From the History of Dostoevsky Studies in the 1920s: On the Centenary of the Founding of the Dostoevsky Research Group at ILYAZV

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Author: Petr A. Druzhinin

Information about the author:

DSc in Philology, PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow, V.V. Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Volkonka St., 18/2, 119019 Moscow, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3097-3375

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For citation:

Druzhinin, P.A. “From the History of Dostoevsky Studies in the 1920s: On the Centenary of the Founding of the Dostoevsky Research Group at ILYAZV.” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 4 (32), 2025, pp. 232–276. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-4-232-276

Received: 18 May 2025

Approved after reviewing: 02 June 2025

Published: 25 Dec. 2025

Issue: 2025 no. 4 (32)

Department: ARCHIVE

Pages: 232-276

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-4-232-276

EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/VBDPVG

UDK: 821.161.1.0

BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)

Publication Type: Research Article

Keywords: Leningrad School of Philology, 1920s, Dostoevsky, ILYAZV, Komarovich, Dolinin.

Abstract: The article presents previously unknown materials on the study of Dostoevsky’s works at the Institute for the Comparative Study of the Literatures and Languages of the West and East (ILYAZV) in the 1920s. Founded in 1919 at Petrograd University, ILYAZV became, thanks to N.Ya. Marr, the largest scholarly center of the 1920s, which concentrated the leading philological forces of the USSR. In 1924, a group dedicated to the study of Dostoevsky’s oeuvre was established within ILYAZV, headed by the prominent Dostoevsky scholar V.L. Komarovich. Because the material and ideological difficulties of the 1920s prevented ILYAZV staff from publishing their scholarly works on time, the primary form of public presentation for Dostoevsky researchers at the Institute became academic lectures and reports. These forms played an essential role in the scholarship of the time, yet information about them was scarcely published. For this reason, both the activities of ILYAZV itself and the Institute’s work on Dostoevsky have remained largely unaccounted for in the history of the Humanities. Drawing on a thorough analysis of ILYAZV archival materials preserved in several archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow, the article reconstructs the history of the activities of the Group for the Study of Dostoevsky’s Works and provides previously unknown information on the scholarly reports delivered by ILYAZV researchers on the writer. Special attention is devoted to uncovering biographical materials on scholars whose research interests in the 1910s–1920s included Dostoevsky’s legacy. The collection of previously unpublished documents presented here makes it possible to clarify the range of scholarly topics and research directions associated with the study of Dostoevsky in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Particularly valuable are documents published for the first time in this article, written by prominent figures in the humanities, among them Academician Aleksei Shakhmatov and the classical scholar and writer Vyacheslav Ivanov.

References

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