The eight hitherto unpublished letters written by F. M. Dostoevsky to A. N. Maikov are taken from the originals kept in the Poushkin Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Petersburg. These letters are preserved there, together with Dostoevsky’s other letters to Maikov which have already been published.
The letters here published are of great interest, chiefly owing to their outspoken tone, but also as containing many facts bearing on Dostoevsky’s life abroad during the period 1867-1871.
Maikov was a great friend of Dostoevsky’s, and their friendship, which dated from before 1848, was the greater because of the affinity of their political views. Owing to that affinity ‘the friends understood each other from their letters, just as well as by personal contact.’ That is why the letters have a special significance. Furthermore, they contain Dostoevsky’s most intimate convictions and utterances about Russia and the Russian people, his prognostications of the future destinies of Russia, and his opinions about the ‘disintegrated’ West.
These letters also tell the history of Dostoevsky’s creation of The Idiot, and the author’s own opinion of that work; they afford a clear and concise explanation of the idea of The Devils (called The Possessed in the English translation); they contain Dostoevsky’s account of the psychology of his creative activity; they also include his literary judgments and opinions of certain writers, such as Leo Tolstoy, Turgenev, Schedrin, and Danilevsky.