Dostoevsky and Nihilism
As a young man Dostoevsky held membership in a group known as the Petrashevsky Circle, whose members interests included the discussion of contemporary topics such as socialism and liberalism, as well as participating in the act of distributing banned texts. Members of the Petrashevsky Circle, including Dostoevsky, were arrested, placed in a mock trial, and sent to a Siberian prison, on charges ranging from reading of banned materials to conspiracy against the government. By the time of his release from Siberian prison, Dostoevsky’s had become a highly religious individual with conservative ideas.
Following Dostoevsky’s exile there began a rise in a movement known as the Russian Nihilist Movement, which saw a disillusionment with the monarchic government and all forms of authority, a rejection of religious authority, the espousing of atheism and rationalism, and the use of violence for political change. Dostoevsky’s issues with the nihilistic movement was with its rejection of the of the bible as well as with its promotion of atheism.
During this period (1860 and onward), Dostoevsky began to add elements of anti-nihilism in his novels, with introductions to characters that were immoral, violent, or otherwise unlikeable or misguided. Dostoevsky presented these characters in an attempt to dissuade people from joining the nihilist movement, and that the rejection of sacred truths by nihilists could be overcome by delving further into the understanding of the human spirit (Woolfolk 73). Dostoevsky presented characters as behaving in an immoral way, due to either the character being an atheist or a person who rejects the sacred truths and moralities of the bible, and then dealing with the spiritual and psychological repercussions of their actions. Raskolnikov’s actions in Crime and Punishment was Dostoevsky’s first attempt at the negative portrayal of a nihilistic character and is more direct in the attribution of these actions as a rejection of the moralities of a higher authority and the creations of a nihilistic atheist (Woolfolk 75). Dostoevsky, through his nihilistic characters, also attempted to create a greater understanding that the human spirit and its connection to religion and higher power could reverse the negative effects he perceived to be a result of an acceptance of atheism and a rejection of religion and sacred laws. Dostoevsky would place these unlikeable characters in situations where they would experience a revelation that would steer the character in the direction of a sacred morality and in the path of redemption.
References
Woolfolk, Alan. “The Two Switchmen of Nihilism: Dostoevsky and Nietzsche.” Mosaic : a Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature, vol. 22, no. 1 ,1989, pp. 71-86.