10 best works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

*Overview of the best according to the editors of Healthy Food Near Me. About selection criteria. This material is subjective, is not an advertisement and does not serve as a guide to the purchase. Before buying, you need to consult with a specialist.

A classic and one of the best psychologists in world literature, who gained recognition in his time and became a cult in the era of modernity. You can’t understand Dostoevsky unless you read his books. And if you still don’t understand, it’s best to read them again. A master of deep dramaturgy and a true genius of the pen, he plunges into the harsh world of Russian society of the 19th century. Your attention to the ten best works of the author.

The great Russian psychologist of the soul: the best works of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Poor people (1844-1845)

Rating: 4.1

The first printed brainchild of the great writer, who had not yet managed to cut his talent by that time, but boldly declared himself to all of Russia. Originally written for that time, the story was written in the epistolary genre: a novel in the form of letters is a vivid description of the life of two main characters – Makar Devushkin (a middle-aged official) and Varvara Dobroselova (an orphan girl).

The novel is considered a kind of reflection of the sentimental novel in the letters “The Sufferings of Young Werther”, written by Goethe in 1774. Varvara and Makar are Lotta and Werther, placed in the impoverished and hopeless Petersburg life of the lower strata of the population. The novel “Poor People” reflects people who are not only not rich in the literal sense of the word, but also spiritually poor: their life is devoid of claims to joy and success. These are dreamers, passive dreamers, whose fate is essentially tragic and they accept all their misfortunes as “God’s providence.”

Modern criticism of those times did not leave the young writer without attention. As Dostoevsky himself wrote in a letter to his brother: “… half of Petersburg is already talking about the Poor People.” And, indeed, the interest in the work of the then unknown author was simply stunning. The 25-year-old young man received a lot of feedback from eminent and not so critics.

Among them were both flattering and frankly humiliating reviews as a writer. One of the first to read Dostoevsky’s manuscript was the famous Russian critic Belinsky. He also contributed to the publication of the work and gave it the highest rating, seeing a rare talent in a young talent.

White Nights (1848)

Rating: 4.2

Another work of the early years of the writer’s work. A story that many readers undeservedly bypass. Work on it was carried out throughout the autumn of 1848. Almost immediately, Dostoevsky received permission from the censorship committee of St. Petersburg to publish it. According to the plot, the main character of the work is a dreamer – a timid, quiet and lonely person. One day on a white night, he meets a girl with whom he falls in love. She sees in him a kindred soul and perceives him as her brother.

Nastenka decides to tell him her story: about how she lived all her early years with her blind grandmother after the death of her parents. She never let her go for long and often pinned her to her dress with a pin. Nastya’s life can hardly be called fun or varied. But for her, everything changes when a guest comes to them with her grandmother, who takes pity on the girl. Nastya immediately falls in love with him, but the man is poor and promises to return in a year, when he earns money.

And now a year passes, her lover is back in the city, and Nastenka finds out about it. But he does not rush to her and does not answer her letter, and the girl selflessly waits. Desperate, she decides to respond to the dreamer’s feelings, but, having accidentally met her lover, she runs away from the dreamer. Subsequently, she writes him a letter in which she asks for forgiveness for the betrayal. But the dreamer does not hold evil: he has forgiven and continues to love. After all, Nastenka is the brightest event in his life. And he is just a support in a difficult moment, and now he is alone again.

The essence of the dreamer, which Dostoevsky laid in his character, is not just indecision or lack of aspirations in life. The writer himself considered this type of person a sign of his time: he wrote that there are enough characters in the country who are greedy for activity, life, reality, but at the same time too feminine, weak, too tender.

The result was the emergence of the so-called reverie, when a person becomes some kind of strange creature – a dreamer. The reason for this, he considered the absence in Russia of common interests for the majority and the inability to fully realize the “thirst for activity.” It is such a person that the main character of the story “White Nights” is shown.

Notes from the House of the Dead (1860-1861)

Rating: 4.3

The story in two parts is documentary in nature: it is actually a description of the life of a man in hard labor on behalf of the main character – the nobleman Goryanchikov. In fact, Dostoevsky acquaints readers with what he saw and experienced, being exiled for 4 years to the Omsk prison, where he ended up in the case of the Petrashevsky (“freethinkers”, members of the Petrashevsky circle, where they discussed serfdom, oppression of censorship, liberties of officials and etc.).

In the center of the plot is the nobleman Alexander Goryanchikov, who was sentenced to 10 years for the murder of his wife. He himself pleaded guilty, citing jealousy as the cause, and, after serving his sentence, cut off all family ties and remained a recluse in Siberia. The protagonist makes money by tutoring, and his only entertainment is literary sketches about hard labor and reading books.

The story does not have a coherent plot as such: it is framed in the form of chronological sketches that describe how Goryanchikov got into a peasant environment unfamiliar to him, how he experiences shock from this, tries to adapt, at first not accepted by the convicts, despised for disgust and impracticality, and , at the same time, respected for belonging to the nobility.

The protagonist falls into the “second category” – the fortress. In total, in the 19th century, there were 3 categories in Siberian hard labor: 1st – mines, 2nd – fortresses, 3rd – factories. The severity decreased from the first to the last, but, according to Goryanchikov, the second was the most severe. He was under the control of the military, and the prisoners were always under surveillance.

In Notes from the Dead House, Dostoevsky vividly and in detail describes the life of prisoners, their relationships, thoughts about faith, and the crimes committed. Readers will be able to learn about how the convicts worked, how and for what they were punished, how the prisoners had fun, earned money, etc. The ethnic composition of the prison is examined in detail, as well as the attitude of the convicts themselves to their imprisonment and “neighbors” of various nationalities.

Humiliated and Insulted (1861)

Rating: 4.4

During the period when Dostoevsky undertook to write the novel The Humiliated and Insulted, there was a significant upsurge in public life in Russia, and the topic of stratification of society was particularly acute. It is this problem that is clearly seen in the plot of the work, the center of which is the life of the family of a wealthy nobleman – Prince Valkovsky – a philosopher and cynic, whose exorbitant egoism and pride are incredibly blind. This character became the prototype for the creation of the heroes of the writer’s later works – Svidrigailov, Raskolnikov, etc.

Dostoevsky managed to very clearly contrast the rich family with poor people, in the role of which the family of the impoverished landowner Ikhmenev appears in the novel. Despite the impossibility of the interaction of such different layers, this happens when Ikhmenev is hired by Valkovsky as the manager of the estate. And, everything would be fine, but the situation is gradually complicated by the fact that the children of families decide to unite themselves by marriage, and without parental blessing, which by those standards is an unthinkable situation.

The novel very clearly reflects the peculiarities of the life of the St. Petersburg bottom, combined with the mystery of the personality of the characters. “Humiliated and Insulted” is a work in which acute psychologism is already quite clearly seen in the description of the characters. This is manifested in the fact that the characters of the characters are often not motivated by anything and are not just one or another social type, but carriers of specific ideas in society.

The central character of the work is Prince Valkovsky. He is the embodiment of an all-powerful destructive evil that destroys everyone around him. Valkovsky not only talks about his own individualism and the desire to enjoy life: he considers himself the arbiter of destinies, he is a “predator”, a person without ideals, who is subject to everything. It is he who is the cause of the suffering of the “humiliated and offended”.

The novel was rather coolly received by critics at the time. This can be explained by the fact that St. Petersburg society was wary of the writer, who had recently returned from exile. Nevertheless, modern critics believe that the work was written especially sharply, interestingly and diversely: only a true master of the pen could create such a psychological masterpiece.

Notes from the Underground (1864)

Rating: 4.5

During the life of the writer, the story was not deprived of attention, but remained completely misunderstood by contemporaries, including representatives of the literary world: most critics and writers did not approve of it. The former girlfriend of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Suslova, considered the work a “scandalous”, “cynical thing”, Saltykov-Shchedrin completely ridiculed her. And only the critic, memoirist Grigoriev approved the work: he was the only one who gave it a positive assessment and drew attention to the special form of narration.

Few then understood that Dostoevsky, in fact, became a “prophet of the coming revival.” He brought his hero beyond the framework of the era of that time, being at that time at the stage of degeneration of his own convictions in the direction of individualism. “Notes from the Underground” is a real cry of horror that sounds from the lips of a person who suddenly realized that all his life he had been pretending, lying, assuring everyone, including himself, that the highest goal of existence was to serve man. The story is a renunciation of the protagonist from his past, it is an act of tragedy.

The protagonist of the work is a government official (collegiate assessor), setting out his confession on paper. Showing remarkable courage, the key character turns to his soul, entering into conflict with his own position, because his political activity does not correspond in any way with moral standards even at that time.

“Notes from the Underground” is an allegorical attempt by the protagonist to hide from the despising surrounding world and comprehend the human essence, his main purpose. A more complete picture of the psychological state of the character is made by a reference to his early years, where the root causes of his future fears and emotional rushes are already visible. The result of the work, its “open” ending is the realization by the hero of an idea hidden in the depths of his soul: “We … are weary of being human … with a real, own body and blood. We are stillborn … soon we will invent to be born somehow from an idea.

The novel became the starting point for an existential trend in the literature of the first half of the 20th century. Nietzsche himself once said that Dostoevsky was the only psychologist from whom he managed to learn anything.

Gambler (1866)

Rating: 4.6

The history of the creation of the novel is quite unusual and revealing. It is no secret that Dostoevsky himself was an avid gambler for many years and partly the work can be considered autobiographical. In 1863, the writer arrived in Wiesbaden, Germany, with his girlfriend Polina Suslova. In just a few days, he lost not only all his money at roulette, but also the money of his girlfriend. To get out of debt, he entered into a kind of betting contract with the publishing house, according to which he had to write a new novel in an incredibly short time – only 26 days (!).

On the advice of his friend, journalist, writer, literary critic Alexander Milyukov, Fedor Mikhailovich decided to use the services of a stenographer, who was Anna Snitkina, who later became his adored wife, with whom he lived until the end of his days, to speed up the process.

According to the plot of the novel, the action begins in a German resort town. Alexey Ivanovich (the main character) accompanies the family of a retired general as a teacher and falls in love with his stepdaughter Polina, who is burning with feelings for the French marquis. The whole family is waiting for the death of their grandmother in order to receive a huge inheritance. But fate has a wicked sense of humor: the old woman recovers and goes to rest at the same resort where her relatives are, and loses a significant part of her fortune at roulette.

Aleksey decides to help his beloved and wins a colossal amount of money, but the proud girl rejects this help and at the same time rejects the young man. All heroes lose sight of each other for a while. During this time, Alexey becomes not just a player, but an avid roulette player. And one day, after 2 whole years, she finds out that Polina, after all, loved him, but nothing can be changed.

The novel vividly shows how the all-consuming passion for the game, provoked by the excruciating mental pain of the protagonist, turns him not just into a gambler: the game for him is not a hobby or a painful craving, it is the essence of his being.

Interesting fact. A few months after the completion of the novel, Dostoevsky and Snitkina got married, and their honeymoon took place in Europe (in Baden-Baden). And there the story with a big loss repeated itself. After that, the writer gave his wife a word not to play anymore and kept it: he no longer sat down at roulette for the remaining 10 years of his life.

Crime and Punishment (1866)

Rating: 4.7

It would seem that a simple novel with a simple plot – a poor student commits a murder. But the emotional shock that remains after reading the work is indelible. The reason is that the author managed to create a subtle and deeply penetrating psychological thriller. The novel “Crime and Punishment” shows the insolubility of certain situations and the fatal decisions of one person, which lead to tragic consequences.

In the center of the story is a poor student Rodion Raskolnikov, who was forced to leave the university due to lack of money to pay for tuition. For a whole month, the main character of the work hatches a plan to kill the “ugly old woman” – a “deed” that will help radically change his own life and save his sister from the shameful need to marry a “benefactor”.

But Raskolnikov’s crime does not begin at all at the moment when he, with an ax, is on the threshold of a pawnbroker. This is preceded by a “word” (an article published by a student in a newspaper is a kind of test of a “pen”), and then a “calculation” is an attempt by the protagonist to correlate the harm that the old pawnbroker causes to the world with the good that will make amends for the perfect deed.

But after one death, a whole string of troubles begins to drag on: the sister of the old woman (probably pregnant) falls under the ax of Raskolnikov, who became an accidental witness to the murder. Then the life of the dyer Mikolka collapses, having committed self-incrimination and confessing to a murder he did not commit. And, finally, a chain and unpredictable reaction is triggered by the death of the mother of the protagonist.

In the novel Crime and Punishment, Rodion Raskolnikov appears not just as a young man who committed a monstrous deed out of frivolity or succumbed to strange ideas. Raskolnikov is the hero of a high tragedy. The character himself clearly formulates the tragedy of the whole situation when he says to his sister: “… and you will reach such a line that you will not step over it – you will be unhappy, but if you step over – maybe you will be more unhappy than her.”

The epilogue of the work tells about Raskolnikov, who is serving an 8-year term in the prison-fortress, who is gradually rethinking his act: his judgments, his thoughts about the future, his appearance are changing. From a handsome, tall young man, he turns into a man who, as if with difficulty, overcomes physical pain: “His eyebrows were shifted, his lips were compressed, his eyes were inflamed.”

“Crime and Punishment” caused a storm of emotions in the Russian literary community and influenced world literature: “satellite” novels appeared in France, Germany, Italy, in which the authors tried to develop the theme of “split”.

Idiot (1867-1869)

Rating: 4.8

The work was one of the most beloved by Dostoevsky himself, since it most fully reflected his moral and philosophical position. The plot is based on the main character – Prince Myshkin: a “strange image”, which raises many questions with his behavior, appearance, character. Fyodor Mikhailovich creates an incredibly sharp and conspicuous deviation of the hero from the social norm, presenting a “positively beautiful person” in the form of an “eccentric”, “idiot”, “stupid”, etc.

The main idea of ​​the great writer, in his own words, was the desire to “depict a completely beautiful person.” In a letter to his beloved niece (S. Ivanova), he complained that showing a positive person in a work is the most difficult task possible for a writer. After all, “the beautiful is an ideal, and the ideal – neither ours nor civilized Europe is far from being worked out.”

In world literature, a similar technique has been used more than once: there are a lot of “jesters” and “simpletons” there. One of the most striking is Don Quixote by Cervantes (Dostoevsky’s favorite book).

It is important to understand that the word “idiot” in one of the cult works of the Russian writer is used in an unconventional sense of the word. In this case, it has many semantic shades. The key idea is that the “idiot” of Prince Myshkin is perceived by mediocrity. But sometimes people close to him think so, considering him unlike others, even ridiculous, in sharp contrast to the generally accepted norm.

And Myshkin’s deviation from the norm lies in the fact that he is a man of rare spiritual kindness, disinterested, morally pure, sincere, even in some ways childishly naive. No wonder several times throughout the story the writer focuses on the fact that the prince is “innocent”. The ability to be happy, love for people, harmony with oneself for the characters around the protagonist is just a “clouding of reason”.

Demons (1870-1872)

Rating: 4.9

The novel is considered one of the most difficult in the work of Fyodor Mikhailovich. In order to understand it and fully reveal the essence that the author wanted to convey, it is important to consider what was the impetus for creating the work. In the 70s, a resonant and absurd event for those times took place – the murder of a student, organized by a revolutionary terrorist group headed by S. Nechaev.

A significant role in writing the novel was also played by the Geneva meeting of the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom, which was attended by Dostoevsky himself. He was shocked by how, in front of an audience of thousands, they openly proclaimed the destruction of monarchies, the Christian faith, and private property, so that “everything would be common.” As he later wrote to his niece, “… fire and sword … as everything is destroyed, then, in their opinion, there will be peace.”

Initially conceived as a pamphlet novel, the work gradually turned into a tragic novel, the main character of which, Nikolai Stavrogin, is a truly tragic character. This is a demonic, “strong personality”, a cold, calculating “demon”, thinking about creating a secret society. The writer deliberately and clearly draws a line between preoccupation with the idea and idealism, which is accompanied by a separation from reality. Such a person does not see evil, so in the end it will enslave him.

Dostoevsky skillfully concentrates small “demons” around the main one – Stavrogin. Some of them are part of his tragic fate, some are evil generated by himself. The whole work is devoted to unraveling the personality of the protagonist, who has an incredibly multifaceted, but turned into darkness character. And this is clearly manifested in the way Stavrogin’s spiritual struggle leads to fires, suicides, murders and riots, drowning the whole city in blood.

Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880)

Rating: 5.0

The last novel of the great writer, the final work of his life, to the creation of which he went throughout his work. In The Brothers Karamazov, the author deeply touches upon the fundamental problems not only of the Russian people, but of humanity as a whole: the meaning of life, questions of morality and spiritual development. Despite the uniqueness and power of presentation, the novel closely echoes the works of Schiller, Shakespeare, Goethe and Hugo, “revealing” the cultural context of an entire era.

The brothers Karamazov, who appear as the main characters, are assigned a clear role in the novel: the entire Russian intelligentsia, the future of Russia, is hidden in their fate, and the dependence of a person on moral development is shown. One of the brothers appears as a desperate atheist, the other is a fanatic, the third is a living force. The novel shows three generations: fathers, children and the future – “roaming forces”.

The key concept of the work – “Karamazovism” – has become a household word. It is identified with spiritual chaos and unbridled passions. Dostoevsky subtly showed a real epidemic of unbelief, which, like a disease, strikes the minds and sharpens base instincts (rudeness, licentiousness), turning people into a crowd. The absence of prohibitions and extreme selfishness – this is the essence of the Karamazov family: “burn even the whole world with fire, it would be good for me alone.”

The passion of a Russian person is shown in the novel as a destructive force, but sometimes it can create. The fate of all the characters in the novel is manifested in its duality: a constant contradiction between the need for faith and the tendency to lie, justifying the egoistic needs of a person. Dostoevsky also shows how a Russian person often falls into the thrall of illusions, taking false ideals and imaginary ideas of humanism for truth, and then suffers from this.

At the time of the writer, criticism did not give the novel a proper assessment. Many saw cruelty in him, some immediately condemned Dostoevsky. Only by the end of the 19th century did a deep study of the work, which later became a cult, begin: for almost a whole century, hundreds of literary critics and writers were engaged in interpreting the novel not only from the point of view of literary traditions, but also from the point of view of national identity.

Attention! This material is subjective, is not an advertisement and does not serve as a guide to the purchase. Before buying, you need to consult with a specialist.