“…After waiting 23 years, it is unthinkable to wait again for 20 years”: An unknown transcript on the fate of the Dostoevsky family’s Ryazan estate

This publication introduces into scientific circulation one of the previously untranscribed shorthand documents of the wife of F. M. Dostoevsky. According to our transcript, the contents of this draft of her letter is related to the inheritance that the writer’s family received after the death of a rich Moscow relative, A. F. Kumanina. Dostoevsky did not have the time to use the inherited estate in the village of Spas-Klepiki of the Ryazan province, and the writer’s widow and children became the owners of the Ryazan estate. On these three pages, A. G. Dostoevskaya encrypted a message to an unknown person about the upcoming sale of her family’s share of the estate in Spas-Klepiki and a request for advice on drawing up a forestry plan. In addition to the fact that this document is written in shorthand, the work with it was complicated by several circumstances: it was randomly enclosed in a folder with letters from N. A. Disterlo to A. G. Dostoevskaya; there is no evocation of the addressee or date. After studying the letters of F. F. Dostoevsky to his mother, the authors of the article concluded that the draft letter was dated 1895. An attempt is made to attribute it: it is demonstrated that the likely addressee is A. D. Povalishin, the manager of the Ryazan branches of the Noble and Peasant Banks. The transcript helped determine that count A. A. Golenishchev-Kutuzov provided assistance in the sale of the estate. It was established that a certain Monsherov, mentioned in the verbatim draft, is not a joint heir of Dostoevsky, as he is listed in the nominal index of the Complete Academic Works of the writer, but the Ryazan surveyor I. P. Monsherov. The study analyzes unpublished letters from 1896 by this acquaintance of Dostoevsky’s widow, as well as epistolary documents from the archive of Andrei and Anna Dostoevsky, which are related to the Ryazan estate. Examination reveals that one parcel of the land inherited by the writer’s family was sold, and the first income from the Ryazan estate was received in 1895. The fair copy of the letter written by Dostoevsky’s widow has not been recovered; the task of locating it (likely in the Ryazan archives) remains relevant. The transcribed, attributed and dated draft of this letter and the surviving letters of I. P. Monsherov to A. G. Dostoevsky are the documents that establish new facts about the fate of Kumanina’s inheritance after the writer’s death.