Vol 9, No 1 (2022)

The article presents the facts that contradict A. S. Syrovatko’s statement, which claims that the current territory of the Museum is not related to the Dostoevsky estate (Unknown Dostoevsky. 2021. № 4). When studied objectively, the objects found during the excavations do not contradict the presence of “traces of Dostoevsky.” The so-called memorial period of estate ownership by the writer's parents, which lasted only seven years, was unable to leave too many traces, and the objects found by archaeologists in the XVIII — early XIX centuries could have been used by the Dostoevsky family up to 1830s. Additional arguments are introduced to resolve the dispute: the result of the dendrological examination and written sources (previously known and recently discovered), namely, boundary plans, memoirs and diaries of A. M. Dostoevsky, family correspondence. The proposed comprehensive approach and a comparison of all the currently available sources, allows us to attribute the location of the Dostoevsky manor house to the preserved wing where the museum was recently opened. In connection with the problem of identification of the museum house, the hypotheses of other authors are considered (T. N. Dementieva and L. A. Tarasova, L. A. Voronkina) about the cardinal changes that took place in the architecture of the manor Darovoe at different times. Sources indicate, on the contrary, a certain continuity in the development of the estate under all three of its owners: the Khotyaintsev, Dostoyevsky and Ivanov families. The key factor is the location of two “mounds” under the lime trees as “green canteens” tied to the manor house, and on the other side, the border between the landowner's estate and peasant homesteads remained unchanged (as confirmed by archival documents and the boundary wall and moat preserved). Conservative localization is characteristic of the life in a noble estate, once and forever inscribed in the surrounding landscape. Taking into account the experience of their predecessors, the Dostoevskys and Ivanovs did not make radical changes to the space inhabited before them, and their house did not change its location.

The article is devoted to Dostoevsky's participation as postmaster Shpekin in a charity performance of the comedy by N. V. Gogol “The Inspector,” staged on April 14, 1860 by amateurs in the hall of Maria Ruadze's house on the Moika embankment near the Polizeisky Bridge. Along with Dostoevsky, 25 amateur actors were engaged in the performance. Their names are known from the showbill published as an appendix to P. I. Weinberg’s memoirs of this event. Dostoevsky interacted with the participants of this production during several rehearsals that began on March 31, 1860, and directly during the performance. However, fewer than half of the participants of this performance are registered in S. V. Belov's encyclopedic dictionary F. M. “Dostoevsky and his entourage,” and most of them are engaged in stage episodes without Shpekin-Dostoevsky. The article contains biographical data about amateur actors who participated in the production of “The Inspector,” who interacted with Dostoevsky in the collective creative process, went on stage together with him, but who have not been previously mentioned in the biographical literature about the writer.

The wife of F. M. Dostoevsky was one of the first female collectors in Russia. The article examines her collecting activities, which included collecting postage stamps and autographs of world historical figures, based on archival sources. The motivation and support for this undertaking were provided by the writer himself, and the "suppliers" were his correspondents and acquaintances. The article focuses on autographs in Italian in the collection of A. G. Dostoevskaya, which are stored at the department of manuscripts of the Russian State Library. These are five letters of famous Italians received from A. N. Jacobi (Peshkova-Toliverova), who lived in Italy in the 1860s and had a wide social circle there. A. N. Jacobi had been familiar with the Dostoevskys since the mid-1870s, and continued to communicate with Anna Grigorievna even after the writer's death. Among the documents handed over to A. N. Jacobi are a letter from the poet Aleardo Aleardi to the artist Guglielmo de Sanctis, letters addressed to her from the Italian opera singer Elisa Volpini, politician Ricciotti Garibaldi (son of Giuseppe Garibaldi) and two letters from the Italian actor Ernesto Rossi. The sixth autograph in Italian in the collection of A. G. Dostoevsky is a letter to her from a fan of Dostoevsky’s work by the Sardinian writer Grazia Deledda in 1912. In this letter, the future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature expressed her admiration and love for the "powerful genius" Dostoevsky. Grazia Deledda not only communicated in writing with Dostoevsky's widow, but also met with his daughter Lyubov in Italy in the 1910s. The article introduces unique letters in Italian from the collection of A. G. Dostoevskaya into scientific circulation for the first time, and provides their translation into Russian. These documents are of double value: as autographs of famous historical figures and as collection items of Dostoevsky's wife.