Fyodor Dostoevsky and his women. Anna Dostoevskaya - “what does it mean to be the wife of a genius

It's hard to be a good wife. It’s impossible to imagine what it’s like to be the wife of a brilliant man, and a good one at that. Give genius happiness and peace. Give all of yourself for peace, love and harmony in the family, while remaining an individual. Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya managed to do the impossible.

Stenographer

Netochka Snitkina had to enroll in a stenographer course in order to later help her family financially. And so, as the best student, she was offered to work with Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, whose works she was engrossed in.

Dostoevsky had only 26 days left to write a new novel and not fall into bondage with the publisher. For a twenty-year-old girl, the famous writer caused an ambivalent impression. On the one hand - a genius, and on the other - an unhappy, abandoned, lonely person, from whom everyone needs only one thing - money. From pity there is one step to love, at least for a Russian woman. And Dostoevsky, feeling the warmth, opened up to the girl in all his sorrows. But they managed to work on the novel and successfully completed it on time. However, the publisher disappeared so as not to accept the manuscript. Anna Grigorievna showed remarkable self-control and handed over the manuscript to the police department. The duel with the publisher was won.

The end of the work upset both of them, and Fyodor Mikhailovich offered to collaborate on the next thing. Moreover, he shyly proposed to the girl to become his wife. This is how Netochka Snitkina became a faithful and necessary friend of the genius in 1867.

Complex, ambiguous feelings

Anna Dostoevskaya, first of all, felt sorry for her husband, adored his talent and wanted to make his life easier, in which his relatives viciously interfered. Fyodor Mikhailovich offered to leave St. Petersburg, but there was no money. Anna Dostoevskaya pawned her dowry almost without hesitation - and here they are, first in Moscow, and then in Geneva. There they stayed for four years. In Baden, Fyodor Mikhailovich lost absolutely everything they had, right down to his wife’s dresses. But, realizing that this was an illness, Anna Dostoevskaya did not even reproach her husband. The Lord appreciated her humility and cured the player forever of his all-consuming passion. They had a daughter, but died three months later. Both suffered endlessly. But the Lord sent them a second daughter. Together with her they returned to their homeland. And in the very first week in Russia, their son was born.

Character changes

Everyone noted that Anna Dostoevskaya became decisive and strong-willed. The writer has accumulated huge debts. The young wife took on the task of unraveling complex material matters, freeing the impractical writer from this routine. Dostoevsky could only marvel at the tenacity and inflexibility of the character of a woman who loved and protected her family.

She managed to do everything: work fourteen hours a day, take shorthand, proofread, listen to new chapters of the novel at night, write a diary, monitor her husband’s fragile health... And when her third child appeared, she decided to publish the works herself.

Family Affair

Book publishing and bookselling went well with Anna Grigorievna’s organizational skills. Isn't this Anna Dostoevskaya's personal achievements? Success inspired the writer. But Anna Grigorievna never lost sight of the little things. When they went somewhere, she stocked up on a blanket to wrap her husband up, took cough medicine, and handkerchiefs. This is all imperceptible, but irreplaceable, and is valued by the spouse as the highest manifestation of love.

But then the youngest dies. The depth of Fyodor Mikhailovich's despair cannot be described. Anna Grigorievna hid her grief as best she could, although her hands gave up, sometimes she could not even take care of two children - Lyuba and Fedya. And they go to the elders in Optina Pustyn. Then this episode will be included in the novel “The Brothers Karamazov”.

Big job

Of course, it doesn't come naturally. Behind it lies tireless work on oneself, which is what Anna Grigorievna did. She humbled her natural impetuosity, because of which quarrels could and did occur. But they always ended in reconciliation, and Fyodor Mikhailovich fell in love with her with renewed vigor. And his inner life was complex and tense. It was at times small in addition to being sick and demanding. That is, the feelings of the spouses were not ossified in everyday life, but were full of mutual care.

Collecting stamps

While still in Geneva, the young couple argued. Fyodor Mikhailovich assured that the woman was not capable of doing anything for a long time. To which, flushed, Anna replied that she would start collecting stamps and would not give up this activity. I immediately bought a notebook from a stationery store and at home proudly stuck on the first stamp from the letter that came to them. The hostess, seeing this, gave her old stamps.

This is how Anna Dostoevskaya began the collection. The most interesting thing is that she was engaged in philately for the rest of her life. But no one knows what happened to the collection after her death.

Irreparable grief

Fyodor Mikhailovich was a very sick man. Emphysema brought him to the grave in 1881. Anna Grigorievna was thirty-five years old. Everyone spoke about the genius whom the country had lost, but everyone forgot about his widow, who lost happiness and love with him. She vowed to live for their children and to publish his collected works, and created his museum. This is evidenced by her biography. Anna Dostoevskaya served her husband even after his death.

Anna Grigorievna herself died in 1918 in Crimea. She was seriously ill, starving, the civil war had already begun, but she continued to sort through her husband’s manuscripts and create an archive of Fyodor Mikhailovich. This is how Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya lived her life. Her biography is both simple and complex at the same time.

Biographers of many famous people asked this question. How often do great women find themselves next to great men and become like-minded people, helpers, and friends? Be that as it may, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was lucky: his second wife, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, was just such a person.

In order to understand the role of Anna Grigorievna in the fate of the classic, it is enough to look at Dostoevsky’s life “before” and “after” his meeting with this amazing woman. So, by the time he met her in 1866, Dostoevsky was the author of several stories, some of which were highly regarded. For example, “Poor People” - they were enthusiastically received by Belinsky and Nekrasov. And some, for example, “The Double,” were a complete fiasco, receiving devastating reviews from the same writers. If success in literature, albeit variable, was still there, then other areas of Dostoevsky’s life and career looked much more deplorable: participation in the Petrashevtsy case led him to four years of hard labor and exile; the magazines created together with his brother were closed and left behind huge debts; his health was so bad that for almost most of his life the writer lived with the feeling of being “in his last days”; an unsuccessful marriage with Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva and her death - all this did not contribute to either creativity or mental balance.

On the eve of meeting Anna Grigorievna, another one was added to these catastrophes: under an enslaving agreement with the publisher F.T. Dostoevsky had to provide the Stellovskys with a new novel by November 1, 1866. There was about a month left, otherwise all rights to subsequent works by F.M. Dostoevsky was transferred to the publisher. By the way, Dostoevsky was not the only writer who found himself in such a situation: a little earlier, Stellovsky published the works of A.F. on unfavorable terms for the author. Pisemsky; V.V. fell into “bondage”. Krestovsky, author of “Petersburg Slums”. The works of M.I. were purchased for just 25 rubles. Glinka with his sister L.I. Shestakova. On this occasion, Dostoevsky wrote to Maikov: “He has so much money that he will buy all Russian literature if he wants. Doesn't that person have no money, who bought Glinka for 25 rubles?».

The situation was critical. Friends suggested that the writer create the main line of the novel, a sort of synopsis, as they would say now, and divide it between them. Each of the literary friends could write a separate chapter, and the novel would be ready. But Dostoevsky could not agree to this. Then friends suggested finding a stenographer: in this case, the chance to write a novel on time would still arise.

Anna Grigorievna Snitkina became this stenographer. It is unlikely that another woman could understand and feel the current situation so much. During the day the novel was dictated by the writer, at night the chapters were transcribed and written. The novel “The Player” was ready by the appointed deadline. It was written in just 25 days, from October 4 to October 29, 1866.

Stellovsky was not going to give up the opportunity to outplay Dostoevsky so quickly. On the day the manuscript was submitted, he simply left the city. The clerk refused to accept the manuscript. The discouraged and disappointed Dostoevsky was again rescued by Anna Grigorievna. After consulting with friends, she persuaded the writer to hand over the manuscript against receipt to the police officer of the unit in which Stellovsky lived. The victory remained with Dostoevsky, but much of the credit belonged to Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, who soon became not only his wife, but also a faithful friend, assistant and companion.

To understand the relationship between them, it is necessary to turn to much earlier events. Anna Grigorievna was born into the family of a petty St. Petersburg official, Grigory Ivanovich Snitkin, who was an admirer of Dostoevsky. Her family even nicknamed her Netochka, after the heroine of the story “Netochka Nezvanova.” Her mother, Anna Nikolaevna Miltopeus, a Swede of Finnish origin, was the complete opposite of her enthusiastic and impractical husband. Energetic, domineering, she showed herself to be a complete mistress of the house.

Anna Grigorievna inherited both her father’s understanding character and her mother’s determination. And she projected the relationship between her parents onto her future husband: “...They always remained themselves, without repeating or imitating each other in the least. And with my soul I did not get entangled - I - in his psychology, he - in mine, and thus my good husband and I - we both felt free in soul.”

Anna wrote about her attitude towards Dostoevsky: “ My love was purely cerebral, ideological. It was rather adoration, admiration for a person so talented and possessing such high spiritual qualities. It was a soul-grabbing pity for a man who had suffered so much, who had never seen joy and happiness and was so abandoned by those close to him who would have been obliged to repay him with love and care for him for everything that (he) had done for them all his life. The dream of becoming his life partner, sharing his labors, making his life easier, giving him happiness - took possession of my imagination, and Fyodor Mikhailovich became my god, my idol, and I, it seems, was ready to kneel before him all my life X".

The family life of Anna Grigorievna and Fyodor Mikhailovich also did not escape misfortunes and uncertainty in the future. They had to endure years of almost poverty-stricken existence abroad, the death of two children, and Dostoevsky’s manic passion for the game. And yet, it was Anna Grigorievna who managed to put their life in order, organize the writer’s work, and finally free him from those financial debts that had accumulated since the unsuccessful publication of magazines. Despite the age difference and the difficult character of her husband, Anna was able to improve their life together. His wife also struggled with the addiction of playing roulette and helped him with his work: she took shorthand notes for his novels, rewrote manuscripts, read proofs and organized the book trade. Gradually, she took over all financial matters, and Fyodor Mikhailovich no longer interfered in them, which, by the way, had an extremely positive impact on the family budget.

It was Anna Grigorievna who decided on such a desperate act as her own publication of the novel “Demons”. At that time, there were no precedents when a writer managed to independently publish his works and make a real profit from it. Even Pushkin’s attempts to earn income from publishing his literary works were a complete fiasco. There were several book firms: Bazunov, Wolf, Isakov and others, which bought the rights to publish books, and then published and distributed them throughout Russia. How much the authors lost on this can be calculated quite easily: Bazunov offered 500 rubles for the right to publish the novel “Demons” (and this was for a “cult” writer, not a novice writer), while the income after self-publishing the book amounted to about 4,000 rubles.

Anna Grigorievna proved herself to be a true businesswoman. She delved into the matter down to the smallest detail, many of which she learned literally in a “spy” way: by ordering business cards; asking printing houses about the conditions under which books are printed; Pretending that she was haggling in a bookstore, she found out what markups he made. From such inquiries she found out what percentage and at what number of copies should be given to booksellers.

And here is the result - “Demons” was sold out instantly and extremely profitably. From that moment on, Anna Grigorievna’s main activity became the publication of her husband’s books...

In the year of Dostoevsky's death (1881), Anna Grigorievna turned 35 years old. She did not remarry and devoted herself entirely to perpetuating the memory of Fyodor Mikhailovich. She published the writer’s collected works seven times, organized an apartment-museum, wrote memoirs, gave endless interviews, and spoke at numerous literary evenings.

In the summer of 1917, events that disturbed the entire country brought her to Crimea, where she fell ill with severe malaria and died a year later in Yalta. They buried her away from her husband, although she asked otherwise. She dreamed of finding peace next to Fyodor Mikhailovich, in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and that at the same time they would not erect a separate monument to her, but would only carve a few lines on the tombstone. Anna Grigorievna’s last will was fulfilled only in 1968.

Victoria Zhuravleva

S_Svetlana — 04/21/2011

Three wives of F.M. Dostoevsky (1821-1881)

(to the 190th anniversary of the writer )

Great literature is the literature of love and great passions, the love of writers for the muses of their lives. Who are they, the prototypes and muses of love? What kind of relationship connected them with the authors of those novels that granted them immortality?!

Maria Dmitrievna - first wife

IN" the most honest, the noblest and most generous woman of all IN"

On December 22, 1849, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, together with a whole group of freethinkers recognized as dangerous state criminals, was taken to the Semenovsky parade ground in St. Petersburg. He had 5 minutes to live, no more. The sentence was pronounced - "The retired engineer Lieutenant Dostoevsky should be subjected to the death penalty by shooting."

Looking ahead, let's say that at the last minute the death penalty was replaced by a link to hard labor for 4 years, and then service as a private. But at that moment, when the priest brought the cross for the last kiss, the writer’s entire short life flashed before his eyes. The sharpened memory contained entire years of life and years of love in seconds.

Dostoevsky's life was not filled with whirlwind romances or petty affairs. He was embarrassed and timid when it came to women. He could spend hours dreaming about love and beautiful strangers, but when he had to meet living women, he became ridiculous, and his attempts at intimacy invariably ended in real disaster. Perhaps this is why in all of his major works Dostoevsky depicted the failures of love. And love has always been associated with sacrifice and suffering.

When Dostoevsky found himself in Semipalatinsk in 1854, he was a mature, 33-year-old man. It was here that he met Alexander Ivanovich Isaev and his wife Marya Dmitrievna. Marya Dmitrievna, a beautiful blonde, was a passionate and exalted person. She was well-read, quite educated, inquisitive, and unusually lively and impressionable. She generally looked fragile and sickly, and in this way she sometimes reminded Dostoevsky of his mother.

Dostoevsky saw in the variability of her moods, breakdowns in her voice and light tears a sign of deep and sublime feelings. When he began to visit the Isaevs, Marya Dmitrievna took pity on her strange guest, although she was hardly aware of his exclusivity. She herself at that moment needed support: her life was sad and lonely, she could not maintain acquaintances because of her husband’s drunkenness and antics, and there was no money for it.

And although she proudly and resignedly bore her cross, she often wanted to complain and pour out her aching heart. And Dostoevsky was an excellent listener. He was always at hand. He understood her grievances perfectly, helped her endure all her misfortunes with dignity - and he entertained her in this swamp of provincial boredom.

Maria Dmitrievna was the first interesting young woman he met after four years of hard labor. Masochistic desires were intertwined in Dostoevsky in the most bizarre way: to love meant to sacrifice oneself and respond with one’s whole soul and whole body to the suffering of others, even at the cost of one’s own torment.

She understood very well that Dostoevsky was inflamed with real, deep passion for her - women usually easily recognize this - and she accepted his “courtships”, as she called them, willingly, without, however, attaching too much importance to them.

At the beginning of 1855, Marya Dmitrievna finally responded to Dostoevsky’s love, and a rapprochement occurred. But just in those days, Isaev was appointed assessor in Kuznetsk. This meant separation - perhaps forever.

After Marya Dmitrievna left, the writer was very sad. Having become a widow, after the death of her husband, Marya Dmitrievna decides to “test” his love. At the very end of 1855, Dostoevsky receives a strange letter from her. She asks him for impartial, friendly advice: “If there was an elderly man, and wealthy, and kind, and made me an offer” -

After reading these lines, Dostoevsky staggered and fainted. When he woke up, he told himself in despair that Marya Dmitrievna was going to marry someone else. After spending the whole night in sobs and agony, the next morning he wrote to her that he would die if she left him.

He loved with all the strength of a belated first love, with all the fervor of newness, with all the passion and excitement of a gambler who has staked his fortune on one card. At night he was tormented by nightmares and overwhelmed by tears. But there could be no marriage - his beloved fell in love with another.

Dostoevsky was overcome by an irresistible desire to give everything to Marya Dmitrievna, to sacrifice his love for the sake of her new feeling, to leave, and not interfere with her arranging her life as she wanted. When she saw that Dostoevsky did not reproach her, but only cared about her future, she was shocked.

A little time passed, and Dostoevsky’s financial affairs began to improve. Under the influence of these circumstances or due to the variability of character, Marya Dmitrievna noticeably cooled towards her fiancé. The question of marriage with him somehow disappeared by itself. In her letters to Dostoevsky, she did not skimp on words of tenderness and called him brother. Marya Dmitrievna stated that she had lost faith in her new affection and did not really love anyone except Dostoevsky.

He received formal consent to marry him in the very near future. Like a runner in a difficult race, Dostoevsky found himself at the goal, so exhausted from the effort that he accepted victory almost with indifference. At the beginning of 1857, everything was agreed upon, he borrowed the required amount of money, rented premises, received permission from his superiors and leave to get married. On February 6, Marya Dmitrievna and Fyodor Mikhailovich were married.

Their moods and desires almost never coincided. In that tense, nervous atmosphere that Marya Dmitrievna created, Dostoevsky had a feeling of guilt, which was replaced by explosions of passion, stormy, convulsive and unhealthy, to which Marya Dmitrievna responded with either fear or coldness. They both irritated, tormented and exhausted each other in constant struggle. Instead of a honeymoon, they experienced disappointment, pain and tedious attempts to achieve elusive sexual harmony.

For Dostoevsky, she was the first woman with whom he was close not through a short embrace of a chance meeting, but through constant marital cohabitation. But she shared neither his voluptuousness nor his sensuality. Dostoevsky had his own life, to which Marya Dmitrievna had nothing to do.

She wasted away and died. He traveled, wrote, published magazines, he visited many cities. One day, upon his return, he found her in bed, and he had to look after her for a whole year. She died of consumption painfully and difficultly. On April 15, 1864, she died - she died quietly, with full memory, and blessing everyone.

Dostoevsky loved her for all the feelings that she awakened in him, for everything that he put into her, for everything that was connected with her - and for the suffering that she caused him. As he himself said later: “She was the most honest, noblest and most generous woman I have known in my entire life.”

Apollinaria Suslova

After some time, Dostoevsky again longed for “female society”, and his heart was free again.

When he settled in St. Petersburg, his public readings at student evenings were a great success. In this atmosphere of uplift, noisy applause and applause, Dostoevsky met someone who was destined to play a different role in his fate. After one of the performances, a slender young girl with large gray-blue eyes, regular features of an intelligent face, with her head thrown back proudly, framed by magnificent reddish braids, approached him. Her name was Apollinaria Prokofyevna Suslova, she was 22 years old, she attended lectures at the university.

Of course, Dostoevsky, first of all, had to feel the charm of her beauty and youth. He was 20 years older than her, and he was always attracted to very young women. Dostoevsky always transferred his sexual fantasies to young girls. He perfectly understood and described the physical passion of a mature man for teenagers and twelve-year-old girls.

Dostoevsky was her first man. He was also her first strong attachment. But too much upset and humiliated the young girl in her first man: he subordinated their meetings to writing, business, family, and all sorts of circumstances of his difficult existence. She was jealous of Marya Dmitrievna with a dull and passionate jealousy - and did not want to accept Dostoevsky’s explanations that he could not divorce his sick, dying wife.

She could not agree to inequality in position: she gave everything for this love, he gave nothing. Taking care of his wife in every possible way, he did not sacrifice anything for Apollinaria. But she was everything that brightened his life outside the home. He now lived a double existence, in two dissimilar worlds.

Later, they decide to go abroad together in the summer. Apollinaria left alone, he was supposed to follow her, but could not get out until August. Separation from Apollinaria only inflamed his passion. But upon arrival, she said that she loved someone else. Only then did he realize what had happened.

Dostoevsky came to terms with the fact that he had to arrange the affairs of the heart of the very woman who had cheated on him, and whom he continued to love and desire. She had mixed feelings towards the writer. In St. Petersburg he was the master of the situation, and ruled, and tormented her, and, perhaps, loved her less than she did. And now his love not only did not suffer, but, on the contrary, even intensified from her betrayal. In the wrong game of love and torment, the places of the victim and the executioner have changed: the vanquished has become the winner. Dostoevsky was to experience this very soon.

But when he realized this, it was too late for resistance, and besides, the whole complexity of the relationship with Apollinaria became a source of secret sweetness for him. His love for a young girl entered a new, burning circle: suffering because of her became a pleasure. Daily communication with Apollinaria physically inflamed him, and he really burned in the slow fire of his unsatisfied passion.

After the death of Marya Dmitrievna, Dostoevsky writes to Apollinaria to come. But she doesn't want to see him. At first he tried to distract himself by taking whatever came to hand. Some random women again appear in his life. Then he decided that his salvation lay in marrying a good, clean girl.

Chance introduces him to a beautiful and talented 20-year-old young lady from an excellent noble family, Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya, she is very suitable for the role of a savior, and Dostoevsky thinks that he is in love with her. A month later, he is ready to ask for her hand in marriage, but nothing comes of this idea, and in those very months, he intensively visits Apollinaria’s sister and openly confides his heartfelt troubles to her.

The intervention of Nadezhda (Apollinaria's sister) apparently influenced her obstinate sister, and something like a reconciliation took place between them. Soon Dostoevsky left Russia and went to Apollinaria. He didn't see her for two years. Since then, his love has been fueled by memories and imagination.

When they finally met, Dostoevsky immediately saw how she had changed. She became colder and more distant. She mockingly said that his high impulses were banal sensitivity, and responded with contempt to his passionate kisses. If there were moments of physical intimacy, she gave them to him as if they were alms - and she always behaved as if it was not necessary or painful for her.

Dostoevsky tried to fight for this love, which had crumbled into dust, for the dream of it - and told Apollinaria that she should marry him. She, as usual, answered sharply, almost rudely. Soon they began to quarrel again. She contradicted him, mocked him, or treated him like an uninteresting, casual acquaintance.

And then Dostoevsky began to play roulette. He lost everything he and she had, and when she decided to leave, Dostoevsky did not hold her back. After Apollinaria's departure, Dostoevsky found himself in a completely desperate situation. Then he had a seizure, and it took him a long time to recover from this state.

In the spring of 1866, Apollinaria went to the village to visit her brother. She and Dostoevsky said goodbye, knowing full well that their paths would never cross again. But freedom brought her little joy. Later she got married, but life together did not work out. Those around her suffered greatly from her domineering, intolerant character.

She died in 1918, at the age of 78, hardly suspecting that next door to her, on the same Crimean coast, in the same year, the one who, fifty years ago, had taken her place in her heart, had passed away. loved one and became his wife.

IN" The sun of my life IN" - Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya

On the advice of his very good friend, Dostoevsky decided to hire a stenographer to carry out his “eccentric plan”; he wanted to publish the novel “The Player”. Shorthand was a new thing at that time, few people knew it, and Dostoevsky turned to a shorthand teacher. He offered work on the novel to his best student, Anna Grigorievna Sitkina, but warned her that the writer had a “strange and gloomy character” and that for all the work - seven sheets of large format - he would pay only 50 rubles.

Anna Grigorievna hastened to agree not only because earning money through her own labor was her dream, but also because she knew the name of Dostoevsky and had read his works. The opportunity to meet a famous writer and even help him in his literary work delighted and excited her. It was extraordinary luck.

At the first meeting, the writer slightly disappointed her. Only later did she understand how lonely he was at that time, how much he needed warmth and participation. She really liked his simplicity and sincerity - from the words and manner of speaking of this smart, strange, but unfortunate creature, as if abandoned by everyone, something sank in her heart.

She then told her mother about the complex feelings Dostoevsky had awakened in her: pity, compassion, amazement, uncontrollable craving. He was offended by life, a wonderful, kind and extraordinary person, it took her breath away when she listened to him, everything in her seemed to have turned upside down from this meeting. For this nervous, slightly exalted girl, meeting Dostoevsky was a huge event: she fell in love with him at first sight, without realizing it.

From then on, they worked several hours every day. The initial feeling of awkwardness disappeared, they talked willingly in between dictations. Every day he got more and more used to her, called her “darling”, “darling”, and these affectionate words pleased her. He was grateful to his employee, who spared neither time nor effort to help him.

They loved having heart-to-heart conversations so much, they got so used to each other during the four weeks of work that they were both scared when “Player” came to an end. Dostoevsky was afraid of ending his acquaintance with Anna Grigorievna. On October 29, Dostoevsky dictated the final lines of “The Player.” A few days later, Anna Grigorievna came to him to come to an agreement about working on the ending of Crime and Punishment. He was clearly delighted to see her. And he immediately decided to propose to her.

But at that moment when he proposed to his stenographer, he did not yet suspect that she would occupy an even greater place in his heart than all his other women. He needed marriage, he realized this and was ready to marry Anna Grigorievna “for convenience.” She agreed.

On February 15, 1867, in the presence of friends and acquaintances, they were married. But the beginning turned out to be bad: they did not understand each other well, he thought that she was bored with him, she was offended that he seemed to be avoiding her. A month after the marriage, Anna Grigorievna fell into a semi-hysterical state: there is a tense atmosphere in the house, she barely sees her husband, and they don’t even have the spiritual closeness that was created when working together.

And Anna Grigorievna suggested going abroad. Dostoevsky really liked the project of a trip abroad, but in order to get money, he had to go to Moscow, to his sister, and he took his wife with him. In Moscow, Anna Grigorievna faced new trials: in the family of Dostoevsky’s sister she was received with hostility. Although they soon realized that she was still a girl who clearly adored her husband, and, in the end, they accepted a new relative into their bosom.

The second torment was Dostoevsky’s jealousy: he made scenes for his wife over the most trivial reasons. One day he was so angry that he forgot that they were in a hotel, and screamed at the top of his voice, his face was distorted, he was scary, she was afraid that he would kill her, and burst into tears. Then only he came to his senses, began to kiss her hands, began to cry and confessed his monstrous jealousy.

In Moscow, their relationship improved significantly because they stayed together much more than in St. Petersburg. This consciousness strengthened Anna Grigorievna’s desire to go abroad and spend at least two or three months in solitude. But when they returned to St. Petersburg and announced their intention, there was noise and commotion in the family. Everyone began to dissuade Dostoevsky from traveling abroad, and he completely lost heart, hesitated and was about to refuse.

And then Anna Grigorievna unexpectedly showed the hidden strength of her character and decided to take an extreme measure: she pawned everything she had - furniture, silver, things, dresses, everything that she chose and bought with such joy. And soon they went abroad. They were going to spend three months in Europe, and returned from there after more than four years. But during these four years they managed to forget about the unsuccessful beginning of their life together: it has now turned into a close, happy and lasting community.

They stayed for some time in Berlin, then, having passed through Germany, settled in Dresden. It was here that their mutual rapprochement began, which very soon dispelled all his worries and doubts. They were completely different people - in age, temperament, interests, intelligence, but they also had a lot in common, and the happy combination of similarities and differences ensured the success of their married life.

Anna Grigorievna was shy and only when alone with her husband did she become lively and show what he called “hastiness.” He understood and appreciated this: he himself was timid, embarrassed with strangers, and also did not feel any embarrassment only when alone with his wife, not like with Marya Dmitrievna or Apollinaria. Her youth and inexperience had a calming effect on him, encouraging him and dispelling his inferiority complexes and self-abasement.

Usually, in marriage, one gets to know each other's shortcomings intimately, and therefore slight disappointment arises. For the Dostoevskys, on the contrary, proximity revealed the best sides of their nature. Anna Grigorievna, who fell in love and married Dostoevsky, saw that he was completely extraordinary, brilliant, terrible, difficult.

And he, who married a diligent secretary, discovered that not only he was the “patron and protector of the young creature”, but she was his “guardian angel”, and friend, and support. Anna Grigorievna passionately loved Dostoevsky as a man and a human being, she loved with the mixed love of wife and mistress, mother and daughter.

When marrying Dostoevsky, Anna Grigorievna was hardly aware of what awaited her, and only after marriage did she understand the difficulty of the questions facing her. There was his jealousy, and suspicion, and his passion for the game, and his illness, and his peculiarities, and oddities. And, above all, the problem of physical relationships. As in everything else, their mutual adaptation did not come immediately, but as a result of a long, sometimes painful process.

Then they had to go through a lot, and especially her. Dostoevsky started playing in the casino again, and lost all his money; Anna Grigorievna pawned everything they had. After that, they moved to Geneva and lived there on what Anna Grigorievna’s mother sent them. They led a very modest and regular lifestyle. But, despite all the obstacles, their rapprochement intensified, both in joy and in sorrow.

In February 1868, their daughter was born. Dostoevsky was proud and pleased with his fatherhood and passionately loved the child. But little Sonya, “sweet angel,” as he called her, did not survive, and in May they lowered her coffin into a grave in the Geneva cemetery. They immediately left Geneva and moved to Italy. There they rested for a while and set off again. After some time, they found themselves in Dresden again, and there their second daughter was born, they named her Lyubov. Her parents shook over her, and the girl grew up to be a strong child.

But the financial situation was very difficult. Later, when Dostoevsky completed The Idiot, they had money. They lived in Dresden throughout 1870. But they suddenly decided to return to Russia. There were many reasons for this. On June 8, 1871, they moved to St. Petersburg: a week later, Anna Grigorievna’s son Fedor was born.

The beginning of life in Russia was difficult: Anna Grigorievna’s house was sold for next to nothing, but they did not give up. During the 14 years of her life with Dostoevsky, Anna Grigorievna experienced a lot of grievances, anxieties and misfortunes (their second son, Alexei, born in 1875, soon died), but she never complained about her fate.

It is safe to say that the years spent with Anna Grigorievna in Russia were the calmest, most peaceful and, perhaps, the happiest in his life.

Improved life and sexual satisfaction, which led to the complete disappearance of epilepsy in 1877, did little to change Dostoevsky’s character and habits. He was well over 50 when he calmed down somewhat - at least outwardly - and began to get used to family life

His ardor and suspicion have not diminished over the years. He often startled strangers in society with his angry remarks. At 60, he was just as jealous as in his youth. But he is also just as passionate in his expressions of love.

In his old age, he became so accustomed to Anna Grigorievna and his family that he absolutely could not do without them. In 1879 and early 1880, Dostoevsky's health deteriorated greatly. In January, his pulmonary artery ruptured due to excitement, and two days later bleeding began. They intensified, the doctors were unable to stop them, and he fell into unconsciousness several times.

On January 28, 1881, he called Anna Grigorievna to him, took her hand and whispered: “Remember, Anya, I always loved you dearly and never betrayed you, even mentally.” By evening he was gone.

Anna Grigorievna remained faithful to her husband beyond the grave. In the year of his death, she was only 35 years old, but she considered her female life over and devoted herself to serving his name. She died in Crimea, alone, far from family and friends, in June 1918 - and with her went to the grave the last of the women whom Dostoevsky loved.

Anya was born in St. Petersburg at the end of August 1846, on the day of memory of St. Alexander Nevsky. The girl’s father, Grigory Ivanovich, is a minor official, “extremely cheerful character, joker, joker, as they say, “the soul of society”” and mother, Anna Nikolaevna, “a woman of amazing beauty - tall, thin, slender, with amazingly regular facial features”* , managed to create a friendly, friendly atmosphere in the family. And this despite the fact that they lived with Grigory Ivanovich’s old mother and four of his brothers, one of whom was also married and had children. Anya never heard any quarrels or mutual claims between her relatives. “They lived amicably and hospitably in the old-fashioned way, so that on the birthdays and name days of family members, on Christmas and Holy Day, all close and distant relatives gathered with their grandmother in the morning and had fun until late at night.”*

In her youth, the girl made an uncompromising decision to go to a monastery. While vacationing in Pskov, she realized that there would be no better moment to put the decision into practice. Anya hit the road. She was only 13 years old. Needless to say, what the parents experienced when they heard about such an aspiration of their beloved daughter. They had to make a lot of effort to turn the foolish child. Only the news of her father’s serious illness (exaggerated, to put it mildly) forced her to submit and return to St. Petersburg.

From her mother, a Swede of Finnish origin, Anya inherited not only neatness, composure, a desire for order and determination, but also a deep faith in God.

Anna Nikolaevna Snitkina (née Miltopeus) was a Lutheran; her ancestors even included a Lutheran bishop. At the age of nineteen she became engaged to an officer who soon died during the Hungarian campaign. The girl's grief was extreme. She decided never to get married. “But the years passed, and little by little the bitterness of the loss softened,” her daughter wrote much later. “In the Russian society where my mother moved, there were women who liked to make matches (this was the custom of that time), and to one meeting, actually for her, they invited two young men who were looking for a bride. They liked my mother extremely, but when they asked her whether she liked the young people presented, she replied: “No, I liked the old man who talked and laughed all the time.” She was talking about my father."*

Grigory Ivanovich was 42 years old. Anna Nikolaevna is 29. They were introduced to each other. “...he really liked her, but since she spoke Russian poorly, and he spoke French poorly, the conversations between them did not last very long. When my mother’s words were conveyed to him, he was very interested in the attention of the beautiful young lady, and he began to intensively visit the house where he could meet her. It ended with them falling in love and deciding to get married.”*

But marriage with a loved one was possible for Anna Nikolaevna only if she accepted Orthodoxy. For the girl, the choice was not easy. She prayed for a long time in the hope of hearing an answer to the torment of her heart. And then one day she saw in a dream how she entered an Orthodox church, kneeled in front of the shroud and prayed...

The answer was heard. And when the young couple arrived at the Simeon Church on Mokhovaya to perform the rite of anointing - oh, a miracle! - in front of Anna Nikolaevna was the same shroud and the same situation that she had seen in her dream!

Anna Nikolaevna joyfully entered the life of the Orthodox Church, confessed, received communion and raised her daughter in the faith. “She never repented of changing her religion, “otherwise,” she said, “I would feel far from my husband and children, and this would be difficult for me.”*

Profession: stenographer

Anya - Netochka, as her family called her - spoke with constant warmth about life under the wing of her parents. “I remember my childhood and youth with the most gratifying feeling: my father and mother loved us all very much and never punished us in vain. Life in the family was quiet, measured, calm, without quarrels, dramas or disasters.”*

Apart from the sudden “escape” to the monastery, Anya did not make her parents worry about herself. She was among the first students at St. Anne's School, graduated from the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium with a silver medal and entered Pedagogical Courses. My father’s serious illness made some adjustments: I had to give up teaching.

“...I, regretting leaving my dear patient alone for whole days, decided to leave the course for a while. Since dad suffered from insomnia, I spent hours reading Dickens novels to him and was very pleased if he was able to fall asleep a little while listening to my monotonous reading.”*

But her father literally insisted that Anya still get a profession and at least complete shorthand courses. Already at the end of her life, Anna Grigorievna wrote: “my good father foresaw for sure that thanks to shorthand I would find my happiness”*.

In 1866, Grigory Ivanovich reposed in the Lord. It was not easy for the orphaned Snitkin family. For Anya, this was the first misfortune in her life. “My grief was expressed violently: I cried a lot, spent whole days on Bolshaya Okhta, at the grave of the deceased, and could not come to terms with the heavy loss.”* By that time, lectures on shorthand were interrupted for the summer holidays, but teacher P.M. Olkhin, knowing about the girl’s difficult mental state, suggested that she take up shorthand correspondence. “Twice a week I had to send him two or three pages of a certain book, written by me in shorthand. Olkhin returned the transcripts to me, correcting the errors he noticed. Thanks to this correspondence, which lasted for three summer months, I became very successful in shorthand.”* When lectures resumed, Anna already mastered the skill of shorthand so much that the teacher could recommend her for literary work.

Ask Dostoevsky

On a chilly November evening in 1866, the entire future life of the fragile girl was determined - and not only hers.

Olkhin offered Anna a shorthand job from the writer and handed her a piece of paper folded in four, on which was written: “Stolyarny Lane, corner of M. Meshchanskaya, Alonkin’s house, apt. No. 13, ask Dostoevsky.”

“The name of Dostoevsky was familiar to me from childhood: he was my father’s favorite writer. I myself admired his works and cried over “Notes from the House of the Dead.” The thought of not only meeting a talented writer, but also helping him in his work excited and delighted me extremely.”*

On the eve of the significant meeting, the girl barely managed to close her eyes.

“Out of joy and excitement, I didn’t sleep almost all night and kept imagining Dostoevsky. Considering him a contemporary of my father, I assumed that he was already a very old man. I pictured him as either a fat and bald old man, or tall and thin, but always stern and gloomy, as Olkhin found him. What I was most worried about was how I would talk to him. Dostoevsky seemed to me such a scientist, so smart that I trembled in advance for every word I said. I was also embarrassed by the thought that I did not firmly remember the names and patronymics of the heroes of his novels, but I was sure that he would certainly talk about them. Having never met outstanding writers in my circle, I imagined them as some special creatures with whom one should speak in a special way. Remembering those times, I see what a small child I was then, despite my twenty years.”*

Many years later, Anna Grigorievna will describe in detail all the circumstances of the first meeting and her feelings from it:

“At first glance, Dostoevsky seemed quite old to me. But as soon as he spoke, he immediately became younger, and I thought that he was unlikely to be more than thirty-five to seven years old. He was of average height and stood very erect. Light brown, even slightly reddish hair was heavily pomaded and carefully smoothed. But what struck me were his eyes; they were different: one was brown, in the other the pupil was dilated over the entire eye and the irises were imperceptible. This duality of the eyes gave the gaze a mysterious expression. Dostoevsky's face, pale and sickly, seemed extremely familiar to me, probably because I had seen his portraits before. He was dressed in a blue cloth jacket, rather second-hand, but with snow-white linen (collar and cuffs) (...) Almost from the first sentences he declared that he had epilepsy and had had a seizure the other day, and this frankness greatly surprised me ( ...) Looking through what had been rewritten, Dostoevsky found that I had missed a period and had unclearly put a firm sign, and sharply remarked to me about this. He was apparently irritated and could not collect his thoughts. Either he asked what my name was and immediately forgot, then he began to walk around the room and walked for a long time, as if forgetting about my presence. I sat motionless, afraid to disturb his thoughts...”*.

Anna Grigorievna left the writer broken. “I didn’t like him and left a bad impression. I thought that I was unlikely to get along with him at work, and my dreams of independence threatened to crumble into dust...”*.

That day, Anna visited Dostoevsky twice: the first time he was “decidedly unable to dictate,” so he asked the girl to “come to him today, at eight o’clock.” The second meeting went smoother. “I answered all the questions simply, seriously, almost sternly (...) I don’t think I even smiled once when talking to Fyodor Mikhailovich, and he really liked my seriousness. He admitted to me later that he was pleasantly surprised by my ability to control myself. He was used to meeting nihilists in society and seeing their treatment, which outraged him. Moreover, he was glad to find in me the complete opposite of the dominant type of young girls at that time.”* The conversation quietly touched upon the Petrashevites and the death penalty. Fyodor Mikhailovich plunged into memories.

“I remember,” he said, “how I stood on the Semenovsky parade ground among my condemned comrades and, seeing the preparations, I knew that I had only five minutes to live. But these minutes seemed to me like years, tens of years, so it seemed that I had a long time to live! They had already put death shirts on us and divided us into three; I was eighth in the third row. The first three were tied to posts. In two or three minutes both rows would have been shot, and then it would have been our turn. How I wanted to live, Lord my God! What a journey life seemed, how much good, how much good I could do! I remembered my whole past, not very good use of it, and I so wanted to experience everything again and live for a long, long time... Suddenly I heard the all clear, and I felt encouraged. My comrades were untied from the posts, brought back and read a new sentence: I was sentenced to four years of hard labor. I won’t remember another such happy day! I walked around my casemate in the Alekseevsky ravelin and sang, sang loudly, I was so glad of the life given to me! Then they allowed my brother to say goodbye to me before separation and on the eve of the Nativity of Christ they sent me on a long journey. I keep the letter that I wrote to my late brother on the day the verdict was read; my nephew recently returned the letter to me.”*

“Execution” on Semenovsky parade ground. Drawing from Leonid Grossman’s book “Dostoevsky”

Anna Grigorievna was amazed: this “seemingly secretive and stern man” poured out his soul to her, sharing his most intimate experiences. “This frankness on that first day of my acquaintance with him pleased me extremely and left a wonderful impression.”*

When this long day came to an end, Anna enthusiastically told her mother how frank and kind Dostoevsky was with her... and to herself she noted a difficult, depressing, never-before-experienced impression: “for the first time in my life I saw a smart, kind man, but unfortunate, as if abandoned by everyone, and a feeling of deep compassion and pity arose in my heart...”*.

“It’s good that you are not a man”

By the time of his meeting with Anna, Fyodor Mikhailovich was in an extremely difficult financial situation. He assumed the debts of his deceased older brother. The debts were bills of exchange, and the creditors constantly threatened the writer to seize his property and put him in the debt department. In addition, Fyodor Mikhailovich was supported by a 21-year-old stepson and the family of his deceased brother. My younger brother, Nikolai, also needed help.

There was no way to reach an agreement with creditors. The writer fell into despair. At this time, a cunning and enterprising man appeared in his life - the publisher F.T. Stellovsky. He offered three thousand for the publication of the complete works of Dostoevsky in three volumes. At the same time, Fyodor Mikhailovich was obliged to write a new novel for the same amount within the prescribed period - by November 1, 1866. In case of failure to fulfill this obligation, Dostoevsky had to pay a penalty to the publisher, and the rights to all works became the property of Stellovsky. “Of course, the predator was counting on this,” Anna Grigorievna summarized in “Memoirs.”

In essence, Fyodor Mikhailovich had no choice. He agreed to the enslaving terms of the contract. The documents were drawn up, Stellovsky paid the money, but Dostoevsky did not receive a penny. The entire amount was transferred to creditors.

Fyodor Mikhailovich was engrossed in work on the novel Crime and Punishment, and when he finally remembered the contract, there was catastrophically little time to create a new full-fledged novel. The writer was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

When Anna Grigorievna first came to help Dostoevsky, there were twenty-six days left before the deadline for the novel “The Gambler.” The work existed only in rough notes and plans.

In such difficult circumstances, in the person of Anna Grigorievna, Fyodor Mikhailovich first met active help: “friends and relatives sighed and groaned, lamented and sympathized, gave advice, but no one entered into his almost hopeless situation. Except for the girl, a recent graduate of shorthand courses, with virtually no work experience, who suddenly appeared at the door of his apartment”**.

“It’s good that you are not a man,” said Dostoevsky after their first brief acquaintance and “testing the pen.”

Because the man would probably drink. You won’t drink, will you?..”*.

This is how the joint work of Fyodor Mikhailovich and Anna Grigorievna began. And from that moment on, the young girl belonged less and less to herself every day, taking on her fragile shoulders the burden of sacrificial service...

“What would you answer me?”

In twenty-six days, the novel “The Player” was created. The almost impossible happened. The writer’s talent would hardly have played a decisive role if it had not been for a modest girl nearby, who selflessly rushed into battle for the writer’s prosperous future, and, as it turned out very soon, her own.

Anna Grigorievna came to Dostoevsky every day, wrote down the novel in shorthand, returning home, often at night, rewrote it in ordinary language and brought it to Fyodor Mikhailovich’s house. By October 30, 1866, the manuscript was ready.

The shock work was over, and Fyodor Mikhailovich returned to the last part and epilogue of Crime and Punishment. Of course, with the help of a stenographer (“I want to ask for your help, kind Anna Grigorievna. It was so easy for me to work with you. I would like to dictate in the future and I hope that you will not refuse to be my employee...”*).

When Anna Snitkina came to the writer on November 8, 1866 to negotiate a job, Dostoevsky started talking about a new novel. The main character - an elderly and sick artist who has experienced a lot, lost his family and friends - meets a girl. “Let’s call her Anya so as not to call her a heroine,” said the writer. - This name is good...”*. Half a century later, Anna Grigorievna recalled: “Put yourself in her place,” he said in a trembling voice. - Imagine that this artist is me, that I confessed my love to you and asked you to be my wife. Tell me, what would you answer me?” Fyodor Mikhailovich’s face expressed such embarrassment, such heartache that I finally realized that this was not just a literary conversation and that I would deal a terrible blow to his pride and pride if I gave an evasive answer.

I looked at the excited face of Fyodor Mikhailovich, so dear to me, and said:
“I would answer you that I love you and will love you all my life!”*.

Anna Grigorievna modestly continues: “I will not convey those tender, full of love words that Fyodor Mikhailovich spoke to me in those unforgettable moments: they are sacred to me...”*.

The explanation took place. The offer was made, consent was received. And on February 15, 1867, Anna Grigorievna Snitkina and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky got married. She is 20, he is 45. “God gave her to me,” the writer will later say more than once about his incomparable Anna.

“I loved Fyodor Mikhailovich boundlessly, but it was not physical love, not a passion that could exist among people of equal age. My love was purely cerebral, ideological. It was rather adoration, admiration for a person so talented and possessing such high spiritual qualities. It was a heart-stopping pity for a man who had suffered so much, who had never seen joy and happiness and was so abandoned by his loved ones.”*

Cheerful and serious, cheerful and keenly aware of the pain of others, Anna embarked on the thorny path of family life. Life with a genius.

"Days of Undeserved Happiness"

The young woman was forced to live under the same roof with Fyodor Mikhailovich’s stepson Pavel, spoiled and dishonest. Moreover, the “stepmother” was a year younger than the “junior”. He constantly complained to his stepfather about Anna Grigorievna, and when he was alone with her, he did not disdain any means to offend her more painfully. In front of his father’s eyes, Pasha was very thoughtful: he looked after Anna during dinners, picked up the napkins she dropped.

“This stepson of mine,” Fyodor Mikhailovich softly admitted, “is a kind, honest boy; but, unfortunately, with an amazing character: he positively promised himself, from childhood, to do nothing, not having the slightest fortune and at the same time having the most ridiculous concepts about life.”*

And with other relatives it was no easier. They behaved arrogantly towards Dostoevskaya. As soon as Fyodor Mikhailovich received an advance for the book, out of nowhere, his brother’s widow Emilia Feodorovna, or his younger unemployed brother Nikolai, appeared, or Pavel had “urgent” needs - for example, the need to buy a new coat to replace the old one that had gone out of fashion. The writer could not refuse help to anyone...

Another inevitability was Dostoevsky’s illness. Anna knew about her from the first day they met, but she hoped that Fyodor Mikhailovich, being under her close supervision and care, would be healed. One day, when the couple were visiting, another seizure occurred:

“Fyodor Mikhailovich was extremely animated and was telling my sister something interesting. Suddenly he interrupted his speech mid-sentence, turned pale, stood up from the sofa and began to lean towards me. I looked in amazement at his changed face. But suddenly a terrible, inhuman scream, or rather a scream, was heard, and Fyodor Mikhailovich began to lean forward.<…>Subsequently, I heard this “inhuman” cry dozens of times, common in an epileptic at the beginning of an attack. And this scream always shocked and frightened me.<…>Here for the first time I saw what a terrible disease Fyodor Mikhailovich was suffering from. Hearing his screams and moans that did not stop for hours, seeing his face distorted with suffering, completely unlike him, his insanely fixed eyes, not at all understanding his incoherent speech, I was almost convinced that my dear, beloved husband was going crazy, and what horror I brought this thought hits me!”*.

Anna Grigorievna confessed to the writer and critic A.A. Izmailov: “...I remember the days of our life together as days of great, undeserved happiness. But sometimes I redeemed him with great suffering. Fyodor Mikhailovich’s terrible illness threatened to destroy all our well-being any day... This disease, as you know, can neither be prevented nor cured. All I could do was unbutton his collar and take his head in my hands. But to see your beloved face, blue, distorted, with engorged veins, to realize that he was suffering and you could not help him in any way - this was such suffering with which, obviously, I had to atone for my happiness of being close to him ... "*.

Dostoevskaya could not help but remember - with quiet sadness - her parents' home, the quiet family comfort, devoid of adversity and shock.

When it became completely unbearable, Anna asked herself: “Why doesn’t he, the “great heart expert,” see how hard my life is?”*.

Gradually, exhausted Anna comes to the conclusion that a change of scenery is the only possibility of salvation. The husband didn't mind. And Dostoevskaya set about organizing the trip with all her energy. Due to lack of finances (her husband's relatives with their urgent needs miraculously appeared every time the writer received even the most meager fee), Anna Grigorievna had to pawn her dowry. But she did not regret anything - after all, a happy family life was at stake. And on April 14, 1867, the couple went abroad.

Roulette and wedding ring

“We went abroad for three months, and returned to Russia after more than four years,” recalled Anna Grigorievna. – During this time, many joyful events happened in our lives, and I will forever thank God for strengthening me in my decision to go abroad. There a new, happy life began for Fyodor Mikhailovich and me, and our mutual friendship and love strengthened, which continued until the death of my husband.”*

Dostoevskaya kept a notebook in which she wrote down the story of their journey day after day. “This is how the diary of Dostoevsky’s wife arose - a unique phenomenon in memoir literature and an indispensable source for everyone who deals with the biography of the writer”***. “At first I only wrote down my travel impressions and described our daily life,” recalls Anna Grigorievna. “But little by little I wanted to write down everything that so interested and captivated me about my dear husband: his thoughts, his conversations, his opinions about music, literature, etc.”*

In addition to the joys, the journey also brought many difficult moments. Here Fyodor Mikhailovich’s painful passion for playing roulette, which he became interested in back in 1862, during his first trip abroad, was revealed. The couple's already thin wallet was emptied instantly. “A simple everyday motive - to win “capital” in order to pay off creditors, to live without need for several years, and most importantly - to finally get the opportunity to calmly work on your works - at the gambling table lost its original meaning. Impetuous, passionate, impetuous Dostoevsky gives himself over to unbridled excitement. Playing roulette becomes an end in itself.”***.

The depth of humility with which Anna Grigorievna endured this “illness” of her husband is amazing, and yet in excitement he pawned literally everything, even... her wedding ring and her earrings.

“I realized,” Dostoevskaya recalled, “that this is not a simple “weakness of will,” but an all-consuming passion for a person, something spontaneous, against which even a strong character cannot fight. We must come to terms with this, look at it as a disease for which there are no remedies.”*

Anna Grigorievna, with her humble love, created a miracle: her husband was cured of passion. The last time he played was in 1871, before returning to Russia, in Wiesbaden. On April 28, 1871, Dostoevsky writes to his wife from Wiesbaden to Dresden: “A great thing has happened to me, the vile fantasy that tormented me for almost 10 years has disappeared. For ten years (or, better yet, since the death of my brother, when I was suddenly overwhelmed by debt), I kept dreaming of winning. I dreamed seriously, passionately. Now it's all over! This was quite the last time. Do you believe, Anya, that my hands are now untied; I was bound by the game, and now I will think about business and not dream about the game all night long, as happened in the past. And therefore, things will go better and faster, and God will bless you! Anya, keep your heart for me, don’t hate me and don’t stop loving me. Now that I am so renewed, let’s go together and I will make you happy!”*.

The writer kept his oath.

Gradually, the spouses grew inextricably with each other, becoming, according to the word of the Lord, “one flesh.” In his letters, Fyodor Mikhailovich often repeated that he felt “glued” to his family and could not tolerate even a short separation.

Flowers for my dear daughter

During the journey, the happiness of waiting and the birth of the first child happened, which brought the spouses together. Anna Grigorievna recalled: “Fyodor Mikhailovich turned out to be the most tender father: he was certainly present when the girl was bathed and helped me, he himself wrapped her in a pique blanket and pinned it with safety pins, carried and rocked her in his arms and, abandoning his studies, hurried to her, a little as soon as he heard her voice (...) he sat for hours by her bed, now singing songs to her, now talking to her, and when she was in her third month, he was sure that Sonechka would recognize him, and this is what he wrote to A.N. Maykov dated May 18, 1868: “This small, three-month-old creature, so poor, so tiny - for me there was already a face and a character. She began to know me, love me and smiled when I approached. When I sang songs to her in my funny voice, she loved to listen to them. She didn't cry or wince when I kissed her; she stopped crying when I approached”*.

Is it possible to describe the grief of the parents when, after a short illness, their three-month-old baby Sonya died? “I am unable to describe the despair that took possession of us when we saw our dear daughter dead,” Dostoevskaya recalled. “Deeply shocked and saddened by her death, I was terribly afraid for my unfortunate husband: his despair was violent, he sobbed and cried like a woman.” Misfortune brought them even closer. “Every day my husband and I went to her grave, carried flowers and cried.”*

Their second child, a girl named Lyuba, was born abroad. The happy father wrote to the critic Strakhov: “Oh, why aren’t you married, and why don’t you have a child, dear Nikolai Nikolaevich. I swear to you that this is three-quarters of life’s happiness, but the rest is only one quarter.”*

Quiet family happiness seemed now to be firmly established under their roof in Dresden. The catastrophic lack of money was covered by love, complete mutual understanding and optimism.

Fyodor Mikhailovich jokingly complained:

We have been living in poverty for two years,
The only clear thing we have is our conscience.
And we are waiting for money from Katkov
For a failed story.

Anna Grigorievna chided him in response:

You took money from Katkov,
I promised an essay.
You are the last capital
I whistled at the roulette wheel.

But life outside the homeland gradually became more and more painful. The last money was used to buy tickets, and the family went to Russia.

Main way

On July 8, 1871, the Dostoevskys arrived in St. Petersburg. Soon the couple had an heir, Fedor.

Creditors quickly found out about the writer’s return to St. Petersburg and had serious intentions to darken the life of the Dostoevskys. But Anna Grigorievna decided to take this matter into her own hands. Unknown to her husband, she managed to meet the most impatient and agree with them on the waiting time.

This was no longer the modest Netochka who stepped onto the threshold of Dostoevsky’s apartment four years ago. “From a timid, shy girl, I developed into a woman with a decisive character, who could no longer be frightened by the struggle with everyday adversities, or rather, with debts that by the time we returned to St. Petersburg reached twenty-five thousand.”*

In an effort to improve the family’s financial situation, Anna Grigorievna decided to publish her own novel “Demons.” Let us note that at that time there were no precedents for a writer to self-publish his work and earn any real profit from it.

The tireless Dostoevskaya delved into the matter down to the smallest detail, and as a result, “Demons” were sold out instantly and extremely profitably. From that moment on, Anna Grigorievna’s main activity became the publication of her husband’s books... Finally, there was a little more freedom in funds, and one could breathe easy.

In 1875, a second son, Alexey, appeared in the family. A bolt from the blue of a happy family life broke out three years later - beloved Alyoshenka died from an epileptic fit.

Fyodor Mikhailovich was heartbroken, because the cause of the boy’s death was his father’s illness, which was transmitted to the child. The very first attack of epilepsy turned out to be fatal for Alyosha. For the sake of other children, for the sake of her husband, Anna initially restrained her suffering and even insisted on Dostoevsky’s trip - together with the philosopher Solovyov - to Optina Pustyn. But there was no strength to withstand the stress of grief.

“I was so lost, so sad and crying that no one recognized me,” she wrote many years later. “My usual cheerfulness disappeared, as well as my usual energy, in its place was apathy. I became cold towards everything: towards the household, business and even towards my own children.”* This is how her returning husband found her. Now, spiritually consoled, he began to save his beloved.

In Optina Pustyn, Fyodor Mikhailovich twice met alone with Elder Ambrose, who conveyed his blessing and words of consolation to Anna Grigorievna.

Upon returning from Optina, Dostoevsky began writing The Brothers Karamazov. Work, coupled with Anna Grigorievna’s care, helped me return to life. In the mouth of his hero, Elder Zosima, Fyodor Mikhailovich put the very words that Father Ambrose conveyed to Anna: “Rachel cries for her children and cannot be consoled, because they are not there, and such a limit has been set for you, mothers, on earth. And don’t be comforted, and you don’t need to be comforted, don’t be comforted and cry, just every time you cry, remember unswervingly that your son is the only one from the angels of God - from there he looks at you and sees you, and rejoices at your tears, and He points to them to the Lord God. And for a long time you will continue to experience this great maternal cry, but in the end it will turn into quiet joy for you, and your bitter tears will be only tears of quiet tenderness and heartfelt cleansing, saving you from sins.”

Dostoevsky worked towards the creation of this novel all his life. In it, the writer poses the fundamental problems of human existence: about the meaning of the life of each person and all human history, about the spiritual and moral foundations of human existence, about faith and unbelief.

The novel was completed in November 1880 and was dedicated to Anna Grigorievna.

The Lord determined their life together to be 14 years. Fyodor Mikhailovich created all his great novels and “The Diary of a Writer,” that is, significantly more than half of what he wrote in his entire life, during these years. “The Gambler”, “Crime and Punishment”, “Idiot”, “Demons”, “Teenager”, “The Brothers Karamazov”, “The Diary of a Writer” with the famous Pushkin speech passed through the hands of Anna Grigorievna, a stenographer and copyist. Its significance in the life and posthumous fate of the writer cannot be overestimated.

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At the beginning of her “Memoirs,” Anna Grigorievna wrote how many important moments of her life were connected with the Alexander Nevsky Lavra: the wedding of her parents, baptism, infancy spent in a house belonging to the Lavra... Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was buried at the Tikhvin cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. She also dreamed of being buried next to him.

“Walking behind the coffin of Fyodor Mikhailovich, I swore an oath to live for our children, vowed to devote the rest of my life, as much as I could, to glorifying the memory of my unforgettable husband and spreading his noble ideas.”*

Anna Grigorievna was 35 years old.

She kept her promise. Dostoevskaya published the complete works of her husband seven times, created his museum, and opened a school named after him.

It’s amazing how much humility, kindness, and most importantly – love – there was in this woman. In one of her letters, she addressed her husband: “I am such an ordinary woman, the golden mean, with petty whims and demands... And suddenly the most generous, noble, pure, honest, holy man loves me!”*.

After the death of Fyodor Mikhailovich, Anna Grigorievna lived for another 37 years. She never married again.

Anna Dostoevskaya confessed to L.P. Grossman, the writer’s biographer: “I do not live in the twentieth century, I stayed in the 70s of the nineteenth century. My people are the friends of Fyodor Mikhailovich, my society is the circle of departed people close to Dostoevsky. I live with them. Everyone who works on studying the life or works of Dostoevsky seems like a dear person to me.”***.

“I gave myself to Fyodor Mikhailovich when I was 20 years old. Now I’m over 70, and I still belong only to him with every thought, every action.”*

In the memorial album of S.S. Prokofiev, the future author of the opera “The Gambler,” where the owner asked that all recordings be dedicated only to the sun, in January 1917 Anna Grigorievna wrote: “The sun of my life is Feodor Dostoevsky”***.

They were not perfect people. From the correspondence of the spouses it is clear that there were quarrels, bewilderments, and outbursts of jealousy between them. But their history once again proves: the Lord, who sanctified the sacrament of marriage with his first miracle in Cana of Galilee and sanctifies it every time when two people stand before the altar with martyr’s crowns over their heads, the Lord, for the humble joint enduring of suffering and shocks, will not fail to send down that precious gift, without which a person is only “a ringing brass or a sounding cymbal.”

Anna Grigorievna wrote: “Feelings must be handled with care so that they do not break. There is nothing more valuable in life than love. You should forgive more - look for guilt in yourself and smooth out the roughness in yourself.”*

Fyodor Mikhailovich echoes through the mouth of his elder Zosima: “Brothers, love is a teacher, but you need to be able to acquire it, because it is difficult to acquire, expensively bought, through long work and over a long period of time, because you must love not just for a moment, but for the whole term. But by chance, anyone can fall in love, and even a villain can fall in love.”

In the last year of her earthly life in war-torn Crimea, Anna Grigorievna was seriously ill and starving.

Anna Dostoevskaya died on June 22, 1918 in Yalta and was buried in the city’s Polikurovsky cemetery.

Half a century later, in 1968, her ashes were transferred to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra and buried next to her husband’s grave.

On Dostoevsky’s tombstone, on the right side, a modest inscription appeared:

“Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya. 1846-1918".

The attitude of his contemporaries towards Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was ambiguous: they despised him, did not like him, they laughed at him. He was a complex person: nervous, absent-minded, unsure of himself, suffering from frequent seizures of epilepsy, and also a passionate gambler. It is not surprising that such a person was catastrophically unlucky in love.

FIRST, his mad love for Avdotya Panaeva, because of which he endured constant ridicule in salons. The girl chose Nekrasov over him. Then an unsuccessful marriage to Marya Dmitrievna Isaeva, a petty, jealous woman who perceived poverty as a constant insult, tormented Dostoevsky with reproaches and was completely indifferent to his work. After the death of his wife, the writer experienced several more novels, which brought him nothing but pain and disappointment. Love failures haunted Dostoevsky until he met Anna Snitkina, his last love...

Acquaintance

AT 45 YEARS OLD, Dostoevsky made a bet with himself: he decided to do an “eccentric” thing - to write two novels at once in 4 months. The first is “Crime and Punishment” for the magazine “Russian Messenger”, the second is “The Gambler” for the publisher Stellovsky. The writer entered into a completely enslaving agreement with the latter: Stellovsky bought the right to publish three volumes of Fyodor Mikhailovich’s works and one new novel. Dostoevsky was tied hand and foot by obligations to the magazine. And it seemed there was no time to create a new masterpiece. This is exactly what the fraudulent publisher was counting on. In case of non-compliance with the agreement, Dostoevsky lost all income from three volumes for nine years.

But Dostoevsky was a rare workaholic: he had everything for “eccentric” things - talent, desire and ability to write. The only thing missing was a stenographer. She became Anna Snitkina, the best student of the cursive writing courses in St. Petersburg. A young girl, waiting for a meeting with Fyodor Mikhailovich, spent a terrible night: she did not sleep, tossing from side to side and dreaming about what her first date would be like with the great writer, “so smart, who has experienced so much.” The great writer in fact turned out to be a strange, absent-minded and completely forgetful person: he could not remember her name, he kept getting confused and asking again. Anna left him laughing, in love at first sight.

Their romance turned out more than successfully: Dostoevsky finished “The Gambler” and, through the police, handed it over to an unscrupulous publisher. There was no other way out: Stellovsky disappeared from the city and left instructions to his subordinates: not to accept anything from the writer, so as not to allow him to fulfill the contract. The magazine received "Crime and Punishment", and Anna became the wife of Fyodor Mikhailovich. And even though he did not love her so passionately and ardently, his heart demanded peace. In addition, Anna was a “very pretty, well-educated and, most importantly, infinitely kind” girl; this is exactly what Dostoevsky dreamed of all his life. In his letters to his brother, he wrote: “The difference in years is terrible (22 and 44), but I am more and more convinced that she will be happy. She has a heart, and she knows how to love.”

Forced departure

The HAPPINESS of the first days ended very quickly. A few months after the wedding, Dostoevsky's brother Mikhail died. And his entire family, headed by the inconsolable widow Emilia, moved in with the writer. The situation was aggravated by the presence of an extremely harmful stepson Pasha (the son of his first wife). The family hearth turned into some kind of booth. The house was always crowded with nephews, some relatives came, everyone begged for money. One day Anna saw that Dostoevsky returned on a cold December day in a light autumn coat, in which he was terribly cold. Emilia and Pasha persuaded him to pawn his fur coat; they once again needed financial help. But much more than selfish interests, something else frightened her: the newly-made relatives managed to convince Fyodor Mikhailovich that the young wife was bored with the old man. As a result, the couple practically stopped seeing each other. Anna was surprised at her husband’s blindness and naivety and suffered immensely. She decided to save her marriage by any means. The only way out of the situation was to take Dostoevsky somewhere away from the annoying family. Somewhere abroad. In her diary, Anna wrote: “To save our love, it is necessary to retire for at least two or three months... I was deeply convinced that then my husband and I would get together for life and no one would separate us again. But where would we get money for this much-needed trip? - I was thinking, and suddenly one thought flashed through my head: “What, shouldn’t I sacrifice all my dowry for the sake of the trip?” My plan is to pawn all my things. Through the efforts of this small but strong woman, the money was found. The Dostoevsky couple went to Europe, despite the efforts of their relatives to prevent their breadwinner from leaving.

New, happy life

THEY left for a few months and returned four years later. “During this time, many joyful events happened in our lives, and I will forever thank God that he strengthened me in my desire to go abroad. There a new, happy life began for my husband and me,” Anna wrote. This was partly true. Only on the path to happiness they had to overcome a lot: lack of money, poverty, Dostoevsky’s bad mood, his passion for the game. Anna was always there - support and support, she looked at everything with a smile and understanding. Fyodor Mikhailovich did not see a shadow of reproach or disappointment on her face, and only then did he realize what a treasure was next to him. And he loved Anna with all his heart: “If you only knew what my wife means to me now! I love her, and she says she’s happy!”

“Many Russian writers would feel better if they had wives like Dostoevsky,” said another Russian classic, Leo Tolstoy, not without envy. And he was right. No other woman could have survived Dostoevsky’s eternal losses at roulette so calmly. “Fedya was terribly upset. I realized that he probably lost those ten gold pieces. And so it happened. But I immediately began to beg him not to be upset and asked if he needed to get more. He asked for five more. I immediately gave it, and he was terribly grateful." Dostoevsky took the money, lost, tearfully asked to forgive him, and the next day everything was repeated all over again. And as a result, the fanatical player, looking at his holy wife, in one fell swoop quit playing once and for all.

Return

ANNA returned from Europe a different person: a confident, happy woman, the mother of two children - daughter Lyuba and son Fedya. She began to manage all her husband’s financial affairs, and she conducted them so brilliantly that Dostoevsky finally managed to pay off all his debts. And there were a great many of them. She was everything to him: publisher, banker, proofreader, stenographer, wife, lover and mother. Dostoevsky found the love he wanted, while apart he wrote to her: “I don’t know a single woman equal to you... and when I go to bed, I think about you with agony, I hug you mentally and kiss you all in my imagination. Do you understand?.. For me You are lovely, and there is no one like you. You yourself don’t know how lovely your eyes are, your smile and your animation in conversation. God grant us to live longer together, and I will love you more and more.”

And they lived 14 long happy years. Only death could separate them. Fyodor Mikhailovich suffered a rupture of the pulmonary artery; before his death, he took his wife by the hand and whispered for the last time that he loved her...