Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky

Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhaylovich (1821–81), Russian novelist. He spent several years in the army but resigned his commission in 1844 to devote himself to writing. His first novel, Poor Folk (1846), was well received. Arrested in 1849 as a member of a socialist circle, Dostoyevsky was condemned to be shot; however, the sentence was commuted in the execution yard to 4 years' hard labor in Siberia. The House of the Dead (1862) tells of his experiences there. During the 1860s he founded two journals and traveled in Europe after his consumptive wife and his brother had died, and after he had incurred large gambling debts, returning to Russia in 1871. In 1876 he edited his own monthly The Writer's Diary. Suffering from epilepsy for most of his life, he died after an epileptic attack. Dostoyevsky's major novels, Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1868), The Devils (1871–72), and The Brothers Karamazov (1879–80), reveal his deep understanding of psychology and the problems of sin and suffering.