FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY AND MODERNITY

INTRODUCTION TO ONE RUSSIAN CRITIQUE OF XIX CENTURY EUROPE

Abstract

The article is an introduction to one of the Russian critiques to modernity in nineteenth-century Europe through the literary production and biography of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky. Such critique reveals traces such as Russia's intellectual, economic and social position in the European context, the struggle between Westerners and Slavophiles for the definition and ideological directives of the nation, questions about nationalism and messianism, existential problems of modern men on the threshold of industrial capitalism in a country marked by the majority of the peasantry population and the growing revolutionary fervor that in much outlines the Russia of 1917 and still marks today the country as an obstacle and counterpoint of the western powers.