A geopolitical map of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s world: A systematic description

Abstract

The relevance of the study lies in the facts that it explores the issues related to the global significance of Dostoevsky’s literary heritage and interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing Russian literature. The significance of the study is stipulated by the current state of scientific knowledge concerning a particular role of literary works in describing and interpreting global political and state processes. The aim of the study is to reconstruct and map Dostoevsky’s geopolitical worldview based on the analysis of his literary and journalistic works. To consider the writer’s works from the standpoint of his involvement into the political issues is the first attempt within Dostoevsky studies. The analysis of Dostoevsky’s literary heritage from a geopolitical perspective was carried out on the basis of Statisticheskiy slovar’ yazyka Dostoevskogo [Statistical Dictionary of Dostoevsky’s Language]. However, since this book does not contain draft notes and earlier versions, preliminary drafts and notebook materials, these texts were intentionally explored. This is the first literary study of its kind which is based on a variety of modern statistical methods. This fact makes it possible to state that the obtained results present new knowledge about Dostoevsky and are of undisputed novelty. The study is focused on big geopolitical subjects, i.e. countries, transnational and national unions, prominent regions; therefore, the present article is only the first stage of the study. In accordance with the conducted analysis and calculations, the following frequency of geopolitical subjects’ mentions is proposed: Russia (4420); France (848); Germany (735); Britain (397); Turkey (304); Siberia (223); Italy (173); Switzerland (172); Poland (145); Austria (141); America (119); Bulgaria (83); Serbia (83); China (49); Spain (40); Montenegro (38); Caucasus (38); Crimea (30); Egypt (26); Greece (23); Hungary (19); Balkans (18); Central Asia (18); Holland (15); Syria (14); Herzegovina (13); Novorossiya (10); Sweden (7); Japan (6); Altai (5); Arabia, Africa, Bosnia, Dagestan, India, Lithuania, Mexico, Sicily, Finland (each 4); Belgium, Iceland, Malta, Peru, Sandwich Islands (each 3); Brazil, Brittany, Denmark, Israel, Moldova, Romania, Sakhalin (each 2); and Galicia (1). The frequency of geopolitical subjects’ mentions by years is as follows: 1877 (2100), 1876 (1516), 1860 (567), 1880 (502), 1872 (388), 1873 (381), 1868 (366), 1862 (328), 1866 (265), 1875 (264), 1869 (170), 1863 (155), 1881 (135), 1867 (128), 1878 (122), 1864 (120), 1859 (102), 1874 (100), 1870 (96), 1856 (75), 1861 (61), 1871 (54), 1865 (52), 1846 (43), 1847 (41), 1849 (38), 1858 (25), 1854 (21), 1848 (15), 1857 (12), 1845 (5), 1843-1844 (3), 1838-1839 (2), 1879 (1); geopolitical subjects were not mentioned in 1841, 1842, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, and 1855. he authors express their deep gratitude to M.V. Podrezov for his assistance in preparing this article. Contribution of the authors: the authors contributed equally to this article. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.