S. Hudspith, Dostoevsky and the idea of russianness

Nel Grillaert

pp. 159-161

in: Robert Bird (ed), Dostoevskij's significance for philosophy and theology, Studies in East European Thought 59, 2007.

Abstract

While Dostoevskij himself was reticent regarding his affiliation with Slavophile thought, many of his contemporaneous and modern readers labelled him a Slavophile. The aim of Hudspith’s book is to establish the correctness of such claims. Avoiding the risky suggestion that Dostoevskij may have been influenced by Slavophile ideas, Hudspith intends to draw attention to and analyse areas of correspondence between Dostoevskij’s thought and the ideas of the two leading spokesmen of Slavophilism, Aleksej Khomjakov and Ivan Kireevskij. To that purpose, she examines both his non-fiction and fiction: her work moves from an overview of Dostoevskij’s explicit statements on and direct debate with Slavophile thought in his non-and semi-fiction towards a study of a more subtle dialogue with Slavophilism in his artistic works. The relevance of her study is that approaching Dostoevskij through “a lens of Slavophilism [...] may bring into sharper focus some of the fundamental issues with which...