Russia’s literary Empire

Damian Achitei
Nov 7 · 6 min read

Destroy my desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better and I will follow you. -Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes From The Underground)

From unsplash.com
From unsplash.com
From unsplash.com

Whenever there is a conversation regarding great writers and the countries that birthed them, Russia received a special kind of attention in the last 200 hundred years. With numerous works considered classics by every standard, Russian writers enjoy a certain type of admiration, not only from the readers but other authors as well.

In terms of inspiration, it is a well-known fact that Russian writers idolize their French and English counterparts. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky even said that Charles Dickens was the “greatest novelist of all time”, they also frequently wrote about their fascination with Victor Hugo, George Elliot, Goethe, William Shakespeare, etc.
A contributing factor to their upbringing regarding literature came from the fact that most noble families had their children learn French and German from a very young age, often hiring tutors to teach and watch over the development and progress of their children. Universities and the majority of higher education institutes did regular examinations when it came to foreign languages.


The main strength of Russian prose comes concerning one of our greatest enemies: hypocrisy.
The best study done on this topic was by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol through his most famous work: “Dead Souls”, a novel which is supposed to have the form of an epic poem, presents the adventure of Chichikov, a man whom we are drawn and intrigued by right from the very beginning, his mannerisms, supposed societal position and confidence build a clear picture in our minds, that ambition is what it takes to succeed. This picture is shattered once we learn that this ambition was nothing but greed behind the mask.

The plot of Gogol’s masterpiece was suggested by one of his best friends, the man who is considered to be Russia’s “everything”: Aleksandr Puskin.
Dostoevsky once said that he and all the others were nothing but pygmies when compared to the national poet. Tolstoy, however, was never fond of Puskin’s work, but the poet’s influence over the country’s literary space can be seen even more than a century after his death in 1837. Vladimir Nabokov, one of the best modern authors, held Puskin in very high esteem and went as far as teaching the novel in verses, “Evgheni Onegin” in his university lectures.


With all the admiration and praise Puskin received in his homeland, he is not the one who took Russian literature outside the country’s borders.
The west started to pay attention to the “eastern front” when Ivan Turgenev published “Father and Sons”, but it was not until Fyodor Dostoevsky and Lev Tolstoy came around and mesmerized the minds of the world through their perspectives and understanding of society’s norms.

Some readers hold heated debates about who managed to encapsulate the human experience better, other people believe that they should always be mentioned together instead of having to choose.

Sadly, the two writers never met in real life. They attended a lecture given by philosopher and theologian Vladimir Solovyov, but that was the closest they had ever been. When visiting for the reveal of Puskin statue in Moscow, Dostoevsky expressed his wish of meeting Tolstoy, but he learned from the ones around him that the writer began to live an isolated lifestyle and would rather not be bothered by anyone, so Fyodor chose not to disturb his rival and contemporary.
Shortly after, Dostoevsky died due to pulmonary hemorrhage and was mourned by thousands of his countrymen, especially Tolstoy. After becoming acquainted with Anna, Fyodor’s widow, Tolstoy stated that he lost his best friend, the only man who truly understood him.


Dostoevsky is no stranger when it comes to exposing greed and internalized hate. One of his most famous novels ( and my favorite) “Crime and Punishment” follows the story of Raskolnikov, a former student going through an existential crisis who believes that his shortcomings, nihilistic views and people’s perception of him all come stem from his poverty. The self-hate becomes engrained in his soul that, ultimately, it pushes him to commit murder, a murder which fails to bring him the closure he so desperately wanted. Until the end, we can see how he manages to repent from his sins and how it changed the relationship he had with his family, but most importantly, the relationship he had with himself.

With all the accolades he received for “Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky thought that his best work was also his last: “The Brothers Karamazov”, a novel which portrays greed and the wish for validation in all of it’s deepest forms, as well as the opposites.
Dmitri Karamazov (in many ways one can look at him as an extroverted Raskolnikov) resembles the character from the Prodigal Son, but this time, his father is not there to guide or encourage him, quite paradoxically, he sees Dmitri as one of his enemies and even threatens to kill his son over a young prostitute, Grusenka, and is absorbed by the thought of maintaining his wealth no matter what.
Aliosha, the youngest of the Karamazovs, is portrayed as an aspiring monk and tries desperately to reconcile the relationship between his two brothers and their father, Fyodor. Aliosha is the only one who seems to have a bond with Fyodor, sometimes forcing his father to have a deeper look into his soul and contemplate his mistakes as a parent and as a man, but even he ultimately fails.
Ivan is the middle child of the family, an atheist at heart, with a personality that appears to be bleak and blurred throughout the novel, peeks towards the end of the novel when he displays incredible amounts of emotion during a dialogue with the devil himself, something which he cannot accept as a hallucination.

Sigmund Freud stated that the three brothers were safe way for Dostoevsky to split his personality and address the issues he had with his father in his own life, but I think that even Fyodor Karamazov is an expression of Dostoevsky’s character, probably what he feared he could become if he would have let pride and the world’s ovations corrupt him.


Now it’s time to get acquainted with the other half of the Russian classic army: Leo Tolstoy (fun fact: “The Brothers Karamazov” was the last novel read by Tolstoy before he left his home for a pilgrimage and died during a blizzard).
Because of my respect for Tolstoy, I will not go into “War and Peace”, the author himself expressed his dislike often regarding his most famous work, he mentioned that he simply wanted to explore the French-Russian war in the form of a novel and that was nothing special about it. For the reason that “War and Peace” was written somewhat in the early stages of his career in 1863–1869 (a period which he will come to hate due to the pride he used to display and project into the world) is fairly easy to understand why he rejected “War and Peace” as his masterpiece.

Despite all of that, Tolstoy used the attention he received to bring into the spotlight his “true novel”: “Anna Karenina”. The novel follows the story of the title character and her demise as she allows herself to go astray and abandon her family due to an unstoppable passion for a young man (Vronsky).
Tolstoy’s tale shows their spiritual decay with great detail, a relationship that is depicted in antithesis with the relationship between Levin and Ekaterina (Katty).
Levin’s character resembles Leo’s wishes of what he should have been as a young man himself, regretting all of his actions and deeds committed in his youth (Vronsky and Levin being diametrical opposites, the two personalities of Tolstoy, the prideful youngster and the studious man looking for a family and spiritual progress above all else).
Across these, almost, 1000 pages, the characters illustrate what domesticity (or lack thereof) can do to the human soul and how one can learn to rise above it.


There is so much more to be said about these people who come from the “land of great writers” who contributed to this literary empire. Of course, writers like Esenin, Bunin, Mayakovsky, Bulgakov and many others are worth mentioning and worth having a study done just for their works, but I have decided to briefly present who I believe to be the ones who left a significant mark on our perception of literature worldwide. I hope I have, at the very least, inspired you to read some of the novels mentioned here and that more people would start to talk about these literary titans.

If you make it a habit not to blame others, you will feel the growth of the ability to love in your soul, and you will see the growth of goodness in your life. -Leo Tolstoy

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