Family Correspondence of Fyodor and Anna Dostoevsky (1866–1880): History and Prospects of Publication

Almost a quarter of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s preserved epistolary legacy consists of his correspondence with his wife Anna Grigorievna dated 1866–1880. These are not merely letters related to love and family, but a valuable source of information about the writer’s life and inner world. They demonstrate his profound personal evolution from an unhappy relationship to true happiness and a period of creative flourishing, which became possible thanks to his wife, his assistant. The article substantiates the need for a new edition of the Dostoevskys’ correspondence, which the leading researcher of Dostoevsky’s biography and work, Boris Tikhomirov, called “a top priority.” The widow was the one to begin the preparation for the publication of the correspondence between Fyodor Dostoevsky and herself. Not intending to publish her husband’s letters to her during her lifetime, she presented the publishing principle to the heirs: to publish only Dostoevsky’s letters, without her reply messages. On the one hand, she subjected her husband’s letters to strict censorship, thickly crossing out certain lines, and destroyed more than 30 of her own letters from 1871–1874. On the other hand, she made copies of her husband’s letters and excerpts from her destroyed letters, and compiled two versions of essential notes to the letters specially for future readers. The first and only edition of the Dostoevsky family correspondence was published in 1976. It became a significant event in Soviet Dostoevsky studies, but by now it has become significantly outdated. Among the shortcomings of the publication are the following facts: not all letters were published; words and paragraphs were omitted from them; about 10 letters were incorrectly dated; individual words were incorrectly deciphered; an inconsistent punctuation principle was used. This article is the first to introduce into scientific circulation a playful letter from the writer’s wife, unaccounted for in the 1976 edition, which was an altered version of the anonymous letter from Sofia Smirnova’s novel “Sila Kharaktera” (“Strength of Character”) (1876) and caused a violent scene of jealousy on the part of Dostoevsky. The researchers face the scientific and educational task of preparing a new edition of Dostoevsky’s correspondence with his wife. It is necessary to publish all the known texts of the spouses’ letters in full, correct the mistakes of previous publishers, take into account two versions of Anna Dostoevskaya’s notes and the latest discoveries in Dostoevsky studies. The new edition stimulates the scientific study of Dostoevsky’s family correspondence both in terms of its poetics and as a historical source.