Dostoevsky’s Favorite Murder

I love Dostoevsky; for those interested in him, or in Russian literature, but who might find the "genre" hard to breach, I can't recommend Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" enough. It's a very quick read, and what initially convinced me to continue exploring Russian writing.

"Was he speaking from experience? Dostoevsky had been arrested in 1849 for his participation in an underground salon whose members read banned works and discussed French Utopian socialism. He had spent the next four years in prison, where he had undergone a political conversion, abandoning the radicalism of his youth to become, on many issues, a conservative. Yet, what incensed Dostoevsky above all about Chernyshevsky was his blind faith in scientific explanations for human behavior. Chernyshevsky became known for a theory he called rational egoism. Inspired by Jeremy Bentham and English Utilitarianism, Chernyshevsky claimed that human behavior was rational in that it was guided by self-interest. If poverty were to be eliminated, he conjectured, crime would all but cease to exist.

Dostoevsky had served side by side with murderers in prison, “sharing tables and latrines with them, hauling bricks with them, sipping water from the same ladles,” writes Birmingham, and could not abide this simplistic view of crime—and by extension of human nature. People were unpredictable, irrational, and often did things that worked against their own interests—this was ugly, but also beautiful, because it was the essence of freedom. Indeed, this is why Crime and Punishment became a crime novel in which the whodunit is answered straight away, leaving the rest of the novel for questions of motive or—more accurately in the case of Dostoevsky—the muddled mess that is human motivation in the first place."

Seems relevant to a lot of the discussions over LA rail thefts, increased crime, and progressive DAs relationship to these trends. There is nothing new under the sun.

Can't help but think of Anders Breivik's current courtroom theatricals when I read about the narcissistic "revolutionaries" which inspired Dostoevsky's book.

2/3 of the way through. It's one of those books that I really look forward to reading. I find myself stealing bits of time to read a few more pages.

Thanks for this, much appreciated. Always a pleasure to read essays that credibly bring to life times long gone, which in this case brings Dostoevsky to life too.

For example: "In the mid-1860s, Russia was in the throes of a true crime craze." and "Sections like “The Criminal Chronicle” became a regular feature of daily newspapers, introducing new social types like the charismatic defense attorney." and "By the end of the century, terrorism was referred to by those throughout the world—including Karl Marx—simply as “the Russian method.”

It creates a better understanding of the surviving literature, moored in the social and political context where it belongs. We can probably never escape the fact that we view everything from our own social and political context - but a good dose of historical knowledge broadens our perspective at least.