This article by Julia Berest was first published in Russian History 50 (2023), 185–218. It is republished here with the permission of the author and publisher. The article is available as a PDF through a link following the abstract.
Abstract:
Dostoevsky’s nationalism has long been a sensitive and controversial topic in Western scholarship. At the core of the controversy is the problem of explaining the stark contrast between Dostoevsky’s philosophical message of universal love and the explicitly xenophobic, chauvinistic and war-glorifying statements found in many of his journalistic articles. Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine has reignited the old controversy in ways that have brought to light the profound political implications involved in interpreting Russian history in a post-2022 context. Many Ukrainian intellectuals and public figures have come to question not only the appropriateness of Dostoevsky’s title as a “great humanist” but also the conventions of Dostoevsky’s reception in Western scholarship, which serve to maintain this image of the writer in the public mind, despite many of his unpalatable ideas. These sentiments are echoed by (as yet) a small group of Russianists in the West who argue for the need to reconsider Dostoevsky from a more critical, decolonizing perspective. This essay offers a historiographic review of the theme of Dostoevsky’s nationalism in Western and Russian scholarship over the past two decades. It also highlights the way in which Dostoevsky’s nationalist ideas have been used by Russian propagandists in popular media since Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
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Image: Vasily Perov, Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky 1872