Foma Opiskin as a Historical Novelist, and His Historical Novel about Novgorod in Dostoevsky’s Story The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants

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Author: Nikolay N. Podosokorsky

Information about the author:

Nikolay N. Podosokorsky, PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Research Centre “Dostoevsky and World Culture,” A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya St., 25A, bld. 1, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6310-1579

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Funding Sources:

The research was carried out at IWL RAS with a grant from the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 25-18-00009 “Characters’ Writings, Languages, and Readings in Dostoevsky’s Mature Works (1859–1881).”

For citation:

Podosokorsky, N.N. “Foma Opiskin as a Historical Novelist, and His Historical Novel about Novgorod in Dostoevsky’s Story The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 3 (31), 2025, pp. 76–129. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-3-76-129

Received: 01 Aug. 2025

Published: 25 Sept. 2025

Issue: 2025 no. 3 (31)

Department: POETICS. CONTEXT

Pages: 76-129

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-3-76-129

EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/QZBOQW

UDK: 821.161.1.0

BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)

Publication Type: Research Article

Keywords: Dostoevsky, The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants, Foma Opiskin, Veliky Novgorod, Novgorod legends, historical legends, historical novel of the 19th century, Karamzin, book in a book, The Legend of Slovenia and Rus, Burivoy, Gostomysl, History of the Russian State, Joachim Chronicle, V.N. Tatishchev, A.Ya. Artynov, Frol Silin, M.N. Zagoskin, Noah’s Ark.

Abstract: The article is devoted to one of the main characters of Dostoevsky's work The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants (1859), the jester and domestic tyrant Foma Fomich Opiskin, presented as a historical novelist of the second third of the 19th century, and the unrealized idea of his novel about seventh-century ancient Novgorod, of which the hero managed to write only the "beginning." This side of the character's life has not yet been the focus of specific research. An attempt is made to reconstruct, as far as possible, the content of Opiskin's last novel-about which practically nothing is known-based on the text of the entire story, the literary interests of Foma Fomich and the ideas of Russian authors of the 17th to the first half of the 20th centuries about how Veliky Novgorod emerged and what existed there before the calling of the Varangians in 862, that is, before the beginning of the Rurik dynasty's rule in Russia. Special attention is paid to the influence on Opiskin of works by Nikolay Karamzin such as Frol Silin, Marfa Posadnitsa, or the Conquest of Novogorod, The History of the Russian State. It is demonstrated that Opiskin was not only an attentive reader of Karamzin but also used his writings as a practical guidance in his life. The laconic and extremely subjective testimony of the narrator (the author of Notes of the Unknown) about the first historical novel by Foma Fomich, written in Moscow around the 1830s, is also analyzed in detail. In the context of Dostoevsky's work and Opiskin's fate, the real historical novels of M.N. Zagoskin, A.I. Churovsky, and I.N. Glukharev are examined, as they were allegedly "very similar" to the first novel by Foma Fomich. The image of "Noah's Ark" is also analyzed, in which, at the very beginning of The Village of Stepanchikovo, the house of retired Hussar Colonel Rostanev is compared after Foma Fomich moves in.

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