On the interpretation of the soil concept in the works of the senior Slavophiles and in the socio-political program of F. M. Dostoevsky in the 1860–1870s.

Abstract

The article analyzes the genesis and internal structure of the “soil” concept in the works of F. M. Dostoevsky and of various Slavophiles: A. S. Khomyakov, I. V. Kireevsky, Yu. F. Samarin, and other writers in the sphere of Dostoevsky’s interests in 1850–1870: A. I. Herzen, A. A. Grigoriev, N. N. Strakhov, Archimandrite Theodore (A. M. Bukharev), and others. The author traces the conditions under which the magazine Vremya was created and explores why the ideology of “pochvennichestvo” was unclear to the Russian public, including some of its supporters (N. N. Strakhov). The author assumes that this idea can be traced from early letters to brother Mikhail (1838), to the “Pushkin Speech” (1880), and to the novel The Brothers Karamazov. The author criticizes claims about a new unwritten novel dedicated to the further path of Alyosha Karamazov, where, according to the “Diary” of A. S. Suvorin, he would have become a revolutionary. The author concludes that there is a deep unity linking Dostoevsky’s ideal of “pochvennichestvo” and the root idea of his literary work, which can be defined as mental searching for an answer to the question of the meaning of life, with the assertion of a direct dependence between moral state of a human being and his religious — ontological position.