New Delhi. 11 November: On the birth anniversary of eminent Russian Writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, India’s capital city witnessed a historic evening, when his Great-Great Grandson Alexei Dostoevsky visited it and gave a detailed lecture about the history of Dostoevsky Family. Alexei is the first member of Dostoevsky lineage to ever set foot in India.
On the late afternoon of 11th November I visited the venue “Russian Cultural Centre” about half an hour before the start of the lecture. The place is a Brezhnev era construction, and I remember I used to visit it during my college days to watch Russian Cinema. Just before the Start of the lecture I got the chance to meet Alexei Dimitrievich Dostoevsky. He was a very warm and cordial gentleman and there was an ease in his manners that dissolved all formality. It felt like as if kindness and depth of his ancestor’s world have found a living expression in him. I took an autograph of him and when I asked for a photograph he happily agreed for it too.
A good amount of Russian diaspora also participated in this event alongwith Indian academics, students of Russian language and enthusiasts of Russian Literature. Some Russian members of audience had put two small figurines on stage, among which one was a Soviet Bronze statue of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Alexei Dimitrievich Dostoevsky (Алексей Дмитриевич Достоевский) started his lecture by describing India as “Fantastic And Majestic Land” and he was very fascinated at being in India. He recounted that his family’s journey began in a Tatar Mongol Fiefdom, under a Tatar Noble or Tatar Murza. Then in the year 1504 their ancestor Danila Irtishch moved to a Slavic Christian fiefdom and settled in a village called Dostoeyvo in modern day Belarus. Dostoeyvo means “Knife” in Russian. There the family received a small estate and used the double surname Irtischev-Dostoevsky for several generation, and later shortening it to Dostoevsky. Alexsei recalled that this village of Dostoeyvo still exists and they discovered the stones of their ancestral home during a visit to the village a few years ago.
Alexei told the audience that Fyodor’s father, Mikhail Andriyevich Dostoevsky was a established Physician and he sent Fyodor and his elder brother to St. Petersburg for further studies.
Dostoevsky brothers arrived in St. Petersburg in the year of Pushkin’s death (1837), and they were aged 15 and 16 respectively at that time. The death of Pushkin had such an effect on the mind of Dostoevsky brothers that they took an oath on the great writer’s grave that they would never abandon writing. As per Alexei, “Dostoevsky’s (Fyodor) literary life began with Pushkin and ended with Pushkin”, noting Fyodor’s final speech at the inauguration of Pushkin Memorial in Moscow in the year 1880.
In a brief opening talk, Prof. Meeta Narain of Centre for Russian Studies, at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) shed light on the psychological and spiritual dimensions of Dostoevsky’s writing, highlighting how his orthodox upbringing had shaped themes of faith, doubt, love and the darker edges of human nature in works such as Crime and Punishment, The Brother’s Karamazov, and Demons.
Overall, it was a remarkable and one-of-a-kind evening in the city of Delhi when a living descendant of a major pilar of world literature had interacted person to person with the enthusiasts of Russian Literature. A girl from the audience during the interaction with Alexei Dostoevsky had remarked that She was in tears, while listening to the five hundred years saga of Dostoevsky family from the Tatar origins to the village of Dostoeyvo, to Mikhail Dostoevsky’s military service in the fields of Borodino during Napoleonic Wars, to Pushkin’s grave and at a rare glimpse at the nostalgic and surreal world of Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In the end audience members had the opportunity to take a group photograph with Alexei Dostoevsky and the evening culminated in the High Tea when Alexei Dostoevsky interacted face to face with the delighted and amazed members of the audience.
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