In his modest apartment, in the most prestigious part of Saint Petersburg, Dmitry Andreyevich, the great-grandson of the classic, celebrated 190 years since the birth of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky. He looks a lot like his famous ancestor. He wears a beard, speaks in good literary language.
He read all the works of his great-grandfather with great attention and that in his mature age, after forty. And he became the guardian of the family tradition.
Beard and the brand "Dostoevsky"
"I don't mind the beard, I'm Dostoevsky after all," laughs Dmitri Andreyevich. "I grew my beard before I got married. I introduced myself to my future wife as a bearded groom. I try to be natural, and above all honorable. Because it is known that Fyodor Mihajlovich was principled and honest in everything. And I try to consistently support him in that, and in that, I hope, I succeed... My character is also as stubborn as his was," says Dmitri.
He said that he has no material memory of his great-grandfather and that he can thank the Bolsheviks for that.
"In the museum of Dostoyevsky, you can find some of his things, but I don't have anything at all"
"They nationalized not only Fyodor Mihajlovich himself, his works, but also took everything away from my father. Everything that was left to him was voluntarily and forcibly confiscated by the Bolsheviks. They scattered it among the archives, which are still closed today.
In the Dostoyevsky museum, you can find some of his things, but I don't have anything at all. Round zero. They even took the baptismal certificate. When I received the decision on the protection of the "Dostoevsky" brand, I had to search for the baptismal certificate in the archives.
By the way, I had to register the brand "Dostoevsky" as a trademark together with the museum. It turned out that private persons have no rights to such documents at all. That's why I had to protect the name together with the museum and be calm, without fear that "Dostoevsky" vodka, "Dostoevsky" casino and the like may appear.
I'm used to living exclusively from my work, so I don't expect to benefit materially from that protected brand," says Dmitry Dostoevsky.
Does a famous surname help or hinder?
He says that his famous surname bothers him when he is not addressed as Dmitri Andreyevich, but through him to the great Russian writer.
Fyodor Mikhailovich was one of the first great Russian professional writers
"And you have to put up with it all. Respond thoughtfully with knowledge of the material. My life consists of two parts: my own and the mission to serve genius. When the traffic police stop me, they usually pay attention to my last name.
Then I say that I am a great-grandson, so sometimes thanks to the famous surname I get away without punishment. This is proof that in Russia even traffic drivers read Dostoyevsky," he says.
My illness is healthier than your health
Fyodor Mikhailovich was one of the first great Russian professional writers: he made a living by writing. True, the first professional Russian writer was Pushkin: he, as Mayakovsky used to say, was the first to start putting royalties into the family budget.
And Dostoevsky is a professional in the sense that apart from the money he earned from writing books, he had no other income. It was easy for Turgenev - he had serfs, Tolstoy had Yasna Polyana, Goncharov - civil service.
There are versions according to which he projected his complexes onto the characters in his novels
Dostoevsky once said: God forbid that I don't finish "Poor People", otherwise I have no choice but to throw myself into the Neva".
However, he gave "Wretched People" to Njekrasov for "Petersburg Collection" for nothing, for only 150 rubles. It was primarily his act of ideological solidarity with his like-minded people at the time - the circle around Bjelinski. He lived on loans all his life.
In one letter, he complains that Turgenev receives 400 rubles for a printed sheet, while they give him barely 100, concluding: "I know very well that I write worse than Turgenev, but still, not that much worse."
All the main characters in Dostoyevsky's works are without employment, without a profession. None of them do anything else but suffer mentally. Dostoevsky himself was a psychologically unbalanced personality. There are versions according to which he projected his complexes onto the characters in his novels. But when he once read a critic's opinion of his novels as "sick products", he wrote: "My illness is healthier than your health".
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