Image-bearing expressions of slavophiles in Dostoevsky's works

The article presents a range of previously unaccounted facts related to political essays and literary works of F. M. Dostoevsky. These reminiscences represent various references to Slavophiles’ ideas fixed in image-bearing expressions. One of such expressions is K. S. Aksakov’s phrase “Publika (nobility) - dirt in gold, folk - gold in the dirt”. The Slavophile image of “Gold in the dirt” is reconsidered by Dostoevsky in his articles dd. 1862, 1863 and 1876, as well as in his novel “The Idiot”. Further we notice the “word-for-word” concurrence of the named authors in characterization of Turgenev and Goncharov’s novels. One more unnoticed episode of Dostoevsky’s literary reference to the works of Slavophiles is recorded in the novel “The Karamazov Brothers”. This novel contains a veiled reference to A.S. Khomyakov’s poem “Shiroka, neobozrima.”. N. N. Strakhov is regarded as a link between Dostoevsky and Slavophiles. It was found out that Strakhov’s thoughts on Russian nihilists were used as a matter for Dostoevsky’s articles in “A Writer’s Diary” dated June 1876. The reminiscences that were found in the works by Dostoevsky allow identification of the special Slavophile-related ideological and stylistic stratum in his oeuvre.