“He massacred the article”: how Dostoevsky edited an article about Tyutchev in “Grazhdanin” (“Citizen”)

The problem of attribution of the article “In fresh memory of F. I. Tyutchev” ( Grazhdanin , 1873, No. 31) was posed for the first time by N. F. Belchikov in 1925. N. F. Belchikov referred to F. M. Dostoevsky's letter to A. G. Dostoevskaya dated 29 July 1873, in which the editor of Grazhdanin referred to a strong revision of Meshchersky's article. A. V. Arkhipova, citing counterarguments, believed that “In fresh memory of F. I. Tyutchev” cannot be attributed to Dostoevsky, since he limited himself to editorial revision. Taking into account N. F. Belchikov's attribution, the editorial board of the academic Complete Works of F. M. Dostoevsky agreed with A. V. Arkhipova’s point of view and did not include the article in the publication. In 2004, V. A. Viktorovich included it in the “Collective” section of the 11th volume of the 18-volume The Complete Works of F. M. Dostoevsky . While noting the editorial revision, the researchers did not pay attention to the linguistic features of the text. In this article, the author examines the peculiarities of the style of “In fresh memory of F. I. Tyutchev”, provides the results of examining the article using statistical methods and number of arguments in favor of strong editorial revision done by Dostoevsky, who managed to adapt to the author's style and internalize it. Dostoevsky did not claim authorship. He edited the article, stylistically improved it, but it is an example of editing that does not transform into co-authorship.