‘Dostoyevsky hated the Mongolian strain in the Russians,’ – Fyodor’s daughter Lyubov Dostoyevsky

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Lyubov Dostoevskaya is best known for the book Dostoyevsky as Portrayed by His Daughter, originally published in Munich in 1920. The quotes below are from the 1922 translation and publication by Yale University Press. The title of the book is ‘Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Study‘ and the author is Aimee Dostoyevsky, which was the literary name of Lyubov.

At the time of the Petrachevsky conspiracy my father was more Lithuanian than Russian, and Europe was dearer to him than his fatherland. The novels he wrote before his imprisonment were all imitations of European works: Schiller, Balzac, Dickens, Georges Sand and Walter Scott were his masters. He believed in the European newspapers as one believes in the Gospels. He dreamed of going to live in Europe, and declared that he could only learn to write well there. He talked of this project in his letters to his friends, and lamented that lack of means prevented him from carrying it out. The thought that it might be well to go east instead of west, in order to become a great Russian writer, never entered his head. Dostoyevsky hated the Mongolian strain in the Russians…

Dostoyevsky arrived in Siberia on a cold winter’s day. He travelled third-class, in company with thieves and murderers, whom the mother-country was sending away from her to the different convict-stations of Siberia. He observed his new companions with curiosity. Here it was at last, the real Russia which he had vainly sought in Petersburg! Here they were, those Russians, a curious mixture of Slavs and Mongolians who had conquered a sixth part of the world! Dostoyevsky studied the gloomy faces of his fellow-travellers, and that second sight which all serious writers have more or less, enabled him to decipher their thoughts and read their child-like hearts.

Dostoyevsky realised that the only republic possible in Russia would be a peasant republic, that is to say, a reign of ignorance and brutality which would cut off our country from Europe more than ever. The Russians dislike Europeans, and reserve all their sympathies for Slavs and the Mongolian tribes of Asia, to which they are akin. The introduction of a republican regime would tend to transform Russia into a Mongolian country, and all the work of our Tsars and nobles would perish. At this period of his life Dostoyevsky loved Europe too much to wish to separate Russia from European influences.

Realising the immense part played by the Tsar in Russia, and his moral power among the peasantry, thanks to his coronation, seeing that he alone could keep them united and preserve them from the anarchy which is always lying in wait for Mongolian races, my father became a monarchist.

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