D. S. Merezhkovsky's ploy: the article written by the critic for A. G. Dostoevskaya

This paper is the first to analyze the typewritten copies of D. S. Merezhkovsky’s famous article “Prophet of the Russian revolution (For Dostoevsky’s anniversary)” (1906) with the author’s notes. The article is believed to have been written at the request of A. G. Dostoevskaya for the anniversary edition of F. M. Dostoevsky’s complete works (to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the writer’s death). After having read it and heard the opinions about D. S. Merezhkovsky’s lecture, given on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the writer's death, A. G. Dostoevskaya turned down the article. D. S. Merezhkovsky immediately published it in the Vesy magazine, and subsequently as a separate brochure and then in both editions of his complete works. However, an examination of the article’s typewritten copies reveals that D. S. Merezhkovsky was working simultaneously on two versions of it: a short one for A. G. Dostoevskaya and an extended one for journal publication. Judging by the author’s notes, he intended to edit the article’s short version in accordance with A. G. Dostoevskaya’s comments, but she was unsatisfied with the result. Instead, the writer’s widow included S.N. Bulgakov’s biographical essay in the complete works. A textual analysis of the variants and revisions of D. S. Merezhkovsky’s article leads to conclusions about the evolution of his intent, the genre and semantics of the titles of the article, written under the influence of the events of the first Russian revolution as a polemically oriented journalistic text.