Minihan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 140.

*2 Mochulsky, p. 140.

*3 If youth only knew! (French).

*4 Mochulsky, p. 156.

*5 Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Stir of Liberation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 28.

*6 Frank, p. 140.

*7 Mochulsky, p. 184; emphasis in original.

*8 Mochulsky, p. 186.

*9 Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 214.

Introduction

In the remote parts of Siberia, amidst steppes, mountains, or impenetrable forests, you occasionally happen upon small towns of one or, at the most, two thousand inhabitants, wooden, unsightly, with two churches—one in town, the other in the cemetery—towns that look more like a good-sized village near Moscow than a town. They are usually quite well supplied with police officers, assessors, and all other subaltern ranks. In general, serving in Siberia, despite the cold, is extremely warm and snug. People live simply, unprogressively; the customs are old, firm, sanctified by the ages. The officials, who by rights play the role of the Siberian aristocracy, are natives, deep-rooted Siberians, or transients from Russia, mostly from the capitals,1 enticed by the payment of tax-free wages, the double travel allowance, and tempting hopes for the future. Those who are able to solve the riddle of life almost always stay in Siberia and delight in taking root there. Later on they bear sweet and abundant fruit. But others, light-minded folk, unable to solve the riddle of life, soon weary of Siberia and ask themselves in anguish why on earth they ended up there. They impatiently serve out their term of office, three years, and once it expires, they immediately put in for a transfer and go back where they came from, denouncing Siberia and laughing at it. They are wrong: not only from the point of view of service, but from many others, one can be blissfully happy in Siberia. The climate is excellent; there are many remarkably rich and hospitable merchants, and many extremely well-to-do non-Russians. The young ladies blossom like roses and are moral in the highest degree. Wildfowl fly down the streets and right into the hunters’ arms. Unnatural quantities of champagne are drunk. The caviar is astonishing. The harvest is fifteenfold in some places … Generally, it is a blessed land. You need only know how to take advantage of it. In Siberia they know how.

In one such merry and self-contented little town, with the most charming inhabitants, the memory of which will remain forever fixed in my heart, I met Alexander Petrovich Goryanchikov, a settler, a Russian-born gentleman and landowner, who was later sent to second-degree hard labor for the murder of his wife, and, on the expiration of the ten-year term laid down by the law, was living out his life humbly and inaudibly as a settler in the town of K.2 In fact, he had been assigned to the suburbs, but he lived in town, which provided him with the opportunity of earning at least some sort of living by teaching children. In Siberian towns one often meets with teachers who are exiled settlers; they are not scorned. For the most part they teach French, so necessary for making one’s way in life, and of which no one in the remote parts of Siberia would have any notion without them. I first met Alexander Petrovich in the house of Ivan Ivanovich Gvozdikov, an old-fashioned, distinguished, and hospitable official, who had five very promising daughters of various ages. Alexander Petrovich gave them lessons four times a week, at thirty silver kopecks a lesson.