Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky[4] (11 November 1821[5] – 9 February[6] 1881) was a Russian writer and essayist,[7] best known for his novels Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

Dostoyevsky's literary works explored human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russian society.

Dostoyevsky is often acknowledged by critics as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.[9]

Considered by many as a founder or precursor of 20th-century existentialism, Dostoyevsky wrote, with the embittered voice of the anonymous "underground man", Notes from Underground (1864), which was called the "best overture for existentialism ever written" by Walter Kaufmann.[

Family origins

Dostoyevsky's paternal ancestors were from a town called Dostoyev in Belarus, in the Guberniya (province) of Minsk, not far from Pinsk. Dostoyevsky's mother was Russian. The stress on the family name was originally on the second syllable, matching that of the town (Dostóev). However, in the nineteenth century, the stress was shifted to the third syllable.[10] According to one account, Dostoyevsky's paternal ancestors were Polonized nobles (szlachta) of Ruthenian origin who went to war bearing Polish Radwan Coat of Arms. Dostoyevsky (Polish Dostojewski) Radwan armorial bearings were drawn for the Dostoyevsky Museum in Moscow

Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow, the second of seven children born to Mikhail and Maria Dostoyevsky.[12] Dostoyevsky's father Mikhail was a retired military surgeon and a violent alcoholic, who had practiced at the Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor in Moscow. The family lived in a small apartment in the hospital grounds, and it wasn't until he was 16 years old, that Dostoyevsky moved to St Petersburg to attend a Military Engineering Institute.

In 1837, shortly after his mother died of tuberculosis, Dostoyevsky and his brother were sent to St Petersburg to attend the Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute, nowadays called the Military Engineering-Technical University (Russian: Военный инженерно-технический университет). Fyodor's father died in 1839. Though it has never been proven, it is believed by some that he was murdered by his own serfs.[13] According to one account, the serfs became enraged during one of his drunken fits of violence, and after restraining him, poured vodka into his mouth until he drowned. A similar account appears in Notes from Underground. Another story holds that Mikhail died of natural causes, and a neighboring landowner invented the story of his murder so that he could buy the estate at a cheaper price. Some, like Sigmund Freud in his 1928 article, "Dostoevsky and Parricide", have argued that his father's personality had influenced the character of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, the "wicked and sentimental buffoon", father of the main characters in his 1880 novel The Brothers Karamazov, but such claims fail to withstand the scrutiny of many critics[who?].

Dostoyevsky suffered from epilepsy and his first seizure occurred when he was nine years old.[14] Epileptic seizures recurred sporadically throughout his life, and Dostoyevsky's experiences are thought[15] to have formed the basis for his description of Prince Myshkin's epilepsy in his novel The Idiot and that of Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov, among others.

At the Saint Petersburg Institute of Military Engineering[16] Dostoyevsky was taught mathematics, a subject he despised. However, he also studied literature by Shakespeare, Pascal, Victor Hugo and E.T.A. Hoffmann. Though he focused on areas different from mathematics, he did well in the exams and received a commission in 1841. That year, influenced by the German poet/playwright Friedrich Schiller, he wrote two romantic plays: Mary Stuart and Boris Godunov. The plays have not been preserved. Dostoyevsky described himself as a "dreamer" when he was a young man. He also revered Schiller at that age. However, in the years during which he wrote his great masterpieces, his opinions changed and he sometimes made fun of Schiller.

Beginnings of a literary career
Dostoyevsky's signature

Dostoyevsky was made a lieutenant in 1842, and left the Engineering Academy the following year. He completed a translation into Russian of Balzac's novel Eugénie Grandet in 1843, but it brought him little or no attention. Dostoyevsky started to write his own fiction in late 1844 after leaving the army. In 1846, his first work, the epistolary short novel, Poor Folk, printed in the almanac A Petersburg Collection (published by N. Nekrasov), was met with great acclaim. As legend has it, the editor of the magazine, poet Nikolai Nekrasov, walked into the office of liberal critic Vissarion Belinsky and announced, "A new Gogol has arisen!" Belinsky, his followers, and many others agreed. After the novel was fully published in book form at the beginning of the next year, Dostoyevsky became a literary celebrity at the age of 24.

In 1846, Belinsky and many others reacted negatively to his novella, The Double, a psychological study of a bureaucrat whose alter ego overtakes his life. Dostoyevsky's fame began to fade. Much of his work after Poor Folk received ambivalent reviews and it seemed that Belinsky's prediction that Dostoyevsky would be one of the greatest writers of Russia was mistaken.

Dostoyevsky was incarcerated on 23 April 1849 for being part of the liberal intellectual group the Petrashevsky Circle. Tsar Nicholas I, after seeing the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, was harsh on any type of underground organization which he felt could put autocracy in jeopardy. On November 16 of that year, Dostoyevsky, along with other members of the Petrashevsky Circle, was sentenced to death. After a mock execution, in which he and other members of the group stood outside in freezing weather waiting to be shot by a firing squad, Dostoyevsky's sentence was commuted to four years of exile