Brawler and snitch: Lev Petrovich Kryzhanovsky, resident of the Omsk military hospital (using archival sources)

This publication continues the author's research related to the Siberian exile period of the biography of F. M. Dostoevsky. Based on archival and memoir sources, the article reveals the identity of another medical doctor of the Omsk Military Hospital - resident Lev Petrovich Kryzhanovsky. It corrects the misconceptions and the erroneous conclusions about him and about the Siberian circle of the writer. The memoirs of Jozef Boguslavsky identify the namesake of the resident, an exiled Pole Karol Kryzhanovsky and his wife Natalia Stepanovna Kryzhanovskaya. She turned out to be Dostoevsky's Omsk acquaintance, who became the prototype for the poor widow Nastasya Ivanovna in The House of the Dead . These archival documents introduced into scientific discourse elucidate a profile of L. P. Kryzhanovsky. This allows us to compare it with the profile of the resident Ya. Ya. Lovchinsky provided in the author's previous publication and to draw conclusions about the identity of the prototype of the medical doctor in the book. In addition, the materials clarify certain details of the investigation into Kryzhanovsky's denunciation of the chief physician Troitsky for “great commutation and indulgence for the political prisoners,” identified in Martyanov's notes. They also describe the poor conditions in the Omsk Military Hospital, which were portrayed in The House of the Dead . All of the above provides an opportunity to fill in the gaps in the circumstances of the penal servitude of the Petrashevsky Circle members F. M. Dostoevsky and S. F. Durov.