THE IDEA OF POVERZHENNICHESTVO IN F.M. DOSTOEVSKY’S WORK OF THE 1860S

Abstract

The present article studies the embodiment of the ideas of poverzhennichestvo in the images of the Russian people in the works of Dostoevsky of the 1860s. The material of the study are the works of the writer “Notes from the Dead House”, “Crime and Punishment”. “The Idiot”. The aim of the study is to interpret Dostoevsky’s views on the people and nationality in the ideological and figurative space of these works. The main task is to identify the peculiarities of the embodiment of the idea of poverzhennichestvo and the category of nationality in Dostoevsky’s works of the 1860s. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this complex of ideas is revealed through the figurative system, the connection between the objective content of the work and the synthesis of the author’s evaluation, as well as the interaction of Dostoevsky’s artistic creation with his published works regarding his views on the people. The article concludes that the important means of expressing the writer’s popular worldview are the people’s voices and images of the spokesmen of the people’s truth. Through them the writer points out the duality of the Russian national character and at the same time conveys a firm belief that the majority of the people retain the spiritual basis of Orthodox culture, which makes it necessary for the Russian people to fulfil the great historical mission of the salvation of mankind. The misguided Russian intelligentsia can find salvation and self-purification only through integration with the people on the basis of Orthodoxy.