Crossroads of East and West in the journalism and novels of F. M. Dostoevsky (“A number of articles on Russian literature”, “A writer's diary”, “Demons”)

Crossroads, pro et contra, is the core of the worldview and artistic axiology of F. M. Dostoevsky, a method of studying and understanding the Russian person, the Russian national character and the Russian soul in the context of the post-reform era and great historical time. The crossroads is revealed through the artistic anthropology of Dostoevsky, the writer’s understanding of the deep borderlines of Russian culture, the problems of atheism, a wide range of artistic reflections of the writer about man and his fate, understanding the processes of mythologizing and remythologization of Russian culture in the minds of Westerners. The fundamental difference between the Orthodox East and the Catholic West is revealed by the writer through a system of axiological oppositions that reveal the fundamental ontological difference between the Eastern and Western paths of development: “external - internal”, “social - moral”, “civilization - culture”, “Christmas - Easter”. Dostoevsky becomes the founder of a new doctrine of man, which is based on a uniquely Russian vision of the world, fundamentally borderline in nature, apocalyptic, aspiring to the “ultimate limits”. In the writer’s work, one can distinguish anthropological maxims embodying the deep foundations of Russian culture in understanding the world and man: the idea of the highest ideal, “peace with God” and “world without God”, understanding of freedom and its limits, the problem of true and false understanding of man, the conflict of good and evil.