“Russian Idea” by F.M. Dostoevsky as the Idea of a New Europe

Abstract

The author of the article examines the issue of the origins and evolution of F. M. Dostoevsky about the “Russian idea”. The emergence of this concept is associated with the work of Dostoevsky, but later the term took on an independent life and was used in a variety of senses and contexts. The article notes that Dostoevsky originally wrote about the Petersburg idea as the meaning of the existence of Russia. The Petersburg idea was embodied in a practical sense, life dynamics and in the “present moment”. Hard labor and exile, by the writer’s own admission, opened the Russian people to him. The “Russian idea” became a synthesis of the idea of St. Petersburg and the real life of the Russian people. The author of the article shows that the original views of the writer were not discarded, they continued to develop consistently in subsequent times. The transformation consisted in the fact that the embodiment of the “Russian idea” was transferred to the future, it became the semantic completion of the path of Russia as a European power and the Russian people as a European Christian people. Russia, as the last great European nation, completed the path of the whole of Europe. Dostoevsky considered the reforms of Peter I and Alexander II to be the most important milestones in the formation of Russia, despite all the costs of these events recognized by the writer. The current task of Russia was the active development of this process, without which the perspective of the “Russian idea” could be lost.