Dostoevsky's engagement of Russian intellectuals in the question of Russia and Europe: From 'Winter Notes on Summer Impressions' to 'The Devils'

Dostoevsky's views concerning Russian intellectuals of the past and present—and their connection with European culture—are often confusingly paradoxical. While the novelist insists the majority of the intelligentsia has been alienated from the common Russian people and their Orthodox Christian roots through the wholesale assimilation of Western secular teachings, he sees much that is redeeming in this group and often assigns their cosmopolitanism a messianic purpose.;To truly understand Dostoevsky's “relationship” to the Russian intelligentsia, therefore, I examine his numerous portrayals of both historical and fictional intellectuals, beginning with his European travel-log Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (1863) and concluding with The Devils (1871). In Winter Notes, we see Dostoevsky cite figures from Russian history and literature (among them two previous travelers to Europe, Nikolai Karamzin and Denis Fonvizin) in an attempt to show his readers Russian intellectuals who, though heavily influenced by Europe, did not “regenerate into Europeans.”;Dostoevsky's ideologically tendentious approach toward depicting various intellectuals, however, leads to various “misreadings” and “misuses” of historical and literary figures. Examples of this include the novelist's portrayals of Alexander Pushkin, and Alexander Griboedov's fictional character Chatsky. Dostoevsky makes Pushkin a prophet of Russia's future leadership role in Europe (though the poet never mentioned anything of the sort) and “fills out” Griboedov's hero, adding a description of Chatsky's repentance and return to his “native soil.”;At the same time, Dostoevsky's reworking of real and fictional Russian intellectuals into his own imaginary characters (demonstrating his compassion for such Westerner intellectuals as Alexander Herzen and T. N. Granovsky) could yield spectacular results, as in the case of Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky in The Devils, one of the novelist's most believable and sympathetic literary creations. Significantly, it is Stepan, an intellectual , not a peasant or merchant, who carries Dostoevsky's message of the renewal of Russia (and Europe) through faith in Christ. By studying such characters, I hope to round out our understanding of Dostoevsky's relationship to this pervasive phenomenon in Russian culture: the Westerner intellectual.