Keeper of the Family Archive (Andrei A. Dostoevsky According to Archival Documents)

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Author: Madina R. Kayumova
Information about the author:

Chief Archivist of the Department of Scientific Reference Apparatus, National Archive of the Republic of Karelia, Kuibysheva Ave., 6a, 185035 Petrozavodsk, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2360-8388

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Author 2: Tatiana V. Panyukova
Information about the author 2:

Member of the Genealogical Society of Karelia, Leading Editor of the International Center for the Study of Dostoevsky of the Institute of Philology, Petrozavodsk State University, Lenin Ave., 33, 185910 Petrozavodsk, Russia.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4494-4332

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Funding Sources:

The research was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (RSF, project no. 24-18-01075 “The Epistolary Heritage of F.M. Dostoevsky and His Correspondents: Sources, Attribution, Textual Criticism (1867‒1875)”, https://rscf.ru/project/24-18-01075/).
For citation:

Kayumova, M.R., and Panyukova, T.V. “Keeper of the Family Archive (Andrei A. Dostoevsky According to Archival Documents).” Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 4 (32), 2025, pp. 277–349. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-4-277-349
Received: 10 Apr. 2025
Approved after reviewing: 30 Apr. 2025
Published: 25 Dec. 2025
Issue: 2025 no. 4 (32)
Department: ARCHIVE
Pages: 277-349
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2025-4-277-349
EDN:

https://elibrary.ru/URUIAH
UDK: 821.161.1.0+929.5+80+091
BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)
Publication Type: Research Article
Keywords: Andrei Andreevich Dostoevsky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky family archive, epistolary, autograph, list, missing manuscripts, archival search, biography reconstruction.
Abstract: The Dostoevsky archive, in addition to the part of it that was preserved and systematized by the writer’s widow, Anna Grigorievna, also includes the family archives of his brothers and sister (Ivanovs). The archive of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s younger brother, Andrei Mikhailovich, along with his diaries, memoirs (which are still the basic source of information about Dostoevsky’s childhood), and personal correspondence (of himself, his wife, and sons) includes the most valuable epistolary legacy of the 1830s: correspondence between Mikhail Andreevich and Maria Fyodorovna Dostoevskys with children. After his father’s death, the role of keeper of the family archive, researcher of the family tree, assistant to Anna Grigorievna Dostoevskaya for preserving her husband’s memory and heritage passed to his youngest son, Andrei Andreevich Dostoevsky (1863–1933). The article brings together all the identified storage locations of A.A. Dostoevsky’s personal and family archives: documents related to his academic, official activities, arrest, and pension registration are kept in St. Petersburg (the Central State Historical Archive of St. Petersburg, the Central State Archive of St. Petersburg, the Russian State Historical Archive, the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Archive of the Federal Security Service for St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region, Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Moscow (State Archive of the Russian Federation), National Archive of the Republic of Karelia, State Archive of the Republic of Crimea. Business correspondence related to Andrei Andreevich’s activities as secretary of the Russian Geographical Society formed a separate fund in the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Fund 723). The archive of A.M. Dostoevsky preserved by him was transferred to the Pushkin House, where he compiled a separate collection in the Department of Manuscripts (Fund 56), which includes 453 storage units. Using the example of two letters originally kept in the family of A.M. Dostoevsky it is shown that the facts of the archive keeper’s biography and the decisions he makes at a certain point in his life directly affect the fate of autographs: one of the four letters from M.M. and F.M. Dostoevskys to his mother was presented to the Pushkin House in 1921, the year of the writer’s jubilee, and in connection with this, the place of its storage became not the 56th foundation, which did not exist at that time, but the Dostoevsky Foundation (Fund 100). Another autograph, the earliest known letter from F.M. Dostoevsky to his father (1842), was presented by Andrei Andreevich in 1925 to the collector I.S. Abramov, and since then, having disappeared from the field of view of researchers for many decades, was listed according to A.A. Dostoevsky. The possible loss of part of the Dostoevsky archive is related to the events of the revolution and the Civil War. An urgent task of modern Dostoevsky studies is to prepare a complete set of the writer’s correspondence with all correspondents as part of his handwritten legacy. The pre- sence of gaps in Dostoevsky’s epistolary makes it much more difficult to accomplish this task and puts forward the need to systematize the existing epistolary and search for lost autographs. The reconstruction of the biographies of the keepers of large archives, such as Andrei Andreevich Dostoevsky, is therefore of undoubted importance, allowing us to establish the path of the autograph to the place of its modern storage (of all its intermediate owners) or to obtain solid documentary data to search for missing manuscripts and documents.

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