Attribution problems in Dostoevsky's “Grazhdanin” (“The citizen”): debate and arguments

After Dostoevsky’s death, it became necessary to collect all his texts for the publication of the Complete Works. There was a difficulty connected to the anonymous and pseudonymous materials published by the writer. Anna Grigorievna gathered a meeting to discuss the inclusion of such articles in the corpus of the writer’s texts. As a result, a decision was made to reject materials not signed by Dostoevsky. This was the first experience of compiling a posthumous collection of the writer’s works. The question of anonymous and pseudonymous articles in publications edited by Dostoevsky remained open and required further study. For the first time, anonymous texts were included in the publication dedicated to Dostoevsky by L. P. Grossman. He insisted on the importance of all the materials that the writer was working on. In the future, the publishers had the task of forming a complete corpus of Dostoevsky’s texts. Over more than a hundred years, a lot of work has been carried out to identify the authors of the materials published in “Grazhdanin” (“The Citizen”): active discussions and discussions of attributions continue, new hypotheses of text authorship are put forward, unknown authors of publications published under pseudonyms are revealed, information about the employees of “Grazhdanin” and the writer’s correspondents is supplemented, the features of Dostoevsky’s editorial work are studied. The result of the great work of I. Zohrab and V. A. Viktorovich were the prepared chronological listing of “Grazhdanin” of 1873-1874, indicating the authors of anonymous and pseudonymous articles. This article provides an overview of studies on the attribution of materials from “Grazhdanin.” The problem of attribution in “Grazhdanin” has not yet been resolved. It is necessary to look for new ways to solve it, because this will help to fully appreciate Dostoevsky’s contribution to the concept and editorial policy of the publication.