the writer dated August 19, 1868 (a response to his letter dated August 9 (21), 1868 from Vevey, published by V. S. Nechaeva in 1927) were transcribed and translated for the first time. Thus, it became possible to get acquainted with the complete epistolary mini-cycle of nine letters from E. F. and F. M. Dostoevsky and to supplement biographical information about this person from Dostoevsky’s inner circle.