Citation

Vladiv-Glover S. Dostoevsky journal, The 2018; 19(1): 74-83.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018)

DOI

10.1163/23752122-01901004

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Dostoevsky has been described as a writer with a national(ist) ideology called pochvenichestvo - an adherence to the (native) soil as the source of a national ethics. Our initial question is: what does the concept "pochva" [soil] signify in the context of Dostoevsky's thought and how, if at all, is the concept tested in Crime and Punishment?

In the biographical scholarship since his death in 1881, Dostoevsky has most often been portrayed as a conservative and a religious thinker. He was neither, although his novels and his journal articles are replete with religious metaphors and Biblical references.

Dostoevsky made the hero of the novel into a double homicide. Yet the murder Raskolnikov plans has no purpose. The alleged purpose is one which conforms to all revolutionary justifications of violence: to do away with a worthless old order for the good of the many in the future.

Language: en